The entirety of the Apple Watch Series 4 experience boils down to one thing: the screen is remarkably larger and that alone makes everything better. It’s worth it to buy one or to upgrade to one just for the screen. I’ve been using a 44mm Apple Watch Series 4 GPS for one month, and I share detailed thoughts on the experience below — but the main takeaway is that the bigger screen makes it worthwhile.
Remember when Apple made the screens on the iPhone dramatically larger back in 2014? That’s the year the iPhone 6 came out, and it was significantly larger than any iPhone before it had ever been. That’s also the year the iPhone 6 Plus came out, which was absurdly larger than the iPhone 6. Apple did this because it was clear that people preferred larger screens. The 2014 iPhone 6 models ended up being the most popular iPhone models of all time, and it turns out that making the screen bigger is also nice on your wrist.
As you can see from the photo below, the new Series 4 Apple Watch is ever so slightly thinner than the Series 3:
💡 Click or tap on images to make them larger
When you consider the proportions of a device as small as a wristwatch, tiny changes in size go a long way. Even though the difference in height between the Series 3 and 4 is roughly equal to the thickness of its black glass display, you can feel it. The Series 4 isn’t as comically bulbous on my wrist — it looks thinner when worn. And even though the body shrunk, the screen is 15% larger.
The attention-grabbing feature of the Series 3 Apple Watch was the version that featured built-in LTE which enabled you to make and receive phone calls and texts without an iPhone with you. While this was a crucially important feature for certain people, I still believe the majority of folks just need the GPS version. My opinion hasn’t changed. A $15 (or more) increase in your monthly phone bill isn’t worth it for something most people will use maybe once or twice a month. Carriers charge a $30 fee just to turn this on, and the watch itself is $100 more.
The improvement that truly made the Series 3 worthwhile was its updated processor, which was 70% faster. The watch was finally good enough to make routine tasks happen quickly. Apps opened as fast as you needed them to, swiping between watchfaces was smooth, overall throughput was zippy. It was a meaningful and important update.
The S4 processor in the Series 4 is also greatly improved. It’s 64-bit, while every other Apple Watch has been 32-bit. What does that mean to you? The answer is not much. The Series 3 Apple Watch was fast enough that you didn’t notice it lagging. The Series 4 is also fast, so this improvement is ultimately a wash. The star of the show is the screen. The big screen makes all of the difference.
I’ve yammered on about how the screen is great on the Series 4, but it’s also important to point out the worst thing about the device: the price. The Series 4 Apple Watch costs 20% more than the Series 3. There is no way around the fact that this sucks. The price hike caused me to hesitate buying one for a week. By the time I put in my order, it was backordered by a full month. Three weeks into waiting for my order to process, I changed my mind about the color of band I wanted, and cancelled my original order. Another month-long wait began.
The model I got is the Nike+ Series 4 GPS 44mm Silver Aluminum Case with Summit White Nike Sport Loop. This one:
It’s great. I love the stupid thing. The fact that I waited nearly two months to get it in the mail proves that I’m not the most savvy tech blogger on the planet. Far from it. It was hard to get over that 20% price increase, but you forget about it pretty quickly when you like a product as much as I like this thing.
After I wore my new Series 4 for a few weeks I put on my old Series 3 for a day. I thought I would be disgusted and want to tear it off of my wrist, but this was not the case. Wearing the Series 3 was fine. It’s still a great watch. The major difference is that the screen on the Series 4 is 1000 times more engaging. The thinner body makes it look a little nicer on my wrist, but the screen on the Series 4 just rocks. Have I said that enough?
All I want for Christmas is an electrocardiogram
Apple’s long-awaited ECG feature finally came out a few days before I published my review. The fact that this is what everyone is excited about is a little whacky. How many ECG’s have you given yourself in your lifetime? I’m guessing zero. How many ECG’s have your ancestors given themselves? Yup… Zero. Now, with the Series 4 Apple Watch, you can finally give yourself an ECG! Yay!
As much as some people may dislike Apple, you gotta applaud them for making the act of giving yourself a casual ECG kind of fun. Using the new ECG app is interesting and rewarding. It provides intriguing animated graphics to look at, it forces you to slow down as you need to be at rest with your arms not moving when taking an ECG, you need to stay still with one finger on the “Digital Crown” of the watch for 30 seconds. At the end, you’re rewarded by being told that you currently do not have atrial fibrillation (hopefully, anyhow). Win!
The Apple Watch ECG only has a single sensor, which is on the Digital Crown. When you go to a medical facility, they typically administer ECG’s that utilize 10 or 12 sensors, which provide much more detailed and actionable health data. The single sensor on the Apple Watch is only good enough to help detect atrial fibrillation. So don’t think the Apple Watch ECG is equal to visiting your doctor. But, for a fun, wrist-worn gadget, this new functionality is pretty amazing.
The new Walkie Talkie app
When I started wearing my new Apple Watch my wife expressed interest in wearing my old one. This took me by surprise because she generally has zero interest in technology. I jumped at the chance for her to wear it, though, because I was eager to try out the new Walkie Talkie app from Apple.
This app that hasn’t received much attention, but it deserves praise. To use it, both people need to have Apple Watches, and they both need to have the latest Watch OS software installed (it works fine with the Series 3). A bit of set-up is required as well. You open the Walkie Talkie app on the watch, and then invite the people you want to talk to. The other person then needs to accept your invitation. If you can check all of these boxes, you can start using the app.
The way it works is every bit as “Dick Tracy” as it sounds. You open the app, tap on the person you want to talk to, and start talking. The app literally turns the Apple Watch into a wrist-worn walkie talkie. It’s great because it creates a useful mode of communication that sits between texting and phone calls. Both calls and texts require your attention. You need to stay engaged for the duration of a phone call. Texting requires you to stop other activities to concentrate on sentence composition (or, sentence-like fragments).
Walkie Talkie just requires you to press and hold the big “Talk” button on the watch. It acts like a press-to-talk walkie talkie transceiver. You don’t need to stop what you’re doing. There are no sentences to compose. There is no beginning, middle, and end like a phone call. When you have young kids, this app can be a helpful time saver. My mom also has an Apple Watch, and my kids always get a big kick out of Walkie Talkie-ing with grandma.
My watch-face of choice
The photograph I took of my Series 4 Apple Watch that I use at the top of this post has the iconic “Infograph” watch-face displayed, but I never use it. I also never customized it. The image you see at the top of this article has all of the default settings that Apple ships. When I purchased this watch, I thought I would love the Infograph face, but the moment I looked at it on my wrist, I decided it was too much to glance at, and too difficult to read what time it was.
The watch-face I fell in love with is called “Infograph Modular.” It’s pretty simple. I’ve been able to configure it to be extremely useful, which is something I was never able to achieve with the watch-faces on my Series 3. In the image below you can see:
- I’ve got a blue Overcast button in the upper left corner (this is a shortcut to my podcast player of choice)
- I’ve got an easy-to-read date and time
- The big section in the middle is a complication for a paid iPhone app I have called Things. This app is a lot like Apple’s Reminders app, but better designed. Apple’s app also doesn’t offer this complication, which is why I bought Things.
- The bottom left corner is the current temperature outside (with low and high for the day)
- The middle bottom is remaining battery
- The last one is a shortcut to the Workouts app
The entire time I used my Series 3, I would switch between watch-faces trying to find something I liked. With my Series 4, I use Infograph Modular almost exclusively. I mainly just switch watch-faces for momentary entertainment, then switch back to this one and leave it. Apple needs to open up watch-face design to developers. The Apple-made options are too limited. I like Infograph Modular, but there should be half a dozen watch-faces I love, not just one.
Annoying things about the Series 3 that persist
The Photos app defaults to “Favorites” – The Apple Watch comes loaded with a default app called Photos, which does very little if you don’t happen to use the “favorites” feature with your iPhone photos. I finally went into the Watch app on my iPhone and changed this default to my “Camera Roll” after using the Apple Watch for over a year. Apple’s decision to default to “Favorites” is a poor choice.
Battery life still isn’t great – I need to charge my Apple Watch Series 4 every two days. I like to work out a lot, and when I get in a good training groove, I end up needing to charge my Apple Watch every day. If you’ve ever used a Garmin sports watch, the idea of charging every day sounds ludicrous.
The “Stand” alerts – The Apple Watch will tell you to stand up periodically. While I could easily turn these notifications off, I haven’t because the silly things do get me to stand up at work. I think they’re a good feature, but I am including them in this section because the alerts are not as smart as they should be. The stand alert arrives at 10 minutes to the hour. I just got one on my wrist at 4:50 p.m. This feature should be smarter than it is. This just feels wrong. I wish these alerts arrived when you truly need to stand, not just at whatever:50 o’clock.
The Siri watch-face doesn’t update itself often enough – When I used the Series 3, the Siri watch-face was what I used most often. But the whole time I used it, I was disappointed that it updated so infrequently. There are lots of things going on in the world. My schedule tends to be rather busy. Somehow my Siri watch-face tended to stay the same all day long. It would be a lot more interesting if it updated at the pace of life. As it is, it’s far too static.
How can the Series 5 Apple Watch be better?
Video – One big limitation of the Apple Watch is that you can’t watch videos. There is no YouTube or Netflix. You can’t watch videos that you shot on your iPhone. This capability simply isn’t there. This was a bummer with the Series 3, but with the Series 4 having a larger, more engaging screen and better sound from its speaker, this limitation is even more pronounced.
The big apps need to come back – Some of the biggest apps on the iPhone are famously not on the Apple Watch. Instagram and Twitter used to have Apple Watch apps, but they have been abandoned and removed. The big screen on the Series 4 changes the game for immersive wearable experiences. Instagram needs to return, because not having an Apple Watch app has become a mistake for them. Twitter needs to come back, too. The Target app can remain dead, though.
Get thinner, get better battery life, blah blah blah – These improvements are so obvious that they need not even be said, but if I didn’t say them, then I would have missed an important trick. So yeah… Make these things better, Apple.
Other stuff I’ve tried on the Series 4
The speaker – As I mentioned earlier, the built-in speaker on the Series 4 sounds louder and clearer. It’s strikingly good for something coming out of a watch.
The new Digital Crown – Apple claims to have improved the digital crown (which is Apple’s fancy name for the dial). After the Series 4 was released I heard people claim that the crown felt nicer. To me it feels about the same. It vibrates when you turn in, which is in sync with what you see on the screen. This is an improvement in the user interface, but it’s just a tiny tweak.
The new heart-rate monitor – Apple improved the accuracy of the heart-rate monitor with the Series 4. If you care about this sort of thing, it’s another reason to upgrade. But you should really just upgrade for the screen.
Fall detection – The Series 4 Apple Watch can be set to automatically detect if you’ve fallen. This feature is on by default if you’re 65 years old or older, otherwise you have to go into settings and turn it on. Thankfully, I haven’t tumbled over hard enough to need it yet, but I have accidentally triggered it to kick-in twice. It makes a little twinkling sound and vibrates when it turns on. You need to look at the watch and tap a button to tell it you’re okay, otherwise it will call 911 and give them your GPS location (or something like that). It’s neat.
Closing thoughts…
This watch is friggin’ great. As much as I like it, it’s still not the right choice for everyone. For example, if you don’t have an iPhone, then you can’t use an Apple Watch. Smartphones are amazing because they can do 500 useful things. Smart-watches can still only do around 5 useful things that you will appreciate. But all 5 of them are important, and they make each day a little more productive and easy.
It’s the little things that matter most with Apple Watch. The little, helpful things it does throughout the day add up. When your phone rings at a bad time, it’s often easier answer on your wrist. You get a text or a call that you don’t want, and instead of digging your phone out of a pocket, you can quickly dismiss them on your wrist. A little time saved here, a little hassle prevented there. One little thing after the other, adding up one by one. That’s Apple Watch.
Is the Series 3 junk? Should you avoid it at all costs? No. Absolutely not. It’s still a great watch, and still very capable. Is the Series 4 better in every way? Yes, it is. And it all comes from the bigger screen. The watch-face I love, Infograph Modular, isn’t supported on the Series 3 because its screen is too small. If you’re on the fence between the Series 3 and Series 4, get off the fence and buy a stupid Series 4. If you simply cannot afford the Series 4, get a Series 3 and be happy.
I originally wanted an Apple Watch because I’m very interested in technology, and I’m especially curious about huge initiatives by Apple. This watch initially just scratched my “tech-nerd” itch, but it’s evolved into something that I truly appreciate.
The future of Apple Watch is exciting and full of potential, but where it is today is pretty great. I’m looking forward to where they’re going to take this thing, but I’m surprised I like it as much as I do. I convinced my mom to get an Apple Watch, and she loves it, too. Mom, if you’re reading this, please upgrade to the Series 4. I want you to take casual ECGs and have Fall Detection. Plus, the screen looks awesome.
NOTE: If this 2838 word review was helpful, you can help me by clicking on the following links before you buy something at Amazon or B&H Photo. Even if you’re just picking up a humble Dad Saddle, I still make a tiny commission. Thanks! 🐴
