The Apple Watch was originally pitched in 2014 as a remedy to the excesses of being attached to a large display. It evoked adventure, activity and an escape from work on the smartphone.

On its 10th anniversary, the Apple Watch — despite all the dupes flooding the market — remains the best-looking smartwatch and is home to an irresistible set of features, as exemplified by the new Series 10, which can track breathing disturbances while you sleep, charges faster, has a new speaker, a new depth gauge, and a new water temperature sensor. And watchOS 11 is still the best smartwatch operating system. We have been trying the Apple Watch Series 10 for over a week, even though we are not snorkelers who want to see how effectively the Depth Gauge functions.

Meaningful design updates

There are two parts to the story — new hardware and a new generation of OS. With someone with shoddy vision like me, I think every new pixel on the new Watch is worth the money. At 9.7mm, this is the thinnest Apple Watch. When you wear it all day, every day, it makes a huge difference in the comfort factor.

Many have been asking for a seconds hand on smartwatches. Apple has delivered

Apple has done away with stainless steel casings, instead, it’s either aluminium or titanium. Aluminium cases weigh up to 10 per cent less than Series 9, and titanium cases weigh almost 20 per cent less than stainless steel Series 9. The case also features more rounded corners and a wider aspect ratio, which contribute to a much larger display while only slightly growing the case to new 42mm and 46mm sizes. You may say what difference does 1mm make? A lot. When it comes to an active display area or pixels you can touch, there is a lot more information available at a glance.

This is the biggest screen (if you select the 46mm version) ever on an Apple Watch, offering a good reason to upgrade. The wide-angle OLED display makes sure you can see the screen from all angles. There is also a seconds hand, which gives the Watch a feel of the real thing. The ticking seconds hand is on the Reflections and Flux watch faces, otherwise there’s a digital second count on Activity Digital.

An upgrade that deserves a mention is the redesigned speaker. You can now play music or podcasts from the watch without connecting AirPods. Apple has made it 30 per cent smaller but it’s still just as loud and clear. Whether taking calls or playing audio through the watch’s speaker, the sound quality is top of the line. Now every uncleji like me can play Alan Parsons Project in the park while having lebu cha and sending out some good vibes early in the morning.

There is Blood Oxygen feature

One of the features you may wonder about is Blood Oxygen. As you may know, Apple is currently locked in a patent battle over blood oxygen sensors with Masimo. If you’re in the US, the Series 10 won’t be able to take blood oxygen readings. But this doesn’t affect watches sold outside of the US.

Stay active on your terms

Apple Watch users are aware of the Activity Tracking feature. It shows activity levels during the course of the day. The Digital Crown can be used to scroll through all the metrics and stand time for the day. One of the features in watchOS is the ability to change goals for the day — you can ‘change for today’ or ‘change daily goal’. It will affect things like your ‘stand goal’. You can even set it for each day of the week or pause your Activity Ring. This is particularly helpful because it sort of smoothens the hyper-competitive edge that comes with closing rings. If the user is sick or is travelling, the Activity Ring can be paused.

A new Tides app can access seven rolling days of forecasted tidal information for coastlines and surf spots around the globe

With watchOS 11 comes the new Vitals app that allows users to quickly view key overnight health metrics and gain better context when it comes to their health. The app shows when you have an ‘Outlier’ metric that doesn’t conform to your established baseline.

Vitals app takes into consideration heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen and sleep duration. All of these are summarised in terms of total value, besides being individually shown as well. In the event one of your vitals is out of range, you’ll get an indicator, showing that metric as out of whack. If two metrics are out of place, you’ll also get a push notification that something bigger might be at play.

Sleep apnea

Perhaps the most important reason behind making an update to the Apple Watch, especially if you are wearing a model that’s three-four years old — understand if you have sleep apnea. Disclaimer: I am yet to try the feature and write about the experience in a future article.

Taking pride of place during Apple’s recent keynote is the sleep apnea feature, which has received FDA approval. You need to enable the feature first, which then will start tracking so-called breathing disturbances. Basically it’s looking at your breathing throughout the night and it’s classifying into two different categories — elevated or non-elevated. Having some breathing disturbances is normal but you just don’t want to end up being in the elevated zone.

The National Institutes of Health in the US estimates that at least 50 million Americans struggle with some kind of sleep disorder, including sleep apnea. Further, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that people with obstructive sleep apnea have a significantly higher risk of depression.

The condition is estimated to impact more than one billion people worldwide, and in most cases, goes undiagnosed. If left untreated, it can have important health consequences over time, including increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and cardiac issues.

At 2,000 nits, the display is very bright and the Series 10's wide-angle OLED makes the display brighter when you look at it from an angle

Sleep apnea data requires time. Users have to wait 30 days to get a notification of signs of sleep apnea and should talk with your healthcare provider. Like with Apple’s other advanced health features, this is meant to be a warning flag, not a diagnostic tool.

The goal here isn’t to treat sleep apnea. From an Apple standpoint, it is to make you aware of it so you can go to your doctor and figure things out from there. The feature is available in all Apple Watch Series 9 and Series 10 options as well as all Apple Watch Ultra 2 Edition watches.

Usually, to detect sleep apnea there are clinics and home tests. Sleep study measures your brain activity, heart rate, movement and blood oxygen among other metrics. The device uses the accelerometer and machine learning to detect interruptions in your breathing pattern by monitoring small movements on the wrist. The Health app looks at data over 30 days.

When you breathe it’s an oscillation of movement in your chest. That oscillation — in and out — is seen through the Apple Watch accelerometer at the wrist. When there is an interruption in breathing that can be read out and detected through machine learning algorithms.

Juice up

Since you would want to record sleep data, charging will play an important role. With the Watch Ultra, users easily get three days of power but with Series 10 it’s up to 18 hours. Improvement has come on the charging front: Apple Watch Series 10 can juice up to 80 per cent in 30 minutes. It’s crazy how fast the watch can power up to the point that battery life has almost become a nonissue. Plop the watch on the charging puck before you go for a shower and by the time you dress up, the device is ready to use.

Sports tracking features

There are a number of sports-focussed features coming in from watchOS 11. Hit the workout icon and you have access to all the sporting modes. What I am interested in is offline maps. On your phone, create a highlight of an area for which you need an offline map, using the Apple Maps app. You can then sync that to your watch.

The new training load feature offers an insightful new way to measure how the intensity and duration of workouts are impacting a user’s body over time. An Up Next view for Custom Workouts helps users keep track of their current and upcoming intervals.

Apple says these insights can help you prepare for an event, such as a marathon, biking race or simply make informed decisions about your training each day.

The comparison (of your workouts over the last seven days) is with the previous 28-day baseline and on rotating the Digital Crown, you can see how you fared each day. It works just fine but what could be better is having a number to each day on a graph (at the moment it’s a percentage), which will help to compare one month to the next.

How deep is deep?

Yes, it’s water resistant up to 50mm but that’s one side of the story. There’s a feature that is coming from the Apple Watch Ultra series: Depth gauge (can measure down to six metres beneath the water’s surface). It’s particularly helpful for snorkelling and those who live near water bodies that are meant for swimming.

New Tides app

WatchOS 11 introduces a new Tides app for Apple Watch. Users can access seven rolling days of forecasted tidal information for coastlines and surf spots around the globe. You can scroll along to see tides over the next few days. There is an option to add locations, which is another helpful feature. You can also see swell information on a particular tide phase.

You can listen to music on the watch without connecting AirPods

Make the call

Apple is aiming for people who haven’t updated in three to four years. Each year Apple keeps adding a few important features but when you update after three or four years, the new feature set will look like a massive leap.

If that’s not all, the jet-black version of the Apple Watch is probably the best-looking device on the market. I even caught my wife, who is not interested in fashion, looking longingly at the new all-black Apple Watch Series 10. When it comes to a smartwatch that can be worn on all occasions without making compromises on health metrics, there’s no competition for the device.

Mathures Paul