After waiting several weeks for it to arrive, I finally have an Apple Watch in my hands. As I wrote in my post before the Watch was announced I went for the 42mm Sport version in Space Grey. Without further ado, here’s my Apple Watch early review.

Ordering & Shipping

Of course the model I went for happened to be the most popular in the entire range, so shipping took some time (after the ordering window opened, it took me too long to get into the Apple site so there were obviously a lot of orders ahead of me).
My initial delivery date was June, but around the middle of May this changed to the end of June, followed a couple of days later by mid-June. Then on the 25th of May it moved to ‘Preparing for Shipment’, finally arriving last Friday (29th May).

Unboxing

As always with an Apple product, the packaging is part of the appeal. Once you get inside the brown shipping box, the Watch packaging feels and looks like a premium product (which it is at the prices we pay I suppose). Inside the outer cardboard box, there’s a plastic watch box which is reminiscent of the old style white MacBook, and underneath that the usual array of accessories for the Watch (charger, instruction leaflet and small wristband). Speaking of the charger – the new design is amazing!

Brief Review

I’ve only been wearing the watch a couple of days, and I intend to do a fuller review in a week or two when I feel I’ll have a better feel for the product, so I wanted to share my initial thoughts and experiences with you in case you were considering a purchase now.

In terms of the Watch Sport, it feels lovely. It’s quite light, and despite my preconceived opinion, the plastic (fluoroelastomer) strap is very comfortable and most importantly, not at all ‘sweaty’. Having not had the chance to wear any of the other straps I can’t comment just yet, but I may be able to get a guest contributor to review the Stainless Steel model with a leather strap later.

My initial feelings are that this product is not in the same league as either the iPhone and the iPad in terms of how life-changing they are (and yes, I’m aware that sounds dramatic, but I think both of those products defined a new class of electronic device and the way we use them). Essentially, it is just a watch, and in many ways it’s not as good at that as a cheap Swiss watch (that costs maybe half as much). But it’s a first generation product that has introduced some new functionality (more comprehsive exercise tracking for instance), which in time will improve to make it a better product. Whether that is down to software (e.g. could come in the next few months), or hardware (the next version) I’m not sure.

I mentioned that I think it’s not as good as a regular watch, and here’s why. This is a small screen with (potentially) a lot of information crammed onto it. Firstly, I’ve found that the screen activation (it turns on when you lift your wrist up) is not perfect – maybe once in every four times, you’ll have to wiggle your hand to get the screen to light up – and then it doesn’t stay active long enough to glean all the information. Maybe if you’re only interested in the time it’s fine, but if you want to see your next appointment/weather forecast/battery level etc at a glance, it often turns off before you’ve had a chance to read it (i consider myself a pretty quick reader normally, but maybe my eyesight isn’t the best any more!). Right now, there’s no way to configure the time it stays on for, so you have to use multiple activations (probably consuming more battery power).

Other than that, the watch is very nice. I’ve yet to settle on which clock face to use (or which of the extra pieces of information – known as ‘complications’ – I want to see), but it’s safe to say that you have a fair bit of flexibility with the customisation options of the 10 different clock faces available to you. That said, it wouldn’t hurt to have even more customisation options in future releases of the software, maybe even the ability to design your own on your Mac through a software tool?

Setup was easy, but there’s a lot of tinkering that can be done. I’m not convinced I’m finished with that yet, so I won’t go into too much detail in this initial review. There is one feature that I do love though; Siri.

Best Feature (so far)

I’ve found the Siri implementation to be the best yet from Apple. Dictation has been nigh on perfect (even with my weird Northern accent), and it’s super useful to be able to do things on the run like remind yourself to start the dinner at 5:45pm (for instance) verbally as you remember it (lift up your wrist and say “Hey Siri, set an alarm to start dinner at 5:45”). The little tap on your wrist you get, along with the on-screen reminder, is discrete enough not to be a nuisance but obvious enough to the wearer that it doesn’t get ignored.

Summary

I’m going to keep on testing the unit until I feel I’ve learnt all I can about its use, and the possibilities for the future, before posting a full review in a couple of weeks.

Right now, my summary would be that it’s nice, but not essential. I am open to changing that opinion of course!