Seven, it is the green one. I promise its green when it catches the light just right. It looks really green, but most of the time it looks like this like a graphite grade. This watch is a bit of a redesign compared to the last few models of the apple watch. So if youre thinking about upgrading, you might have some questions about the series. Seven – and i mean im gon na answer a bunch here, but the more important questions to ask are about your watch hows your watch. Is it good hows the screen? Does it show the time when you need it to? Is the screen big enough hows? The battery is it, is it good yeah? Is it charging fast enough you getting all the quantified self biometric but non medical data that you use to track all of your health stuff that going well sure yeah. You got any scratches on your watch. Is it cracked? No, its good. Do you even have an apple watch? Have you ever wanted one? Unless the answer to one of those questions tells you that you need a new apple watch, you dont need to think twice about the apple watch series 7. But if you do need a new apple watch, well, im going to tell you whats new the apple watch series 7 is not the major redesign that we saw rumored leading up to its release. Instead, we have a subtle, update, thats, all about two things: durability and a bigger screen.
The screen is 20 bigger than the last few apple watches, and you can really see it. The bezel is smaller and everything on the screen is bigger. Now, when the series 3, which by the way, is still available – and i do not think you should buy it anyway, when the series 3 got updated to the series 4, the bigger screen on the 4 made a huge difference. But here on the series 7, i just dont think it makes enough of a difference to justify an upgrade now. The second thing is that apple says: the watch is more durable. The front crystal is more crack resistant. The whole thing is now ip6x dust resistant. In addition to the usual water resistance to 50 meters, that weve seen on a bunch of apple watches now and if you leave the ambient mode screen on it is slightly brighter indoors, but the overall maximum brightness of the screen hasnt changed. So the screen, the design, the durability, theyre all really nice, but none of them are reasons to upgrade. Now this year, with the iphones apple made battery life for the iphone 13 mini and regular and pro and pro max way way better this year for the apple watch, it made charging slightly faster, but battery life is still hitting that same 18 hour target that apples Aiming for, i gladly would have traded this bigger screen for better battery life, but instead its just about the same as what weve had for the last couple of years, but the faster charging is noticeable.
It comes with a usbc cable, so you got to make sure you have a charger that can use it, but if youve got that you get just enough juice in the morning, while you putter around doing your routine to get charged up for basically the whole day. I could charge this thing up about 20 in 10 minutes its pretty fast, so we got a bigger screen, but what i really wanted was better battery life and we got faster charging, but what i really wanted is more convenient charging. The apple watch still doesnt support standard qi charging, so you cant charge it on a regular standard pad, or you know off the back of the iphone. Actually, the only thing you can charge off the back of the iphone is that weird battery pack that apple makes and thats only when the iphone itself is plugged in and i dont know apple, you should get on that. You should let us charge things off the the back of the iphone just go ahead and copy samsung. We promise, we wont, tell anybody, so the hardware got some really minor. Iterative updates, not reasons to buy a new watch, but theyre nice. If you end up buying a new watch, as for software apple made some of the new features in watchos 8 exclusive to the series 7., the idea is that the bigger screen of the swatch lets apple do more stuff on it. But im not convinced.
Most of these features couldnt go on older apple watches, but lets go through them. First off there are two new custom watch faces. Contour puts the numbers on the edge of the screen, and it has them change size as the time changes and modular duo lets. You have two big full width complications, instead of just one then theres a new keyboard which you can tap or swipe on as smartwatch keyboards go its not bad, but i would still rather just dictate to siri most of the time. I would like to compare this keyboard to flick type. The third party apple watch keyboard, but apple, kicked it out of the app store a little while ago and now theyre getting sued on it by the developer over the decision to kick them out right before they made their own keyboard. I mean come on apple. The rest of the new features in watchos 8 apply to pretty much all apple watches, but the tweaks are fairly minor theres. A new portrait mode watch face that can hover the time behind a head and theres a new world time watch face thats very busy, but third party developers still cant make their own fully. Custom watch faces, youre stuck with what apple gives you the home. App, though, for smart home controls is much better, now theres easier to find buttons and statuses at the top, but honestly theres, really only one watch os feature that i care about talking about right now: multiple timers, multiple timers.
Finally, you can set them in the app or you can set them with siri. You can name them its a revolution, its also something you still cant do at all on the iphone 2021 baby, otherwise watch os 8 and the apple watch. Series 7 do basically the same stuff as before. Theres, an ecg monitor a heart rate, monitor and a blood oxygen monitor, and no, you should not use any of these monitors for medical diagnostic purposes. This is not a medical device at best its like a health device, a quantified self gadget and a pretty good fitness tracker, which leads me to my favorite thing lets ride bikes. There may not be new health sensors in the series 7, but watch os 8 does have some new fitness features. Now all apple watches can finally do bike, workout detection and it works even if youve got some starts and stops or whatever you think might fool it. Five to ten minutes in it asks if youd like to track your workout and then you reach over, and you hit the button and bang here. Youre tracking your bike workout its a good start, but i dont think its quite enough. Theres no easy way to get the kind of data that cyclists really care about, integrating with the apple watches data. So if you have a cadence sensor or a power meter on your bike, getting those numbers merged with the apple watch, gps and heart rate data is still difficult.
Youre kind of on your own to figure that out apple is also making its fall. Detection feature work during workouts, like bike rides and also speaking of bike, rides its supposed to detect when youre on an e bike and adjust your calorie metrics accordingly. But i cant tell if it works if its turned on. Yet when you go look at a fitness thing, theres no way to tell if it thinks it was an e bike right now. All of these bike features theyre also on the older watches, so just like everything else, theyre, not necessarily a reason to upgrade to the series 7. theyre, just a reason for us to show you these pretty shots from pacifica california. I say this every year because its true every year, the apple watch series 7 is the best smartwatch and theres, nothing even close, especially for android users, because you cant use an apple watch with android. But if you already have an apple watch and its not broken and its not bothering you theres nothing here that is gon na urge you to get an upgrade right away and thats, not a failure. By the way, it would be weird to replace any watch every year, two or three years and the apple watch is a watch. So you should replace yours when its broken or when its not meeting your needs and not before that point. But if it is time for you to get an apple watch, that is when the series 7 will be worth the upgrade, because its great hey everybody thanks so much for watching.
If you missed it, weve also reviewed the iphone 13 and the ipad mini, and you can click on something now to watch them, and i should point where that is.tAK8da2v8sU
