Enough time has passed since the Apple Watch Series 4 was announced that the initial excitement has completely cooled off, so it’s a great time to figure out if you should actually buy one. Luckily, impulse purchases are not an option. Apple quickly sold through their stock of the Series 4, so even if you decide to order one today, you’re not going to get it for three solid weeks.
There are many appealing things about the new Apple Watch Series 4, but I want to cover the shortcomings first:
- The battery life is still too short.
- Even though it’s a bit thinner than the last generation, it’s bulky and large.
- There are no third-party watch faces, which is limiting and adds to the unsettling homogeny of wearing an Apple Watch.
I don’t hold the above complaints as strikes against it. They bug me a little, but they’re not deal killers. But there are two big drawbacks that should potentially keep you from buying an Apple Watch: the fact that the display is turned off most of the time, and the price escalation.
John Gruber, a well-known Apple blogger, shared a perfect example of how the always-off screen is a real issue. While out with his wife, he stepped away to get them coffees. When walking back holding their cups, he was curious what time it was. He looked down at his Apple Watch and saw its dark, information-free face. His choice at that moment was to spill one of the coffees in order to check the time, or to get no information from the watch at all.
If you buy an Apple Watch today, you need to understand that the always-off display is a real annoyance. If an Apple Watch with an always-on display is announced in September 2019, you are going to want to buy a new one. We’ll talk more about annual watch upgrades later in the article.
The other big downside is the recent price increase. I ordered a 42mm aluminum Series 3 GPS shortly after it was released in October of 2017. The total with tax was $385 USD. Depending on your station in life, that either looks like a lot of money, or very little. For me it was a lot.
Fast forward to the present day. The equivalent Apple Watch Series 4 comes to $461 with tax. A $76 increase. The Apple Watch is 20% more expensive this year. It is a better device than it was last year. It has a larger screen, a louder speaker, and the back plate is now made of ceramic, which is an expensive material that helps improve radio reception.
I accept that it’s a nicer watch, but the price increase was still difficult to swallow. In fact, when the Series 4 was first available to buy, I hesitated for over a week. The single factor that held me back was the price increase. By the time I decided to get one they were backordered and I had to wait an entire month to have one in my hands.
The price of Apple hardware has always been high, but in the past few years they’ve intentionally pushed their average selling price (ASP) higher and higher. As much as I love Apple products, there will come a point when they’ve sailed beyond reach.
I don’t feel like the media and independent publishers like myself have made a sufficient stink about Apple’s price increases. I prefer to pay more for nicely made things that last a long time, and Apple always delivers in that department. But their greed in the past few years has ballooned, and as a loyal user I feel burned.
Good stuff about the Apple Watch Series 4
The Series 4 is a complete redesign, and the flagship feature is its larger screen. This means that every time you point your eyes at it, the experience is going to be better than it was before (if the display happens to light up, that is). With a device as small as a watch, little improvements in screen size go a long, long way.
Whether or not the Series 4 is worth the price of admission is harder to say. Everyone on the planet needs a smartphone, but only a certain kind of person benefits from having a smartwatch. If you think you may be a smartwatch person, I think it’s worth it to find out, and the new Series 4 is the one to get.
Should Series 3 owners upgrade?
I don’t think it’s a good idea to hang on to an older Apple Watch and to wear it until it dies. Smartwatches are still in their early days of existence. They’re like the first touchscreen smartphones that came out between 2008 and 2013. Every year they got meaningful improvements. After two years, these phones would be lagging far behind the new models. This is the current state of the Apple Watch.
You can buy a new iPhone today and keep it alive and kicking for a solid five years if you’re careful. The Apple Watch is a different story. These devices are size of a pad of butter. The rechargeable battery inside of them is puny. The screen of an Apple Watch is literally stuck to the device with glue. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find out how long the adhesive on my old Apple Watch is willing to stick around.
Even if you have a Series 3, I think it’s worth it to upgrade to Series 4. And when September 2019 rolls around, it will be time to upgrade again. Staying on the bleeding edge with Apple Watch is necessary. It costs a lot of money, but your device will always be current, you will have the fastest processor, your battery won’t be on the way out, and the glue that holds the screen on will have fresh cling.
Think about being stuck with these old Apple Watches:
2015: The original Apple Watch has a painfully slow S1 processor, and it no longer receives software updates, so it doesn’t have any of the latest features. There are people that spent $17,000 on the 18 karat gold “Edition” version of this watch 30 months ago and now it’s completely obsolete.
2016: The Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 came out in 2016, and while their processors were faster than the 2015 models, they offered such a laggy experience that Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Target all pulled their apps from the platform.
2017: The Series 3 finally gave the device a processor fast enough to make it worthwhile to leave your phone in your pocket most of the time. But now the screen on this version feels compromised and small. You can still buy these new from Apple, and they cost $50 less than they did last year, which is nice. But for just a little more cash you can have a substantially better experience.
So… Should you buy the Apple Watch Series 4? If you’ve read this far into my post, the answer is yes. You’re clearly curious about it and doing a praise-worthy amount research. Just get the thing! But don’t just bite the bullet — take a big chomp. The Series 3 is a good device, but the Series 4 is where you should start. It will cost around $100+ more, but this is the kind of investment where the latest technology provides a meaningful improvement.
