Apple Watch SE (2024) Review

On 16^th September 2024, I received my brand new Apple Watch. This was an exciting time for me for many reasons, it was my first Apple Watch, it was the first time I had preordered something and it was the first purchase I made with my own money. I have had a smart watch since Christmas Day 2022 (if memory serves me correct), I had a Sekonda smart watch, which was a great starting point as a smart watch, not the best in comparison with other smart watches in the market but not a bad one. The Apple range is a reasonably sized one with many great looking options. I made the choice of the Apple Watch SE (2024) which is the cheapest model available; though I got the bigger version of it, the 44mm one as opposed to the 40mm as my previous smart watch was a 44mm and it fit quite nicely on my wrist.

The setup process was actually nice and simple, I had it all setup within about 10 minutes. The Watch came with a decent amount of battery charge (I think it was around 87%). This let me get it set up as soon as I got it out the box. Inside the box, I got the Watch itself, a charging wire (USB-C to wireless watch chi charging puck thingy) and a Ultramarine sports loop strap.

The Setup Process

The setup process itself consisted of turning on the device, installing the Watch app on my iPhone, open the app, in the top left click All Watches, then Add Watch. As I was setting up for myself, I clicked Set Up for Myself, this prompts you to turn the device on and scans for the device. The Watch will then show one of those Apple QR blob things which you scan with you phone. And that's it, all done.

Pros

There are many pros of the Apple Watch, the first few of which are easy to understand UI and controls, and easy to follow help guides. These are a very small thing, but they aren't to be taken for granted anymore.

The app on my phone is also a great thing, my old smart watch's app was absolute crap, it needed to be open to pull certain things through, limited features and limited watch faces, which brings me neatly into the next pro for the Apple Watch, the variety of watch faces. This is something that bugged me about my old watch, I am a tinkerer, I love to change things hence why I am much more drawn to tiling window managers which allow a whole load of customisations. I have already had over 10 watch faces and I am slowly finding what work for me and that I like.

The next pro is notification support; my old watch only had support for messages, phone calls, Whatsapp and a couple of other niche messaging apps (that I had never heard of). These couldn't be interacted with, it just served as a notification preview as opposed to a usable device. The Apple Watch is able to answer phone calls independantly of a phone, and send, receive, reply to messages (both iMessage and SMS) and all other notifications that come through to my phone come to my Watch.

The last pro that I am going to discuss is the fitness tracking. There is a dedicated Fitness app on iOS which is much better than my old watches' tracking, my old watch used to track bumps on the road as a load of steps so my tracking was miles off the true value, while the Apple one is much better, there are still occasions where bumps in the road are tracked but it's tracked as a couple of steps not a couple hundred steps.

Cons

The first con I am going to discuss is related to the last pro I discussed, the rings that Apple Fitness have (Movement, Exercise, Stand). I have found that the stand goal tells me that I have reached my 6 hour stand goal while I'm sat down at my desk, or sat on the floor. It seems to count an hour stood as you have stood at some point in that hour. I'm not 100% sure how it figures out whether you're stood or not but it is an interesting metric to look at.

The next and final con to talk about is that when my watch is connected to my phone, all notifications come through to my watch (like the ping - haptic or sound), they are listed on my phone as well but no haptic or sound. I have looked into this and this is by design but I feel that I am less likely to miss notifications when I have them pinging on both my wrist and in my pocket, sometimes I don't have my watch on but it is still connected and it gets all notifications ping to it rather than my phone which I always have near me. The notifications do ping to my phone when it is unlocked (again by design). In Apple's view, if you have you're watch on, you are more likely to look at notifications on your wrist rather than getting your phone out to look at it, which I kind of get but in my brain it would be better for me to have both.

Conclusion

After over 2 months with my brand new Apple Watch, I can say that it has improved my life, in that I have started recording my mental health and how I am feeling at a precise moment and overall that day which helps me to track it, also the fitness tracking has been a fun metric to monitor and look into as well as a kind of game to see if I can close my rings (meet all 3 of my daily goals) which is always fun.

If you are considering getting a smart watch (and have an iPhone), then I would recommend an Apple Watch, I have only tried the SE (2024) but I'm sure that the other models are just as great. If you aren't in the Apple ecosystem, then you won't be able to use the watch unfortunately (or fortunately for some).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this, let me know you're thoughts on the Fediverse (link down below). This blost took me way to long to write but it's finally done and I can move on and write the next one. Have a good one!

• Previous: Gnome Is My Home... For A While
• Next: The Great Polymaths Migration