Kind of Blue

Some thoughts on the Apple Watch Series 6

M.G. Siegler
500ish
Published in
6 min readOct 7, 2020

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At this point, I feel as if it’s safe to say that the Apple Watch may be the company’s best device, relatively speaking.

Yes, the qualifier is important. But it’s no less impressive of a feat. Apple has not only lapped every other “smartwatch” in the field, it’s hard to remember who is even bothering to compete anymore.

That’s my high-level takeaway of the Apple Watch Series 6. It’s not just that it’s good, it’s that it’s so much better than the competition that even using the word “competition” seems unfair. The only real competition for the Apple Watch Series 6 is the Apple Watch SE.¹

And given that the SE is just a slightly stripped-down Series 5, it’s an interesting competition. Compared to the 5, the 6 is certainly better, but is it absolutely must upgrade better? For most people, probably not.

The biggest new feature, the blood oxygen sensor, is a nice-to-have, but I’ve also found it to be pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to getting readings. I’ve found that roughly 60% of the time, it works every time. Which is to say, there are a lot of “unsuccessful measurement” screens, which is mildly annoying as it’s 15 seconds to retry each time. They warn you that the watch needs to be snug to get a good reading. But “snug” is not exactly a scientific term. Your snug may be different than my snug. And my snug seems to certainly be different from Apple’s snug. If I go with “tight”, it seems to work better.

But that’s actually important because alongside the Series 6, Apple has released a new kind of band, the Loop, which is non-adjustable. Initial return policy snafu aside, if you choose or prefer a Loop that is more like my definition of snug and less like my definition of tight, getting a consistent blood oxygen reading is going to be hard to do.²

The other most obvious new feature of the Series 6 are the color options. If you go with aluminum, you can now get a blue or red Apple Watch. If you go with stainless steel, there is a new ‘graphite’ color. At first, I tried out the graphite version. It’s nice. But in my opinion, it’s not different enough from the various names of black/gray Apple has used in the past. I mean, it is different, sure. But for regular folks, it’s not going to look all that different than previous iterations.

And for some people, that matters. This is in no small part why the ‘tock’ models of the iPhone often sell better than the ‘tick’ variety. Certainly in China, but in the US too. People don’t just want the new thing, they want the new looking thing. The thing that conveys status.

All of that is to say that I traded in my graphite stainless steel model for the blue aluminum variety. And I’m much happier.³ Not only is it significantly cheaper, I honestly think it looks a bit nicer. The blue aluminum is a strong look.⁴ It’s richer than you might think. It’s slightly darker than cobalt, slightly lighter than navy. I like it.⁵ And it doesn’t pick up smudges and finger prints like the stainless steel does. In that regard, I definitely prefer the titanium models, which is what I had for the Series 5. Yes, they’re more expensive still, but far less smudgy.

They’re also lighter than the stainless steel variety. As are the aluminum kind. Doing a very unscientific weight test with my hands, I believe the aluminum is the lightest, followed by the titanium, followed by the stainless steel. This makes sense given what we know about each of those materials. The stainless steel is heavy compared to both.

This matters less on your wrist, but it all… weighed on my decision to go with aluminum. Weight, cost, color. In reverse order.

One thing I’ve been pleasantly surprised by is the noticeable speed increase of the Series 6 versus the Series 5. I mainly notice this in the app switcher, which I admittedly don’t use all that often — but I might now that it’s so fast. ‘Buttery smooth’, is how I would describe it versus more ‘molasses smooth’, the last time around.

The same is true with launching apps. It’s noticeably faster now. And it’s a bit hard to tell if this is more about the upgraded OS versus the upgraded hardware, but the apps themselves seem to load content faster now too.⁶

This has long been one of my biggest gripes with the Apple Watch. Even if you want to use an app, and even if it’s one of Apple’s own apps, you load say, the Apple News app, and you’re never sure if the content is new or old. Sometimes it takes a while — I mean like upwards of a minute or more! — to load the new content. And there’s no indication this is happening. I’ve been noticing this is less of an issue with the Series 6, for whatever reason.

Assuming this holds, the Apple Watch seems to be at the point where I may start using individual apps more. This has slowly but surely been happening over time as the device’s speed improves. And I think it’s there now. If only many third-party developers hadn’t long-abandoned their Watch apps

I’ve also noticed the battery life of the device holding up better with the Series 6. As is always the case with new versus old electronics, it’s hard to know how much of this is degraded battery capacity versus better battery performance. Still, it definitely seems better with the 6.

In their keynote unveiling the device, Apple also noted the better screen on the Series 6 with regard to brightness. I believe this to be true, but it’s hard to know for sure as it’s hard to go outside in the middle of a pandemic and even when I do, San Francisco is shrouded in smoke from wildfires half the time, blotting out the sun. So… we’ll take Apple’s word for this and hope to benefit from it someday.

Those are my key takeaways about the Apple Watch Series 6 having used it for about a week and a half now. The best gets better and the notion of competition becomes more comical. The amount of “better” will vary depending on what is important to you, but in general, it’s not a massive upgrade over the Series 5 (which, again, is now basically the SE). But it is surprisingly noticeably faster. And it’s less surprisingly noticeably bluer. Which I love.

¹ I haven’t tried that device myself yet, and don’t plan to as I remain slightly confused by it. It’s the lower-priced Apple Watch, but not the lowest priced version — that is the… Series 3, which is oddly still on sale. And I certainly don’t understand the name.

² It does seem to work better in the background. At least that’s what the built-in Blood Oxygen app tells me. Like the other health-related features, blood oxygen will be monitored in the background with the Series 6. I’ve noticed it a couple times at night when my wrist starts to glow red.

³ Though hopefully the screen doesn’t randomly pop out again as it did with my last aluminum model…

⁴ I really, really, really want an iPhone in this color, as is rumored

⁵ And when paired with one of those yellow — sorry, “Ginger” — but dare, I say maize — bands. It’s #GoBlue time.

⁶ Apple says the S6 chip in the Series 6 is “up to 20% faster” than the S5 chip in the Series 5 (and SE).

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Writer turned investor turned investor who writes. General Partner at GV. I blog to think.