It's been about two months since the Apple Watch Series 3 hit and during
that time I've had it on my wrist almost every single day so I wanted to do a
full review of the Apple Watch we didn't do a review when it first came out I
wanted to get a chance to know it a little better see if there were any
giant differences. Before I jump into that I want to talk a little bit about
smart watches in general I am a ball a conflicted emotion when it comes to
these little computers on my wrist part of me wants to be like what's the point
apps on your wrist are stupid they're slow they're hard to launch and it just
as easy to look at my phone if all I need to see its a notification the other part of me
when I don't wear a Smart Watch super misses it and I'm not sure which side is
winning so my approach with smart watches is kind of like a question mark
are they useful? Sometimes, are they not useful? Yeah probably but
the Apple Watch Series 3 does bring something new that takes it one
step closer to actual utility and that's LTE availability you can tell you've got
an LTE model by the real red on the crown and that's pretty much the only
way you can tell you've got an Apple Watch Series 3 as opposed to the Apple
Watch Series 2 or really the original Apple Watch. So a couple things I really
like about this series 3 I think Apple improved over previous versions
that is battery life hot damn is battery life good I went three days without
charging the Apple Watch by time one day went by I used about 30% so 30% each day is
pretty awesome. It's going for about 7:00 a.m. until about 10:00 p.m. the big
caveat though if you have LTE turned on or at least LTE active so if you leave
your phone at home it'll detect that and I'll turn the LTE modem on battery life
with LTE is not great I did a test of able to make a one-hour phone call on
the watch with LTE and that drained the battery from complete to zero. If you've
got LTE on and just like out walking in the park or something you can generally
get through maybe about five to six hours away before the battery life is
gonna come pretty close to dead but I don't think the use case is most people
using LTE all the time I think it's using LTE when you're going
for a run you're going for swim or doing a workout that's when you want have the
benefit of having LTE on those kind of things it works
pretty well. One of the big benefits of LTE and this wasn't there at launch
actually was the ability to stream Apple Music to wireless headphones when you
don't have your phone near you and I tried it paired it with some AirPods it
worked really well as I went for my run I could ask whatever song I wanted to
play I could play playlist anything I wanted to do anything I could do with
Apple Music for my phone I could just do with my watch. And if music is something
that's really important to you and maybe you wanna listen to music at home or by
your bedside I want to thank the folks at iHome for sponsoring this video
making it possible in particular their IAVS 16 and this thing does absolutely
everything it's an alarm clock it's got alexa built-in it's got a USB port on
the back for charging your Apple Watch or whatever else you want to charge and most
importantly I think it addresses the big shortcoming with an Amazon Echo device
they don't have a screen so if you have an alarm set you wake up in the middle
of night you want to know what time it is you got to ask it and it's loud and
could wake up the person sleeping next to you this has a screen built-in it's got
really cool LED lights that will glow when you ask Alexa question it does
everything in a really nice small compact footprint I'll link to it down
below if you want to check it out. The Apple Watch Series 3 seems geared towards
the Fitbit crowd the folks that want a SmartWatch that's geared towards workouts
you've got a barometric altimeter in here you've got new workout apps and
make it easier it automatically detect when you are working out. You got a revised
heart rate sensor so if you need a watch to work out it's still probably
the best going admitedly I should work out a little bit more but when I did do
the workout it worked out great when I'd start working out and I forget to set my
watch it would know and it would start tracking and that was nice I liked the
added heartrate stuff that it does. If you are into working out then that
might be a reason to get the Apple Watch when it comes to me and fitness I'm
generally only fitting this whole pizza in my mouth.
Some other nice things versus previous versions this one's way faster
the Apple Watch Series 1 was certainly slow when launching the apps off the watch
2 got a little bit quicker. The jump from two to three though seems like it
three or four times as fast if you want to launch apps and speaking of apps I
don't I don't use them on a smart watch I think it's cumbersome to find them when
they launch they're not that useful it's easier for me just to look at my phone
the only time I really ever use apps to check like a football score or
something on ESPN but that was pretty much it for me. My use case for the watch
is generally notifications being able to talk to Siri and she'll now talk back to you
with the Apple Watch Series 3 which is nice and then being able to make an
occasional phone call on LTE using a speakerphone. So maybe for me the series
3 isn't necessary most of those things I could do on series 2 but being able to
have LTE has been nice for that peace of mind but all that peace of mind is damn
expensive you're starting at four hundred bucks to get a watch with LTE then
it's depending on your carrier about ten bucks a month for the LTE service then
you gotta have an iPhone to go along with that by the time you get all this
stuff together if you've got a new generation iPhone you're looking at like
1500 bucks just to get out the door and that's a lot of money to have freedom
from your phone it's also kind of weird that Apple's trying to sell you on
freedom from your phone while also trying to sell you a phone. All right so
who is the Apple Watch Series 3 for? First if you already know you're an
Apple Watch fan and you want to upgrade then yeah you're gonna do it anyway
for coming from the first gen Apple Watch it's gonna be a gigantic update
for you not only for battery life but for speed and overall OS and software
improvements it's a gigantic improvement. If you're coming from a Series 2 I mean
other than LTE there's very little difference here there's some new band
colors but you can you can just buy those from the Apple Store or buy a ton
of third-party bands from Amazon that's who the watch is for other than that I'm
not sure who the target market is I like it I don't love it kind of sums up my
apathy in general toward smartwatches and not just the Apple Watch and I think
having worn Android Wear for years now the OS that Apple's got on the Apple
watch called
watch OS it's way better and more intuitive than Android Wear but at their
heart they both do the same thing. And if that same thing that it does is for you
then great if it doesn't you can skip it wait for next gen and hopefully we'll
see a design change and maybe a little round screen or these sort of look
noticeably different than the very first version that hit. All right so that's
the Apple Watch Series 3 it's kind of the same thoughts I've had for one
and two it's probably the best SmartWatch out there whether or not you need a
SmartWatch or you want a SmartWatch it all comes down to your personal usage if
you want the latest from Apple you can get it if you're a workout fanatic you wanna
be able to track your heart rate a little bit better maybe you run up in
the mountains I don't want to know your altitude it's nice to have if you're
coming from the first gen watch and you want the waterproofing and you want the
speed nice to have that there as well if you're rocking a series 2 I think stick
with your series 2 for another year perhaps your patience will be rewarded
and let me know what you guys think did you buy a series 3 if you did why
you're using LTE till next time I'm Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo talk to you guys
in the next video