Apple Watch Series 5 Review: One Big Tradeoff!

Hey what's up guys mkbhd? I bet I'm not the only one chatting with the CEO of Microsoft while he's wearing an Apple Watch and I bet I'm not the only one chatting with Bill Gates with an Apple Watch on and looking good. You've probably also realized that it's not that I'm trolling, no one does that is trolling, it's just that it's the default at this point, the Apple Watch is everywhere, it's the default smart

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for the iPhone, which also It's everywhere, so after a couple of my tweets some of you wanted to know my full opinion on the Apple Watch Series 5, the latest and greatest version that just came out for this holiday season.

Spoiler alert. I've already tweeted most of my thoughts, but I'll post them all. in a video here in one place so I have 44 millimeters instead of 40 for that bigger face, bigger battery, although I don't have a huge wrist I think it looks good and I chose space gray aluminum so I'm keeping it . dark matte finish and I have had no durability issues on my other aluminum Apple

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es and yes just to take it out like I wear it on my right wrist even though I'm right handed I guess I'm backwards like that So if you remember that Apple event ago just a couple of weeks in, there really weren't that many new features with the new Apple Watch, you'll know there's a new brushed titanium finish that looks really cool and then there's the other ceramics and stainless steel and stuff. so and there are some other new features and some new bands, but actually the main new feature of the Apple Watch Series 5 is the always-on display, so technically speaking, this new Apple Watch is capable of always-on display with a new screen technology that remains dimly lit but illuminates all the time at a variable refresh rate, which is why it's called ltpo, which stands for low temperature polysilicon oxide, which doesn't really matter as much as knowing that This involves a special driver and certain hardware that is only in the Apple Watch Series 5.

Therefore, there cannot be a software update for the Series 3 or Series 4 to always work. It is only in the Series 5. Therefore, the screen itself will look just as good and become just as bright. and it's just the familiar oled that you're used to seeing, but now it's always on, so normally when you use an

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watch, the oled refreshes at 60 frames per second, 60 hertz, that's why the animations are smooth, everything looks normal and second hand, if you have one on your watch face that rotates smoothly in a circle, this is still the case here with this new version, but when you stop using it or put it down it goes into always on mode, the screen dims and refreshes just 1 hertz or once every second, which is nice because it hides the second hand and doesn't have to show you constantly updated information and stuff smoothly on the screen, so it can still show you the time all the time and save a ton of power by not continuing to refresh at 60 hertz, so what are the benefits of this always on display?

You may ask if you have never used any other smart watch, if you have had an Apple watch before, then already used to this gesture that you have to do so that it recognizes that you are looking at it and illuminates whatever your latest notification is or just to see the time , sometimes you can be pretty good at doing it subtly but it's a pretty obvious gesture but of course sometimes it's a little difficult or just inconvenient to do that whole gesture and you just want to be able to look at it and see the time or just check something really quickly without the obvious wrist movement perhaps. you're driving or cycling and don't want to switch to one hand or maybe you're typing and just want to look down and check the time without stopping or maybe you're just in a social situation or it would be a little rude to check the time with the huge swipe gesture, so these are all real situations and that's why people always wanted visibility only, but the most controversial trade-off here with always-on mode is battery life, Apple claims. that the variable refresh rate is what will help you not destroy the battery life, this way it is reduced to low power mode and it is true that it does not completely drain the battery, but I have definitely noticed that having the screen always lit always hurts. battery life, I personally went from ending the day with 50 percent left to ending a normal day with 20 or 30 percent left and that's not the end of the world, that's definitely still clearly battery life throughout the day for my use, which is a high brightness that gets enough of notifications, frequent workouts, things like that, but I still noticed that hit and on a day with a longer outdoor workout where GPS is used and is always on, you can come close to killing the Apple Watch in a day, something I've never done before. always on and I did more intermittent testing with this and some of you were really skeptical about it when I tweeted about it saying it was the background noise app or some other things with software I should check but I don't need any more testing than the fact that when I turned it off it was coming up to noon and I had over 90 percent battery life left which is amazing and that's legitimately two days of battery life that I wasn't getting when I turned it back on every time . on, that's something I've noticed right now, I just turn it on when I want and then turn it off when I know I'm going to have a longer day;

It's just a couple of quick taps away in settings. I sometimes switch wrists, so I'm used to diving into settings to change wrist orientation, so I do it frequently. Sometimes I always turn it off, so if I go out at night I usually turn it off because It's a little annoying to be the guy with the glowing wrist all night, but on a normal work day during the day I'll leave it like that. It's a balancing act. It's a little more thought than I had to do before, but it's also a feature. "I've never had it before so I guess I'm up for it.

A few other little thoughts. The built-in compass is pretty good now. I will literally never use the compass app, but it's great that it's more accurate to tell you which direction you are facing" . When you're using maps and the noise app is great too, you can add a complication to your watch face or just use the app to monitor noise levels and it will tell you when the environment you're in has potentially harmful levels of noise. noise and just thinking about the blob app selection interface, I just have to say that I think this might be the worst UI on any Apple product on any tech product in the last decade, I think we can all agree on that, um.

I've changed it to list mode, maybe, maybe you'll discover a grid mode or something for selecting apps on the Apple Watch. Just saying, but overall, honestly, it's kind of similar to that iPhone 11

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, where it's like it's an Apple Watch, like you already know what it is. Is it the same design? Some subtle tweaks and really one major new feature. I think the fact that I disabled the always-on display so often is kind of funny, like you would disable it if you didn't use the Oezon stuff. Very often this is as good as a

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three or

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four, in which case you can buy one from Apple or on Amazon for a pretty steep discount, so I'll link them below, it's a better deal, but other than that.

I just like the way the Apple Watch has been, it's not a necessary upgrade, but for the things that I usually do, which is having a big screen that tells the time, workout notifications, that's basically, I mean, any An additional thing is an advantage that the Apple Watch continues. firmly delivers all the things you expect it to do um and if you've always wanted to be always on then this is the Apple Watch to get but anyway that's it quick

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but if you want the next things they'll come up quickly on October, there is a There are a lot of things happening, I will see you in the next peace.