Best Apple Watch: Quick Menu
With a new Apple Watch Series 10 but no other new hardware upgrades to speak of, choosing the best Apple Watch in 2024 is a tricky question. The right one for you will depend on a range of factors, including your budget and your use case. Of course, the Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory, so if you don’t already own one you’ll need to grab one or take a look at some of the other best smartwatches on the market.
Apple Watch models from the SE all the way up to the brand new Series 10 will feature a range of core features including workout tracking, iPhone connectivity and notifications, communication features, and more. They’re all powered by watchOS 11, Apple’s latest wearable operating system, too.
Now that we’ve got our hands on the Apple Watch Series 10 and have put it through its paces, we can confidently say it deserves a place in our best Apple Watch lineup for 2024, but where does it fit?
The best Apple Watch on the market right now remains the Apple Watch Ultra 2, but the choice of Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs Series 10 is a tricky one for new customers and those upgrading from older models. The Series 10 is undoubtedly the best option for most people who don’t need the Ultra’s rugged durability and battery life.
For the budget-conscious, the Apple Watch SE 2 remains the device of choice thanks to its incredibly cheap price point, owing to a more limited feature set and cheaper materials. But those aren’t the only options on the market, and in truth there’s an Apple Watch to suit every need, and more importantly every budget. Here’s our full rundown.
Matt Evans
As Fitness and Wearables Editor, Matt is responsible for curating the Best Apple Watch buying guide, alongside all other on-site fitness content. He’s very excited to get to grips with the next iteration of Apple Watches.
The quick list
Jump straight below to the best Apple Watch for your needs with our quick and easy round-up section. Read more by jumping to our full write-ups and explanations using the links below.
The best Apple Watch overall
Despite a couple of new Series 10 features, this is still the most potent Apple Watch package on the market. Incredible GPS tracking, more than 36 hours of battery life, the Action Button… it’s still top of the pile.
Read more below
The best Apple Watch for users on a budget
The same excellent watchOS 11 operating system, same great synergy with your iPhone, and the same superb health, wellness, and lifestyle functionalities. A few corners cut like the nylon backing lowers the price.
Read more below
The best Apple Watch for everyone else
New for 2024, the Series 10 boasts a bigger, more vibrant display than the Ultra 2, and a more powerful chip thanks to the S10. It’s still not as rugged as the Ultra though, and battery life is limited to a single day of use.
Read more below
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The best previous generation Apple Watch
The Apple Watch Series 9 is still a capable contender and can often be found at a pretty decent discount. It’s got the S9 chip and features like Double Tap, on-device Siri, temperature sensing, and more.
Read more below
The best Apple Watch for deals
The older the model, the better deal you can find on it. Apple Watch 6 probably hits that sweet spot in that you don’t lose much functionality, but you’ll still have a relatively future-proof watch.
Read more below
Best Apple Watch overall
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the ultimate Apple Watch. It’s bigger and bulkier, adding an action button that you can customize with genuinely useful features. Designed to survive all kinds of terrain, the Apple Watch Ultra rivals many Garmin watches and boasts the brightest, OLED-iest, best screen ever.
It could still offer better battery life (despite surpassing the regular Apple Watch) but a powerful and accurate GPS is great for exploring, plus there’s a diving sensor for the avid underwater adventurer. Plus, all the benefits from other Apple Watches are here, ensuring you can always see how you’re doing, health-wise. It even comes with the Double Tap gesture controls, made possible with the S9 chipset.
It’s expensive but powerful. And, during testing, we easily found this to be the best wearable that the brand has ever made.
Read our full Apple Watch Ultra 2 review
Best budget Apple Watch
The Apple Watch SE 2 is the Apple Watch for anyone who doesn’t need an always-on display and isn’t too fussed about tracking their blood oxygen level or ECG. It has the car crash detection tool of the 8, plus extensive fitness tracking so you’re hardly missing out.
There’s a gorgeous screen with brightness up to 1,000 nits so flicking your wrist up isn’t exactly suffering here. Using the same processor as the Apple Watch 8 means you get speedy performance while surprisingly, we found the battery overperformed with around two days of life here.
Read our full Apple Watch SE 2 review
Best Apple Watch for most people
The new Apple Watch Series 10 is the first design upgrade to Apple Watch in several years. It’s got a larger, more vibrant display and it’s also thinner in profile. Apple’s wide-angle OLED serves up 40% more brightness when you view your Apple Watch face at a glance, and it now refreshes at a lower rate of 1Hz, once per second. That means that seconds can now be displayed on some Watch Faces through the always-on display.
Other upgrades include the addition of media playback through the speaker, and a new charging coil that can be used to fast charge your watch from 0-80% in just 30 minutes, up from 45 in the Apple Watch Series 9.
While there’s not much to write home about beyond the chassis redesign and the new display, this is definitely the best mainstream Apple Watch on the market right now. When it comes to the best overall model, it’s definitely a toss-up between this and the Ultra 2, but we reckon the Ultra 2 takes it on battery life and design.
Read our full Apple Watch Series 10 review
Best previous gen Apple Watch
The Apple Watch Series 9 was a fairly incremental update to the Apple Watch 8 but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. While its battery life remains average and it looks the same as the old model, you get a few new tricks including hands-free gesture controls, the S9 chipset, brighter screen, and an improved Find Devices feature that unfortunately only works with other devices capable of Ultra Wideband (read: iPhone 15 and later).
The processor boosts the speed a tad, while the car crash detection tool could just save your life (but hopefully you’ll never need it). Plus, there are all the benefits of WatchOS 11 with improved fitness stats and better interval training features.
It’s certainly not as good as the Series 10, but it’s definitely a close second.
Read our full Apple Watch Series 9 review
Best Apple Watch for deals
The Apple Watch 6 is still a strong watch despite the release of the Apple Watch Series 10, so of course it places high on our list. New additions in this model include blood oxygen monitoring, plus the still respectable Apple S6 chipset. That extra efficiency helps improve battery life, though the Apple Watch 6 still doesn’t last as long as we’d like – especially now that you can track your sleep, a feature that debuted on this model but is available as a software update for others too.
The screen has also been improved a little over previous generations, and you can get the Apple Watch 6 in some new colors (relative to its original launch), including a flashy red shade. Even so, for the most part, this is much the same as the Apple Watch 5 – just a slightly better and more expensive alternative to it.
Read the full Apple Watch 6 review
How to choose the best Apple Watch for you
The main thing to consider when buying a new Apple Watch is the price – Apple always keeps multiple smartwatches around, offering older ones as affordable counterparts to the newer ones.
Features are also worth bearing in mind – some newer Apple Watches have always-on displays, more advanced sensors and newer software, with even newer tools.
There’s one other thing to consider, and that’s availability. Apple only sells certain models of its watches, and while third-party retailers usually offer a bigger range, depending on where you run it might not be all of them.
FAQs
Is it worth buying an Apple Watch?
If you have an iPhone, Apple Watches are great additions that help you make the most of your handset with extra features and tools, and great connectivity between the two.
However if you’re an Android user it’s not worth buying an Apple Watch, as Apple doesn’t let its wearables connect to smartphones it doesn’t make.
What can you do on an Apple Watch?
Apple Watches offer loads of features including workout-tracking, health monitoring, calling and texting, handling notifications from your phone, setting alarms, stream music to headphones, check maps, monitor your sleep, contact the Siri AI assistant and more.
Plus, thanks to the watchOS App Store, you can download third-party apps to get extra features and tools.
Each newer generation of Apple Watch comes with newer features too, so definitely check out the review of the handset you’re interested in to make sure it does what you need it to.
Are there other Apple Watches?
You’ll probably notice that the original Apple Watch, the Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, 4, 5 and original SE devices are all missing from this list. That’s because it’s getting harder to buy those devices new anymore and the latest watchOS iteration, watchOS 10, doesn’t support some of those devices. Future watchOS updates may bypass older watches such as the original SE.
You can still source the original Apple Watch and a variety of older devices from some places, but we’d recommend opting for one of the devices above as they will be supported with software updates for longer and are generally more refined wearables.
What iPhone do you need to use an Apple Watch?
Unlike Google’s Wear OS devices, the Apple Watch only works with one type of phone. You’ll need to have at least an iPhone X running iOS 17 to be able to use an Apple Watch running watchOS 10, the latest version of the software. This gives you new features such as advanced hiking and cycling features, new watch faces and mental health tools.
What bands can you use with the Apple Watch?
There are dozens of straps sold by Apple that offer a huge variety of styles for your wrist. When you first buy your Apple Watch you’ll have a strap included, but you can buy and easily switch out different straps that you buy separately.
There are material and color options available including leather link, solo loop, Milanese loop, braided solo loop, and much more. Any Apple Watch strap works with any Apple Watch, as long as you’ve got the right smaller or larger size watch.
Plus there are lots of third-party bands available too, but make sure you get the right size as it won’t support all watch straps. Want to see our favorites? Here’s our selection of the best Apple Watch bands.
How we test
When we use Apple Watches, we don’t just hook them up to a machine in a lab and see what numbers pop out.
We wear the smartwatches all day, every day – we go for runs with them on, take calls on them, track our sleep with them, check our notifications with them, and even test out all the weird and wonderful apps available.
But we don’t just use them for a week or two – we keep them on our wrists day in, day out (okay, we take them off when we wash) all year round; just to make sure we know the Apple Watch experience in and out.
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Below are a selection of the how-to guides we have at TechRadar to help you understand some of the complicated parts of setting up, customizing and using your new smartwatch.
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