Jiří Filip If there was something I was really looking forward to this year, apart from the reviews of the new iPhones, it was also the review of the Apple Watch Series 7. The watch seemed to be extremely interesting according to a lot of leaks before its unveiling, and that's why I kind of expected that testing it would literally excite me and at the same time will prompt me to upgrade from my current model - i.e. Series 5. After all, the previous generation was relatively weak and unfun for Series 5 owners, and therefore the expectations attached to the Series 7 were all the greater. But did Apple manage to fulfill them with what it finally showed? You will learn exactly that in the following lines.
Design
It probably won't come as a surprise to you when I say that the design of this year's Apple Watch is really a big surprise, despite the fact that it doesn't really differ from previous models. Since last year, there have been various leaks of information revolving around the fact that this year's Series 7 will receive an updated appearance after years, which will bring them closer to Apple's current design language. Specifically, they should have sharp edges along with a flat display, which is a solution that the Californian giant currently uses, for example, with iPhones, iPads or iMacs M1. Sure, Apple itself never confirmed the redesign, making all of this speculation based on speculation, but damn, that speculation was confirmed by virtually every accurate leaker and analyst. The arrival of different and yet the same Apple Watch was therefore literally a blow from the blue for many of us.
Gallery
In his words, Apple still brought the redesign with the new Series 7. In particular, the corners of the watch were to receive changes, which were to be rounded in a slightly different way, which was to give them both modernity and improve their durability. While I cannot confirm the second mentioned feature, I have to directly refute the first one. I've been wearing the Apple Watch Series 5 on my wrist for two years now, and to be honest, when I put them next to the Series 7 - and that I looked at them really closely - I simply didn't notice the difference in shape between these models. In short, the "sevens" are still the classic rounded Apple Watch, and if Apple has changed the inclination of the milling cutter of their body somewhere, probably only a worker who mills these watches after last year's Series 6 will notice.
I almost want to say that the only distinguishing mark of this year's and last generation's Apple Watch are the colors, but actually even that is not entirely accurate. They are not colors, but one single color - namely green. All the other shades – i.e. grey, silver, red and blue – have been retained from last year and although Apple has played with them a bit and they look a little different this year, you only have a chance to notice the difference between the shade of the Series 6 and 7 when it's next to you will position yourself and compare colors more thoroughly. For example, this gray is much darker compared to the colors from previous years, which I personally really like, because it makes this version of the watch look more complete. Their black display blends in much better with the dark body, which looks good on the hand. This is, of course, a detail that is quite unimportant in the end.
I was also very curious as to how I, as a long-term wearer of the Apple Watch in 42 mm and subsequently in 44 mm, would perceive their further increase - specifically to 45 mm. Although it was clear to me that the millimeter jump was nothing dizzying, deep down I was convinced that I would feel some kind of difference. After all, when switching from Series 3 in 42 mm to Series 5 in 44 mm, I felt the difference quite decently. Unfortunately, nothing like that happens with the 45mm Series 7. The watch feels literally exactly the same on the hand as the 44 mm model, and if you put the 44 and 45 mm models side by side for comparison, you simply won't notice the size difference. It's a shame? Honestly, I don't know. On the one hand, it would probably be nice to have more options thanks to a significantly larger display, but on the other hand, I don't think that the usability of the Watch would change significantly after increasing it from 42 to 44 mm. Personally, therefore, the (in)visibility of an extra millimeter leaves me quite cold.
Display
By far the biggest upgrade of this year's Apple Watch generation is the display, which saw a significant narrowing of the frames around it. It doesn't make much sense to write here how many percent the Series 7 offers a larger display area compared to previous generations, because on the one hand Apple bragged about it like the devil during practically the entire time of the "main hype" of the watch, and on the other hand it doesn't really say that much, because you can hardly imagine , what it is actually about. However, if I had to describe this upgrade in my own words, I would describe it as extremely successful and, in short, what you want from a modern smartwatch. Thanks to the significantly narrower frames, the watch has a much more modern impression than the previous generation and perfectly proves that Apple is, in short, the champion despite similar upgrades. In fact, he has recently been doing the narrowing of the frames for most of his products, with the fact that in all cases it cannot be evaluated other than as very successful. However, while the world waited many years for iPads, iPhones and Macs, the Californian giant "cuts" bezels every three years for the Apple Watch, which is not bad at all.
However, the entire frame upgrade has one big but. Are narrower frames around the display really necessary, or will they improve the use of the watch in any fundamental way? Sure, the watch looks really better with it, but on the other hand, it works exactly as it did with the wider bezels on the Series 4 to 6. So don't count on the fact that the increase in display area of the watch will somehow significantly improve its usability, because it simply won't arrive. You will continue to use all applications exactly as you used them before, and whether you look at them on a display with wider or narrower frames will suddenly not matter to you. No, I really don't mean to say that Apple should have scrapped this upgrade and used wide frames again for the Series 7. It is only necessary to take into account that not everything is in reality as it may appear at first glance. I must admit that at first I also thought that I would feel the larger display much more, but after testing, when I returned to the Series 5, I found that I actually did not feel the difference at all. However, it is possible that I am talking like this mainly because I am a fan of dark dials, where you simply do not recognize the narrow bezels, and where you can appreciate them more in one place. The watchOS system as such is generally tuned to dark colors, and the same applies to both native and third-party applications, so even here the narrow frames do not have much to score.
Closely connected with the larger display is another improvement, which Apple boasted when unveiling the watch as one of the key ones. Specifically, we are talking about the implementation of a keyboard, which is supposed to take communication via Apple Watch to the next level. And what is the reality? Such that the potential to shift the level of communication via the Apple Watch is huge, but again there is one extreme catch. Apple somehow forgot to mention at the presentation and later in the press release that the keyboard will be limited to only certain regions, as it uses whispering, autocorrect and generally all the goodies of Apple keyboards. And since the Czech Republic (unexpectedly) did not fit into these regions, the usability of the keyboard here is, in a word, dismal. If you want to "break" it, you need to add a supported language to the iPhone keyboard, i.e. English, but in a way you will break the phone and do more harm than good. As soon as you put on the foreign language keyboard, the emoji icon disappears from the lower left corner of the display and moves directly to the software keyboard, which makes communication through this element more difficult, because you are simply not used to calling emoji from the new place. A globe for switching keyboards will then appear in the former place of emoji, and you will be faced with many unwanted switches that activate, for example, autocorrection for the given language, which can very solidly trample your texts.
Of course, you have to count on auto-correction and whispering directly on the watch as well. Therefore, texts written in Czech will often be really nerve-racking, because the watch will try to force its words on you, and you will have to constantly correct transcribed phrases or ignore whispered options. And I guarantee you that it will stop being fun really soon. In addition, the keyboard as such is very small, so typing on it cannot be described as very comfortable. On the other hand, it should be noted that it was not even supposed to be comfortable, because whispering or autocorrection of the language in which the user was writing should have helped significantly. In other words, Apple did not expect that you would write the texts in the watch letter by letter, but rather that you would click a few letters into them, from which the watch would whisper your words and thus facilitate your communication. If the Czech language worked like this, I would honestly be really excited and I would already wear the watch on my wrist. But in its current form, bypassing the absence of a Czech keyboard by adding a foreign one makes absolutely no sense to me, and I don't think that it will ever make any sense in the Czech Republic. So yes, the software keyboard on the Apple Watch is inherently great, but you need to be an Apple user communicating in a supported language.
However, not all display upgrades are either relatively unnecessary or priceless in the Czech Republic. For example, such an increase in brightness in the Always-on mode when using the watch indoors is a really nice change, and although it is not necessarily a striking difference compared to older generations, it is simply nice that the watch has again taken a few steps forward here and it happened with Always -he more usable. Higher brightness in this mode means better readability of the dials and therefore often also the elimination of various turns of the wrist towards your eyes. So Apple has done a really good job here, although I honestly think few people will appreciate it, which is a shame.
Performance, endurance and charging
While the first Apple Watch models were very poor in terms of performance and therefore overall agility, in recent years they have been really fast thanks to the powerful chips from Apple's workshop. And it seems that they are so fast that the manufacturer no longer wants to speed them up, since the last three generations of Apple Watch offer the same chip and therefore the same speed. At first glance, this thing may seem strange, surprising and, above all, negative. At least that's how it felt to me when I learned about the "old" chip in this year's Watch. However, when Apple looks at this "chip policy" in more detail, it realizes that it is completely unnecessary to criticize it here. If you have been using the newer Apple Watch for a long time, you will certainly agree with me when I say that you would simply look for performance gaps in the form of longer loading of applications or system things with them in vain. The watch has been running at extreme speeds for years now, and I honestly can't imagine how to use the extra potential power to improve the user experience. The use of an older chip in the Series 7 has stopped bothering me over time, as this step simply does not limit a person in absolutely anything and that is the main thing in the result. The only thing that annoys me a little is the slower boot time, but honestly - how many times a week, month or year do we turn off the watch completely, only to appreciate its faster start-up. And "cramming" a faster chipset into the Watch just so that they run equally fast in all respects and boot up a few seconds faster seems to me to be pure nonsense.
While I have to support Apple for deploying a chip that has been tested for years, I cannot do the same for battery life. I find it almost unbelievable how he manages to ignore the calls of apple sellers for years for the watch to last at least three days without the need to "prick" it on the charger. Sure, it would be difficult for Apple to make a generational jump from one day to three with the Watch, but I find it strange that we don't even get small shifts, like we do with iPhones every year. With the Series 7, you will get the same battery life as the Series 6, which was the same as the Series 5 and very similar to that of the Series 4. And what is the biggest paradox? That this endurance in my case is one day, i.e. one and a half days in the case of a smaller load, while when I used the Apple Watch Series 3 years ago, I got quite comfortably for two days even with a heavier load. Sure, the watch got a pretty brutally inflated display, added Always-on, got faster and offers a lot of other functions, but heck, we've also moved a few years ahead technologically, so where's the problem?
I secretly hoped that Apple had managed to work on the energy consumption of the LTE modem, which was really brutally draining the battery in the Series 6. I honestly didn't get better results here either, so you still need to expect that the watch will last you a day with occasional use of LTE, but if you use mobile data more during the day (for example, you would use it for half a day to make phone calls and news), you won't even make it to that one day.
It seems to me that this year Apple is trying to at least partially excuse its inability in the form of low battery life by supporting fast charging, thanks to which you are able to realistically charge the watch from 0 to 80% in about 40 minutes and then to full charge in less than an hour. On paper, this gadget looks really nice, but what is the reality? Such that you will enjoy charging your watch quickly at first, but then you will somehow realize that it is actually of no use to you anyway, because you always charge your watch according to your "charging ritual" - i.e. overnight. In other words, this means that you don't really care how fast you charge your watch, because you have a certain window of time reserved for it when you don't need it and therefore don't appreciate a faster charge. Of course, from time to time a person gets into a situation where he forgets to put the Watch on the charger, and in that case he appreciates fast charging, but it is necessary to say objectively that compared to a longer battery life, this is a completely incomparable thing.
Summary
Evaluating this year's Apple Watch generation is honestly extremely difficult for me - after all, just like writing the previous lines. The watch brings perhaps even less interesting things than last year's Series 6 compared to the Series 5, which is disappointing. It annoys me that we didn't see, for example, an upgrade of the health sensors that could have been more precise, the brightness of the display or similar things that would have moved this year's generation forward at least an inch. Yes, the Apple Watch Series 7 is a great watch that is a joy to wear on the wrist. But honestly, they're practically as great as the Series 6 or Series 5, and they're not too far off from the Series 4 either. If you're going from older models (i.e. 0 to 3), the jump will be absolutely brutal for them, but that would also be the case if that he would now go for the Series 7 or 6 instead of the Series 5. But if you wanted to switch from a watch in the last, let's say, three years, then count on the fact that after putting on the Series 7, you will feel as if you still have the same model on it what so far Naturally, you will not be enthusiastic, although the product as such deserves an enthusiastic reaction in my opinion. Just this year, justifying its purchase is much more difficult than in previous years for many more users.
The new Apple Watch Series 7 can be purchased, for example, here
I had an AW 5 that I sold last year and wanted to buy an AW 7 this year but the lack of space gray put me off buying it… unfortunately
But if I understand it, there are three main problems where the AW7 did not live up to expectations... design/frame, problematic typing on the keyboard and battery life...
If Apple came up with an angular, new iPad design, a bigger display (45mm is no big deal, I just like big watches) and more weight (e.g. bigger batteries... I like heavy watches, I can't wear those that I can't really feel on my hand because I feel that I'm missing something... ) ...
so that leaves the keyboard…. my god... why would I need to write texts on the watch's miniature display? There are different devices for writing ... but maybe I'm just too old-fashioned and I don't understand how cool it is to write notes, e-mails, messages on a watch ...
I am completely satisfied with the AW3.
As long as I don't have an apple watch round, it will last at least 5-6 days, so I won't buy it. I can't help myself, the angular design on a man's hand looks terrible, it just doesn't suit me on a woman or a man. It just looks feminine.. I'm currently considering the gt2 pro, even if it's a stupid watch, but the design and the battery are on a completely different level.
It only looks feminine in your head, that's the whole problem. 😉
They look like a rocking toy.
Of course, it looks feminine on a man, but if you are 50 kg and have hands like a woman, buy an apple watch😀 the woman has them in the family, we have round ones, and the apple ones are terrible in terms of design. Feel free to buy what you want, I'm an apple fan, but not those square calculators
I have to join and respond to the color of the watch. I don't know what it is, but I also claim that the color is dark blue, but my colleague sees it as black, I want to say that everyone sees the color differently, which is quite mysterious, maybe an optical illusion.
I don't understand why someone keeps solving the design. Simply, smart watches with a round display are the best. they don't show anything at all if you occasionally read the text. The battery life isn't great, but I'm used to putting them in there for a while before going to bed when I'm going to shower and brush my teeth, and it's enough for me even with the sleep record for the whole day, so the fast charging will really help me.
Writing on it is nonsense, luckily the text recognition by voice is great and is enough for short answers.
And I say this as an apple watch and Garmin Fenix owner. Both are for something else. Garmins are great for sports and stamina for GPS, Apple for everyday use, agenda and home control via Siri. The upgrade from 6 is not worth it, but next year I will go to steel, sapphire and I hope that Vodafone will already support LTE