Apple Watch Series 5 Review

From the perspective of an average Series 2 user

Review Unit

• Apple Watch Series 5 Nike
• Wi-Fi+GPS
• 44mm
• Space Gray Aluminium
• watchOS 6.0.1

My Reasons to Upgrade

• Always-on display, also the reason why I skipped Series 4
• Larger screen
• More watch faces and complications
• Series 2 is getting slow

What’s New Comparing to Series 4

• LTPO Always-On Display
• 64-Bit Dual Core S5 Processor
• 32GB of Storage
• Compass
• International Emergency Calling
• Ceramic returns and new Titanium finish

What’s New Comparing to Series 2

• Larger, Edge-to-Edge screen
• Full screen watch faces
• Digital Crown and Side Button add haptic feedback
• Bluetooth 5.0
• ECG
• Fall Detection

New Watch Faces in watchOS 6

Nike Hybrid watch faces are exclusive to Apple Watch Nike.

Visit Apple’s website for more information about the features of watchOS6.

One & Only Key Feature: Always-On Display

California watch face.

• It has a variable refresh rate from 60Hz to 1Hz. Reducing the refresh rate conserves battery.
• Watch face will turn dark, and the refresh rate will become 1Hz when idling. You can peek at the time easily without waking the watch or raising your arm.
• You can see the time clearly under the sun as it still has the 1000-nit display. You can also manually change the brightness inside Settings.
• Colour is vibrant thanks to OLED. Not sure about the colour gamut, but who cares if it is sRGB or Display P3 anyway?

The issue of the display

• It drains more battery than Series 2.
  I usually put on my watch at around 9AM and take it off to charge at around 11PM. Series 2 would still have around 70% of battery, however Series 5 would almost hit 50%.
• However, if you turn off the always-on feature, the battery is significantly better than Series 2, I got 80% of battery left.

• The display is a little too cold and the colour will become even colder when you are looking it from the side.
• The picture on the left is the California watch face, and the background colour is supposed to be cream. However, it becomes bluish when you are looking it at a different viewing angle.
• I do not recommend using an all-white background. I would prefer using navy blue, or black because of the nature of OLED.

What Else I Have Noticed

• The Screen is bigger (Duh)
• It’s faster and more responsive (except launching App Store, it took me like a minute)
• The vibration is stronger, I often could not feel the vibration from Series 2.
• The sound pitch produced when unlocking Water Lock mode is significantly lower than Series 2.
• Noise app enlightens you about how noisy the environment is. Especially in subways, it is way noisier than you can imagine. Most of the time it is above 90dB. In Apple standard, 80dB is the threshold. (Time to get a pair of noise-cancelling headphones)
• Compass is handy during hiking. However, wearing metal watch strap could reduce the accuracy. Even the watch will tell you to use other strap to prevent.
• Because of the larger storage capacity, the watch will automatically syncs some of my songs from the music library for offline listening.
• You can turn off bluetooth separately instead of turning on airplane mode.
• I like the tip function on the new calculator app, it comes in handy when having dinner gathering with a bunch of people.
• The call reception sounds better, there’s too much noise when answering phone calls via the watch.
• Some old watch faces did not make use of the larger screen, such as modular and utility. They clearly have space to expand the watch face area as the edge is only pitch black.
• Some Series 5 users are suffering from battery life issue, but I don’t.
• Just like what I’ve experienced in Series 2, in some occasions, notifications won’t pop up and show on iPhone instead. I have to restart both devices to enable notifications for the watch.
• You can finally mix-and-match the watch and the strap when purchasing the watch.

The Verdict

• Except the battery life, everything is better than Series 2. Definitely recommend Series 2 users to upgrade. Nevertheless, whether you enable the always-on display feature or not, Series 5 can get through a day.
• If you are worried about the battery bug, wait until watchOS 6.1 launches first to see the feedback from the affected users.
• I do not recommend Series 4 users to upgrade, unless you really need an always-on display. Technically they are the same in terms of specs, only without the LTPO display, and some secondary features including compass.

What I Hope for the Next Generation

• Longer battery life (as always)
• Warmer Display
• Watch Face Store for third party watch faces
• Sleep tracking
• Keeping the compatibility of the watch straps
• Double Tour strap for the larger version
• Lower the prices of higher end finishes
• Don’t make an Apple Watch Pro