Today is a big day for the Apple Watch, as the company’s long-standing smartwatch range is turning 10 years old today. And just like when the iPhone turned 10, Apple had a lot in store for Apple Watch enthusiasts. In addition to (whatever the premium apple watch is), the company has also announced the Apple Watch Series 9 today, and it looks like a really good purchase if your Apple Watch is already due for a replacement — or if you’re looking to get your first one.
Despite not being Apple’s most premium smartwatch anymore, the Series 9 still brings a series of sensible upgrades over its predecessor, the Series 8. For starters, we have new powerful silicon — the S9 SIP, which has 5.6 billion transistors and a 30% faster GPU, as well as a quad-core neural engine that allows for things such as on-device Siri processing (making queries much faster) and 25% more accurate dictation. Apple says that this new chip, and its several improvements, allow for an array of improvements in smoothness and overall performance.
The Series 9 also has a much-improved edge-to-edge screen, with brightness that’s able to go up to 2000 nits and going as low as 1 nit, and it’s getting the ability to read gestures with the hand you’re wearing the watch on — with a double-tap, you can snooze alarms, turn down calls, and much more. And despite all of these improvements, Apple says that the watch still has an 18-hour battery life.
Siri is also getting a bunch of new improvements, such as the ability to read and provide you with health queries. You can, for example, ask Siri how many calories have you burned, how much have you walked today, or how well your blood pressure is looking. watchOS 10, coming as a part of Series 9 is also getting improvements such as the same NameDrop feature that’s coming on iOS 17, which was first announced on WWDC.
The Apple Watch Series 9 comes in the usual range of aluminum and stainless steel colors, in addition to a new Pink one, and with the new FineWoven environmentally-friendly bands as well as new Nike sports bands and Hermes fashionable bands (also environmentally-friendly). The watch starts at $399, and you can pre-order yours now whenever the event is over — they’ll be available on store shelves starting September 22nd.
