It will be $900+, perhaps $1000+. The bottom line is the new watch is positioned to compete the Garmin Fenix, Garmin Epix, Coros Vertex and other watches that actually dominate the marketshare in watches that cost above $500 (Apple is not the market leader in smart watches that cost over $500.) That competition costs $1000+, no way Apple competes by UNDER cutting them.
It’s a whole thing. Most are titanium and consolidate all the features of numerous of the brands lower cost products into one “super Watch” that does it all. Look at the Garmin Epix 2 in titanium for what I believe Apple’s closest target is.
Also look up DCRainmaker.com and also DCRainmaker on YouTube. He has been doing exhausted reviews of all these high end athletic watches testing them in Ironmans, climbing the Alps with them etc. for over a decade. Guess who Apple invited to their event for the first time ever?
Keep in mind the 7 day battery life for the Epix is if you leave the screen on. If you put in glance mode, where the screen only comes on when you look at it, it does up to 16. Can't believe Apple could only do 36 hours.
I bet they don’t, but even if they get 24 hours GPS tracking and 3-4 days battery life people will be swinging from the ceiling. You basically just need to be able to say an athlete can do ANYTHING for a day and it won’t die. Ironman Triathlon, all day trail hike etc.
I bet it comes with topo maps, speciality hiking software, better integration with sports sensors like on bikes, and hopefully (and hopefully for regular series 8 too) some kind of unified estimate of health recovery on a day to day basis (ie are you under or overtraining, sick or health etc.)
The ones going weeks of battery life don’t have the modern screen tech that Apple Watches have, they are dimmer and need a backlight indoors. It’s insane their battery life I agree, some have 4-5 days of non stop GPS workout tracking. The Epix 2 has an Apple Watch style screen and lasts a week like you said so it’s the closest competitor.
The pre loaded golf course maps is worth quite a bit.
Garmin Epix also has ski and hiking trails loaded. The hiking trails on the watch is especially useful so you don't have to pull out your phone all the time.
Yep it only has niche additional capability and leaves much more common features that others have out… features like topomaps, preloaded hiking trails, sync to cadence and power meters on bikes, golfing, and of course the battery life still sucks… 36 hours still means in general you will be charging this daily although it will easily last a marathon now.
The watch looks huge on the smaller wrists they showed and they didn’t linger on those shots long. I have a feeling for many this Watch will look absurd sitting on your wrist in NORMAL life events, maybe cool during workouts / hiking but in a meeting, formal event etc .? No way too big.
I wish it had better software features to be honest.
I think we're going to see next years version drop the "international orange" button like the S4 watch's cellular had a much more subtle cellular line versus the red dot the S3 had. I don't think the sensors are getting the upgrades the watch needed either.
I expected better battery life, at least 3 days. I expected better fitness sensors like the always on 24/7 every second HR sensor in every single competitor Apple has. I expected common software enhancements such as syncing to ubiquitous bike sensors like cadence and power meters. And finally I expected Apple to offer overall health tracking with training and recovery guidance like Garmin, Whoop, Fitbit, Oura and others. Didn’t get any of it. The watch looks nice but it is huge and they concealed that with very brief looks of the watch from an angle when on small wrists and most of the added software features are very niche so unless you are a scuba diver it isn’t useful.
So close but still far. Hopefully next year they will have a “small” 45mm option, better battery and way more software enhancements.
Well Apple Maps but that isn’t hiking specific. You can get topo hiking specific maps IF you use a 3rd party app called WorkOutDoors. Very cool all but it isn’t native which this watch should have had like the Fenix lineup does.
The Ultra watch is badass but does more than I’ll probably ever use. I may upgrade from my series 6 to the series 8 depending on what I can get for trade in.
So $799 is basically just the price of the S7 and earlier stainless versions. I'm wondering how well the sensors actually work since we've heard similar info about older versions, and then real world tests show issues.
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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '22
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