Upgrading to the Apple Watch 3

The Apple Watch 3 is the latest in the watch line from Apple. Its a watch that allows you to stay connected when you’re away from your phone, making calls and send texts with just your watch. It has the ability to stream millions of songs with Apple Music and track your activities, heart rate, and calories burned right from your wrist.

The Great

• Good smartwatch battery life
• LTE connectivity
• Water resistant
• Apple Music compatable
• Improved exercise tracking
• Snappier performance
• Apple Pay is convenient and really easy

The Not

• LTE connection drains battery significantly
• Wait time for Apple Music streaming is a bit excessive
• LTE roaming is not available
• Siri is a little spotty

The Conclusion

The Apple Watch is the best and only viable smartwatch on the market, everything else is unnecessary or a liability. The upgrades are useful and implemented well on the 3. LTE adds a much needed connection allowing the watch to function with out your iPhone. Being water resistant is another crucial upgrade. Overall the watch was a great addition to your apple eco-system and the enhancements play well.

I Upgraded

So I’ve used the series one for two and a half years now, and at no point have a thought I’ve need to replace it. Then due to an unfortunate band malfunction my beloved Apple Watch and I have parted ways. No fear I have $500 in my pocket so I can swing by any number of retailers and have a new one in just a few mins. Now to be clear I use my watch daily, I find it has improved my ability to stay connected with my calls, messages, appointments and emails while significantly reducing my iPhone screen time. Adding in the activity, heart rate monitoring and breathing reminders its an integral part of my day to day and I can say it improves my quality of life. Not many tech gadgets  can claim this.

The  Improvements

The Apple Watch is now in its third iteration, and while it may appear that not much has changed on the surface, there have been some developments under the hood. Its now water resistant. I live in a coastal town, I am swimming, boating, surfing on a daily bases 9 months out of the year. Being able to take my watch in the water is a need and I am  not sure how I made it for two and a half year with out this ability. The series 2 has this but it is perfected in the 3, and its got a really cool red dot on the dial so everyone can see I am fancy, bonus.

LTE

The big draw for the Series 3 is the option of LTE connectivity. This means greater independence from your paired iPhone, and always-on connectivity wherever you get network coverage. This gives me the ability to stream music from my watch when I am not with my phone, another nice perk. Although I quickly discovered the LTE Series 3’s limitations when I left my iPhone at home. I started the day with a nice bike ride, during which I streamed my bike ride playlist that starts off with Queen’s “Bicycle” and continues with equally enjoyable tracks the  entire 43 minutes of my ride. When I returned home to eat breakfast, I checked my watch battery. It had drained to 60 percent after running every battery-sucking feature simultaneously. I was able  to squeeze through the by not relying on it too heavily on the watch.

Now I do have to say outside of using the LTE to stream music to my Bluetooth headset, the Apple Watch 3 battery life completely blows the series one out of the water, which means I can go almost 3 days without a charge,  and even use the Apple Watch to track my sleep. Another bonus.

I did find out that LTE roaming is not a thing on the watch. This means that if you are not on your carriers cell tower you dont have connection. Not that big of a deal for I use Verizon, but for you Sprint and Tmobile users a much bigger deal, and I would have to assume the 3 third party carriers are out of luck completely.

In Short

It’s an absolutely  justifiable upgrade for me and all of us who already own a previous series Apple Watch. While you likely don’t need LTE, it can be helpful if you want the freedom to leave your iPhone at home or in a car while working out. The Apple Watch 3 is noticeably faster than the series one, which means I use apps and features that took too long to reliably use on the older model. Siri is now talking to you, which is nice when you want to quickly command the digital assistant and keep on doing what you want.