The Apple Watch Series 9 may bring in a lot of updates to what is already the best-selling smartwatch, but a radical departure it is not. The design remains largely unchanged from the Series 8 – it’s available in aluminium (including a fetching pink colour) and stainless steel, as before. But it’s worth calling out that the aluminium Watch Series 9 (along with the accompanying Sport Loop or FineWoven bands) are Apple’s first carbon neutral products, via a combination of recycled materials, reduced packaging and carbon offsets.
Beyond promising a brighter future, the Series 9’s screen too goes all the way to 2,000 nits in peak brightness, and as low as 1 nit for late night use. Springing for the new Watch will also get you the S9 SiP (system in package), which uses its 4-core Neural Engine to not only deliver faster performance but also enable a new ‘Double Tap’ gesture and faster on-device Siri – all without any impact to the all-day battery life, which remains unchanged.
While Double Tap officially only rolls out to Series 9 in October, using the Assistive Touch feature available in watchOS since 2021 has prepared me somewhat as to what to expect from Double Tap. Using data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and heart rate monitor to detect movement and blood flow variations, the Watch can detect a pinch gesture so you can operate your watch – dismiss notifications, play/pause music, scroll through Smart Stacks or take/dismiss calls - when your non-watch hand is occupied, say if you’re holding a book, stirring a ladle or doing a single bicep curl with a dumbbell! Siri requests processed on-device is a huge quality of life improvement – not only is it faster, but you can also record a workout hands-free or ask about your sleep/Health data, even if you’re not connected to the paired iPhone.
The Series 9 also plays even better with the rest of your Apple devices, using the second gen UWB chip to see the distance and direction to your misplaced iPhone 15 series device, whether it’s under the sofa or in another room. Come close to a HomePod, and the Series 9 pops up Now Playing to control the audio. In all, the Series 9 is an impressive year-on-year refinement that may tempt even Series 8 owners to get in on the Double Tap and offline Siri action.
Rating: 9/10
Price: Rs. 41,900 (Aluminium, 41 mm) onwards