Review: Apple Watch

Fitness

Apple has strongly promoted the Apple Watch as a device for fitness. It includes two applications dedicated to fitness: Activity and Workout.

Activity is designed to get you more active throughout the day, by setting a movement goal (expressed as a target in calories), an exercise goal of 30 minutes per day, and a standing goal to encourage you to stand for a few minutes, 12 hours per day.

It's not designed for hardcore exercise bunnies, who will be better served by third-party apps. Instead, it's designed for people like me, who simply need a bit of a nudge towards being more active.

Workout is, as the name suggests, all about logging specific workouts. You can select from common types of workout such as outdoor and indoor runs or walks, elliptical trainers and rowing machines.

You set a calorie or time goal, and away you go – the Apple Watch logs what you do, and encourages you along the way by telling you when you've hit 50 percent of your goal. It's basic, but it works effectively.

All the data from the fitness apps, along with general steps taken and your heart rate, are fed into the Health app on your iPhone. This means the data also ends up available to other applications to which you've given permission on your phone.

There's also already a good selection of third-party fitness apps on the Apple Watch, from well-known brands such as Runtastic and Strava, to more specialised apps such as FitStar Yoga and Hole19 for golf.

Is the Apple Watch better than a dedicated fitness device? For everyone except the most dedicated fitness fanatic, the answer is probably yes.

It's easy to use; it tracks things in a clear and intelligible way; and it's extensible by third-party applications. The one caveat is, of course, that it needs to be in range of your iPhone to fully track your motion, as it doesn't have built-in GPS.

It tracks steps and heart rate even without the phone to hand, and it will make a guess based on previous data of the distance you've walked or run, but unless you have the iPhone with you, you can't accurately track your distance or route.

Battery life

Before its release, there was some controversy over the Apple Watch's potential battery life. The rumour was it would last only a few hours per charge in “active use”, which sounded like you were going to need to charge it multiple times per day.

The good news is that in real-world use – backed up by our smartwatch battery tests – you should see around a full day and a half of use before the device runs out. On average I found it had around 30-40 percent battery left at the end of each day. It's a device you'll want to charge overnight, using the inductive charger supplied.

It's worth noting these battery figures are for the 38mm Apple Watch, which has a 205mAh battery. The 42mm version, which we haven't had the opportunity to test yet, is likely to last longer, thanks to its bigger battery.

Conclusions

Given the company's track record, it would be foolish to bet against Apple completely changing the way wearables are perceived. And, after six days of continual use, I've come to expect the Apple Watch to be on my wrist at all times.

The true test of any personal device is simply whether you miss it if it's not there, and in the case of the Apple Watch, this is definitely true.

It's also changed my behaviour. One of my biggest fears about the Apple Watch was that it would be like the Android Wear devices I've previously used – a distraction, which ended up making me look at my phone more than I previously did.

In fact, what I found was the opposite: being able to glance at notification after a soft tap on my wrist meant I didn't look so much at the phone. I didn't need to – I was able to triage notifications from the wrist, usually with just a tap.

Is it the best smartwatch available at present? If you have an iPhone, the answer is a clear “yes”. It's not cheap, but you're paying for a high-quality product that integrates incredibly well with the whole Apple ecosystem.

Certainly, Apple Watch is a more complete product than the first iPhone was. It's ahead of Android Wear in pretty much everything that matters, apart from three things: watch faces, support for Android and the choice of different watches.

However, if all the multiple watches available are worse than the Apple Watch – and I think they are – then the choice is unimportant.

The Pebble Steel and forthcoming Pebble Time are stronger rivals for your cash, with superior battery life to anything else on the market and effective notifications systems, but they lack the design finesse of Apple's digital timepiece and its fitness-tracking features.

At the moment, however, the Apple Watch is really “just” an accessory to the iPhone, albeit a beautiful and really interesting one.

Should you buy one? If you have an iPhone and have the money, you won't regret it. But how much use you'll get out of it remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk