Apple Watch Series 6 in Review: Improved Health Metrics Thanks to watchOS 7 and New Sensor

As before the aluminum models feature Ion-X glass while the stainless steel and titanium models come with Sapphire glass instead. The LPTO OLED that was first introduced with the Watch Series 4 remains well usable in sunlight. According to Apple, its Always-On Display’s maximum brightness has been improved by 2.5x over the Watch Series 5, which is supposed to be beneficial mostly to those who cannot raise their arm during their workout for whatever reason. We were particularly impressed by how fast the new device switched between the two modes. Even with Always-On Display enabled activating the full display when lifting your arm takes a split second.

The rear side has been updated to include the new sensor. The new sensor array is comprised of a crystal with four photo diodes and four green/red/infrared LED clusters. This array now allows for estimating your blood oxygen level as well as measuring and recording your heart rate, your heart rhythm, and recognize when you’re asleep. The latter does not require the new sensor and is thus available on all models that can be updated to watchOS 7, namely Series 3 and newer.

However, updating to watchOS on previous Apple Watch models comes at a price. The latest iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system no longer supports Force Touch, which in previous versions was used to access context menus or customize the currently installed watch faces. Instead, this way of input was now partly replaced with a long touch without applying extra force. The Apple Watch Series 6 lacks the Force Touch gasket that was still present on previous models, and on all older devices its readings are simply ignored.

The Apple Watch Series 6 supports GPS and is ISO 22810:2010 certified against ingress of water up to 50 m. The new Wi-Fi chip now also supports 5 GHz bands. Furthermore, the watch comes with NFC for Apple Pay as well as a speaker and microphone for Siri and phone calls. As before, an LTE model with eSIM support is available optionally at a premium.

The watch faces can be customized either via the Watch app on the iPhone or on the watch itself. Changing between the various installed watch faces can be achieved with horizontal swipes across the screen. The digital crown is used for scrolling through settings menus or zooming in the Photos app. The single button can be used to either display the Dock, which contains all recently used applications, or a customizable list of favorite apps.

This all isn’t new by any means. Its ease of use is one of the basic principles defining the Apple Watch, as is the full integration of multiple Apple products logged in with the same Apple ID with one another. For example, should Siri respond to one of your questions with a search and website suggestion you can open this website on your Mac thanks to Handoff. Furthermore, all Siri suggestions and open websites are synchronized with your Mac to be found in Safari’s history. In addition, you can also use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac. Once setup the watch will vibrate and play a sound reminiscent to that of a vault opening every time it unlocks your Mac. A nice touch for sure.

What it is capable of recording is the time you fell asleep, the time you woke up, and how often and when you awoke at night. This data can be graphed and analyzed long-term over the last few days or weeks and will inform you whether or not you reached your self-defined sleep goal for weekdays and weekends. Despite the fact that heartrate and oxygen saturation data is available for that same time period a sleep diagram overlay is not available. In addition, unlike Fitbit’s algorithms Apple’s infrequent readings will be barely able to reliably detect sleep apnea.

We suspect that more frequent readings would decrease the Apple Watch’s battery life even further. At the time of writing the minimum charge required for a night’s worth of sleep tracking is 30 %. Charge levels below 30 % will result in a warning. How and why the Apple Watch Series 6 managed to record more time asleep than time spent in bed (see last screenshot) remains a mystery to us. We can positively assure you with absolute certainty that the number of power naps taken during the review period was unfortunately exactly zero.

The exercise goal can best be reached through workouts that can be recorded with the preinstalled Workout app. If you’re not a big fan of gyms or indoor sports facilities, you can alternatively also reach your daily exercise goal and close the ring with a 30-minute long brisk walk. Basically, anything you can record with the Workout app or any other Apple Health-compatible fitness app will count towards your exercise goal. The app will also calculate your daily calories by adding up all exercises, steps taken, etc. The app store contains numerous apps that allow you to record your calorie intake as well and use that data fed into the Health app to record and monitor your weight.

At the time of writing, Apple’s Workout app supported slightly less than 100 different workouts. Running can be paused automatically if you stop or, alternatively, manually by pressing the digital crown and side button simultaneously and then terminating the workout via touch button on the display.

Thanks to its built-in GPS the watch is capable of recording your track even without an iPhone present.  Music and audio books that have been previously synchronized with your watch can be played during your workout on any compatible Bluetooth headset.

Today’s workouts can be found in the Activity app on the watch. Analyzing older workouts requires the Fitness and Health app on the paired iPhone. The latter will even display heart rate and frequency during your workout session as well as during the resting period immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, this data is also only available for the current day.

Various alternatives to Apple’s Workout app are available in the app store, such as for example Strava or other apps aimed at running, swimming, or golfing. Those apps are great for keeping long-term records in order to use these metrics for improvement.