Apple Watch Series 4 Buyers and Owners thread (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/10/apple-watch-series-4-review-the-invisible-redesign/

 

[Carlo_M]

Been extremely happy with mine in the week or so I've owned it. I'm pleasantly surprised by the battery life. While I charge it each night while I sleep, one night I forgot to, woke up the next morning, and there was still 64% battery life. I had time to charge it while I got ready for work which topped it off nicely, but had I been in a rush and not had that time, I have no doubt that it would have lasted all of that second day.

 

[Sam Posten]

I just wish it were in stock. I could order via Apple but that would cost me $25 more than waiting for my B&H preorder....

 

[Carlo_M]

Not to wax too poetic on the watch, but a week or so into it and despite the fact that I haven't worn a watch in 25+ years (and I mean not at all, not just sporadically) it already feels like an integral part of my life. Well done, Apple.

 

[DaveF]

Don't tell my wife this, but I'm probably going to buy her a Series 4 for Christmas so I can have her Series 3.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Dave,

Great gift! Though I must say, I wish it was you who had the series 4 as well. It really overshadows the 3.

 

[DaveF]

I have her Series 1. But I only wear it to the gym. I’m fine being behind on the Watch.

 

[DaveF]

I'll add, I've come to like the Apple Watch in my intermittent use of it. And as a luxury splurge, I'm happy to buy my wife the new Series 4 on an earlier upgrade timeline than typical since it's such a jump ahead in every regard.

As for myself, I actually like watches and have a small collection of four ~$100 watches. I like Fossil type watches that are attractive but affordable; I'm not into the true luxury collection of thousand-dollar Rolex-type watches. But the particulars of my life prevent me from wearing a smart watch on a daily basis. So I wear mechanical watches daily.

And I enjoy the Apple Watch as an exercise tracker weeknights and weekends when I can. Having it doesn't really change my exercise plan, but seeing the numbers and seeing them accrue helps encourage me. And the data is perhaps useful in understanding the general ups and downs with my inconsistent eating and exercise habits.

All that said: the Series 1 does a poor job of tracking my pulse during weightlifting. It has drop outs maybe 30% of the time. It's a champ on elliptical machines and such, but doing weights and weight machines, it's not good. If getting the Series 3 doesn't fix that, I'll really consider jumping to the Series 4 solely to use as a fitness exercise aid.

 

[Nelson Au]

Interesting Dave. I wear the Apple Watch Series 0 daily and I like to use it to track my activity. And I wear my stainless steel mechanical watch too on the other wrist. I wear it for my own personal reasons. So I don’t care if it looks goofy to wear two watches.

I wouldn’t expect the Apple Watch to be able to track weight lifting. I do make it a point to take a break at work in the afternoon and do daily laps for walking around the building. I’ve built up to a point that if co-workers join me, I find that their slower pace slows me down and I don’t make as much progress to close my excercise ring. I like to close my rings. It’s interesting to me to see that my heart rate has to be over 90 to even register as excercise. So I try to do my own laps too doing the stairs in the building too. So I also like that it helps me track my fitness and encourages me.

I wear it too when I go cycling where it really comes in handy. It’s so much better then the days I would use an app on my iPhone to track my cycling. I still wonder how it can accurately track when I’m standing. But I see if I stand for a certain period every hour, it reads it. I’ll be curious how all the readings will work on the Series 4. If it gets a more accurate reading of standing and walking. I do find the Series 0 Watch will be pretty close to the cyclometer on my road bike. When I cycle, I record both readings into my log. The cyclometer I figure is accurate as I enter the diameter of the tire for it to calculate the distance and speed I ride. When I compare to the Apple Watch, it ranges from .06 to .01 mile difference in the distance I have ridden. And I love that it records my heat rate during the ride and tallies my average heat rate. Sometimes the watch is less and some times it reads more miles ridden compared to the cyclometer. This gives me confidence that the distance I walk is being accurately determined.

When I do work around the house, if my heart rate climbs enough, it counts as excercise. So that’s great. When I wash and clean my car, it counts as excercise. So this is all great!

And I find that I love to just look at my mechanical watches to tell time.

 

[DaveF]

I wouldn’t expect the Apple Watch to be able to track weight lifting.

I don't know why the Series 0 (which is what I have -- the original original Apple Watch) shouldn't track my pulse during weight lifting as it does on aerobic machines. And it does...about three quarters of the time.

 

[Nelson Au]

I’ve not tried to record my work outs with weights, I’ll try it and see what happens.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys, wanted to chime in that I managed to pick-up the Apple Watch Series 4 in the hard to find stainless steel, size 44mm.

Last Thursday morning I checked the Apple Store app and found that two local stores had one. Considering that I work in Silicon Valley, it seemed very appropriate to go to the Infinite Loop Store as they had one. So I immediately bought it using the iPhone while at work. After work, I drove over to Infinite Loop and picked up the watch. This is my first visit to this store after it was renovated. I stole a quick pic while inside.



I recently read a great article about the Infinite Loop campus. It is a historical site for Apple as the resurgence of Apple when Steve Jobs came back happened there. Friends have worked there. For me, there are memories from the 1990’s when I went there with a friend to protest the end of the Newton. And I’ve been there to have lunch with a friend at the Apple cafeteria. So I felt it would be great to go back to Infinite Loop to pick up the Series 4 Watch.

Pairing was pretty neat and quick. I like how Apple has made this so easy. I’ve worn it a full day yesterday so I thought I’d post a quick few initial impressions. On launch day, I had bad luck at my local Apple Store waiting in line and wasn’t able to buy one. But I did see it and compare sizes. I figured the 44mm would be best as the 40mm seemed too small. And my old watch is a 42mm, so 44 made sense. Once it paired with my iPhone X, I put it on and used the infograph complication and tried the white and black background. My first impression is it’s big! The larger display also displays the graphics larger so that’s a major factor in its apparent size. I used one of my other complications I used on my Series 0 Watch and that complication was huge! I tried to find a way to see if I could zoom out. But I didn’t find any way to do it yet.

I wear a 40mm stainless steel mechanical watch and with the lugs and steel band, it’s a pretty large watch. From lug to lug, it’s about the same size as the Apple Watch. But the face of the AW is larger then the dial in the mechanical watch. So the Series 4 challenges the mechanical watch’s size.

I think i’ll experiment with different faces. I like that I can have the activity/work out button on the face to quickly activate it for a walk or bike ride. So that’s a must and weather is nice and stocks is nice too. Event reminders is useful for work. And seeing my rings is another must. So i’ll see if I can find the right face. After a full day wearing it though I started to get used to the size. Not sure if i’ll fully adjust, but we’ll see. For now, I’m leaving the infograph face as it’s got everything I want to see.

Aside from the size issue I’m having, my reaction to the new watch coming from my three year old Series 0 Watch is wow, this thing is fast and smooth! Swiping by finger and scrolling with the crown is smooth and fast. I imagine for you guys who have upgraded every year, the jump in speed wasn’t as noticeable for you. I used it for a quick walk with my coworkers yesterday and was pleased how fast the app launches and is ready right away to start. My worker gave up using her Apple Watch series 0 to record our walks because on her watch it’s really slow to get the work out app going and she’s impatient and doesn’t get the timing right to launch the app. It’s a pity for her as I tried to show her how to get it going.

I was listening to music from the iPhone X and Airpods while working yesterday and used the watch to control that. I checked stocks a few times. I did the walk work-out and one more shorter work-out at home last night and closed my rings. I used the timer like I did on my old watch while cooking dinner. . At the end of the day I had about 47% battery left. My old watch would be at about 25% left on an average day’s use. I’ll keep tracking battery life as I’m sure I’ll settle into a regular usage as I get familiar with the watch. Overall, I have no regrets. It’s a big upgrade from my old watch and one I’ve been looking forward to. The size thing is the only issue and I might get over it.

BTW, I learned that you can have more then one Apple Watch paired to an iPhone. I’m thinking of re-pairing my old Apple Watch now so I can use it for times I may not want to risk the new one. Like garden work or working on my car. Or I could use it for other tasks.

Finally, I’m really looking forward for the ECG function to be enabled. And since I put a focus on heath, I’ll activate the low heart rate monitor. Will he interesting if I can get my resting heart rate below 40 and get the watch to trigger the warning.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, hope you’ll indulge me.

I did re-pair my old Series 0 Apple Watch. And it was pretty cool that when I put on the Series 0 Watch, the iPhone automatically changed to that watch as the one I was using, and visa versa.

I went to the Apple Store yesterday morning to add AppleCare. I was surprised I forgot to get it and more surprised the sales associates didn’t ask me if I wanted to add it when I picked it up. Maybe there’s a new policy to not remind customers to add it. One time I bought an iPad and there was super strong pressure to add it. For the watch and iPhone, I thought it was worth it

I wore the watch most of the day yesterday and went on a 14 mile bike ride. I didn’t see much difference from the Series 0 except that the display also showed elevation. I don’t think the Series 0 did that and it must be due to the larger screen real estate to show more info during the work out. So it inspired me to deviate from my normal path and climb a very small inclined area to see it work.

I switched to the old watch when I got home to do a quick car rinse and wipe down. Though it’s risky as the series 0 isn’t water resistant, I’ve been doing it for three years without incident.

I also tried the fire and water faces. Those are pretty cool. I wondered if the animation would use more battery power. I like the simplicity of the face and it helps to reduce its apparent size.

At the end of the day, the watch had 50% battery left and I left it all night without charging as an experiment to see how the battery does today.

I’m glad I didn’t order on-line and just kept watch of stock at my local Apple Stores. I was amazed to find one so I’m happy to avoid the wait till mid November shipping time.

Edit: forgot to add, I was curious to see if the iOS could be updated on the series 0 Watch, looks like it can’t go passed 4.3.2.

 

[DaveF]

Nope. The Series 0 doesn't get watchOS 5.

Which is why I need to upgrade my wife to Series 4 so I can get her Series 3 running OS 5.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys- had an odd hiccup with my Series 4 Watch today. I actually had a good weekend where I only charged it Friday night, then Saturday had a full day of activities with a bike ride and running errands. Sunday I didn’t use the watch as much, but had it on all day and it lasted the whole weekend with only the one charge Friday night. On Sunday night before going to bed, I put he watch on the charger and went to bed.

This morning I put it on as usual and went to work, the battery was fully charged as far as I knew. At about 10:00am, I noticed the watch battery levels was around 67% which is way lower then normal at that time. About 1/2 later it was down to 59%. It was hemmoraging like crazy so I quit all the apps running on the watch and kept an eye on it. At about 11:00 I decide to shut the watch off and restart it. At this point the battery was at 49%. Upon restart, the battery was at 47%. After lunch the battery seemed to stabilize and was at 46%. I decided to really push my luck and put on my AirPods and listen to music for some time on and off and used the watch to control the volume. I also took a half an hour to do a walk around the office and used the walking activity app. As of now, at 8:30pm, the battery is at 20%. I plan to do one more work out before I stop as I need to close my rings. .

I think the battery should hold on till I put the watch on the charger for the night. This was really odd. This happened twice on my Series 0 Watch and I have no idea why. Was it talking to Apple’s servers? Was it doing something with the iPhone X? Has this happened to anyone?

 

[Carlo_M]

I haven't had the watch do anything like this yet. But I have had iPhones do something similar, and usually a hard restart fixed it. As much as I love the Apple OS, sometimes they're prone to corruption or errors just like any software, and sometimes you just have to reboot it. If after rebooting it continues, then something may be wrong with your battery. But if rebooting fixed it, a process or app might have been "hung" and eating the battery.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Carlo. Well, I hope the shut down and restart I did earlier today fixed the problem. A hung app sounds as plausible as anything. I’m taking the watch off now and charging it up. It’s at 16% now.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Nelson,

I also hope that Carlo's suggestion (which is a great one) works for you.

Another thing, though I kind of doubt this would pertain to you...

If you have a cellular account linked to your watch where you can use it without it being tethered to the phone....

If your watch somehow got disconnected to the phone and is running entirely on cellular, it will eat through your battery very fast.

 

[Nelson Au]

Ron, that’s a very interesting thought! I had not considered the cellular function coming on. The watch doesn’t have a cellular contract set-up. But now I wonder if I had accidentally turned it on. But I’d think it wouldn’t work without an account. I’ll have to look into that.

For now, I did shut off the watch one more time last night for several minutes and then restarted it and it’s been charging all night. I’ll see how it performs today.

Thanks again for that idea!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Nelson,

If you did not pay for a cellular account then, no, it would not have come on.