Apple Watch: the first reviews

Apple Watch pre-orders have opened in the US and a number of other countries, and the first reviews are rolling in (New Zealand doesn't have a release date yet beyond "coming in 2015").

The Wall Street Journal's Geoffrey Fowler spent nine days with the Watch.

His verdict, in short, is that Apple has taken yet another product category that's been problematic for others, and whipped it into shape for the mainstream. The Watch looks good on both men and women, and has myriad clever tricks that make it a user-friendly complement to the iPhone. The Watch can take calls with its "remarkably good speaker phone", track your exercise, serve as a remote for selfies taken on your iPhone (the Watch itself lacks a camera), or send a message that you've dictated to Siri. The force-touch finger gesture acts like a mouse's right click. The smartwatch finally makes sense, Fowlers says.

The major flaw is, as I feared, battery life. 

Fowler writes, "The battery lives up to its all-day billing, but sometimes just barely. It’s often nearly drained at bedtime, especially if I’ve used the watch for exercise. There’s a power-reserve mode that can make it last a few hours longer, but then it only shows the time."

Like other smartwatches, the Apple Watch also dims the screen until you flick your wrist to wake it up. This feature only half-worked on Samsung's first smartwatch so I'll be interested to see how it goes with Apple's.

At least it scrapes through a day. But are punters ready for yet another gadget that needs daily charging?

Other negatives? "The $1,000 steel 42mm version I tested is still a bit thicker than I’d want, as tall as a stack of six quarters. And you can’t soap it up in a shower, though a little rain won’t hurt it."

Various reviewers note the Watch does have its own wi-fi but no cellular capability.  So if there's no wi-fi, you need an iPhone in your pocket for internet access.

Overall, Fowler finds the Watch works brilliantly as a second screen. The exception is its mapping and navigation feature, which he finds just too slow to display. That's a pit. Glancing at your watch for directions would be more socially acceptable that holding your phone in front of your as your walk to follow a map.

Then there are the things the Watch doesn't even try to do. There's no web browser or keyboard so, for example, you can read, flag or delete an email, but you can't reply to it. That seems fair enough for the sake of simplicity. Most would reach for their phone to do any typing or web browsing anyway.

Steep learning curve
New York Times reviewer Fahad Manjoo finds "Bliss, but only after a steep learning curve."

"It took three days — three long and often frustrating and confusing days — for me to fall for the Apple Watch," he writes, "But when I fell, I fell hard."

He adds, "My wife told me I seemed to be getting lost in my phone less than the past. She found that a blessing." 

Track, pay, control your TV
CNET's Scott Stein writes, "I’ve been using the Apple Watch for a week. I’ve worn it on my wrist every day, doing everything possible that I could think of. I’ve tracked walks and measured my heart rate, paid for lunch, listened to albums while exploring parks without my phone, chatted with family, kept up on email, looked for Ubercars, kept up on news, navigated on long car trips for Passover, controlled my Apple TV with it and followed baseball games while I was supposed to be watching my 2-year-old."

That all sounds good, though note that Apple Pay (swiping your Watch or iPhone over an eftpos terminal to make an instore payment) is not available in NZ yet, and not anywhere on the horizon.

Stein adds, "The watch is beautiful and promising — the most ambitious wearable that exists. But in an attempt to do everything in the first generation, the Apple Watch still leaves plenty to be desired. Short battery life compared with other watches and higher prices are the biggest flags for now. But Apple is just setting sail, and it has a long journey ahead."

Its own apps
The Watch can't run regular iOS (iPhone and iPad apps), though it has the ability to act as a second screen for some. Wired notes that some app companies, like Facebook-owned Instagram, have done a good job creating new Apple Watch versions of their software.

Air New Zealand has promised a Watch app to coincide with the local release.

Twitter and Evernote are among others to have Watch apps at launch, but there isn't a whole blizzard (see Apple's Watch apps page here).

Try before you buy
In the US, Apple Stores are allowing customers to book an appointment for a 15-minute sales pitch preview session. I'm not sure if we'll get the same here, given our lack of directly-owned Apple retailers, but Ars Technica says it's not wholly satisfying. You can trying on a drawfull of Watches and get a good idea of the look and feel. But the Watches themselves are set to a non-interactive demo mode.

Watch that investment
NBR's take: like all tech products, Apple Watch will be better with version 2.0. And even better with versions 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 over the next few years.

It'll get less chunky and battery life will be longer.

That's definitely something to factor into your considerations as you decide whether to spend a few hundred dollars on a version 1.0 model, or splash out $US17,000+ on a gold-plated edition.

ckeall@nbr.co.nz

Follow @ChrisKeall

The Apple Watch comes in two sizes — 38mm and 42mm — and three "collections", each with a variety of cases and straps: Apple Watch Sport, priced at $US349 and $US399; Apple Watch, available from $US549 to $US1099 (US); and Apple Watch Edition, crafted from custom rose or yellow 18-karat gold alloys, with prices starting at $US10,000 and running through to $US17,000. The NZ pricing and launch date have yet to be announced. More: Apple.com, Apple.co.nz