Is the Apple Watch Edition worth its £7K price tag?

The long-awaited Apple Watch will hit stores on April 24. We take a first look at the fashion and tech world’s most coveted accessory and ask whether it’s wise to shell out £7,000 on a timepiece
Time after time: Apple hopes to follow the success of the iPhone and iPad with the Apple Watch (Picture: AFP/Getty)
Jasmine Gardner10 March 2015

On my wrist is a $10,000 timepiece. Midnight blue strap, classic buckle, 18-carat gold casing and one very little, high-tech screen. The Apple Watch Edition is the most expensive accessory I’ve ever worn. No wonder my heart rate (according to the watch’s sensors) is at nearly 100bpm — Apple has just played a room full of geeks in Berlin an exclusive new trailer for the new series of Game of Thrones and now, at Apple’s European launch, I’m receiving a screen-by-screen demo of the Apple Watch, which lands here on April 24.

I’ve been given just enough time to snap one quick photo, and a member of Apple staff is running me through some features. “Tap here to bring up the fitness app...scroll up using the digital crown...” Walking off around the room wearing the watch is forbidden. Other keen reporters are squishing up behind me trying to be next in line for a test run. Meanwhile, a few strays who are a little off message for the day are examining the new ultra-thin MacBook on the other side of the room. Poor MacBook — a pretty amazing new product is being largely ignored.

As one tweeter noted that yesterday all internet traffic could be surmised as, “Why I will be buying an Apple Watch” and “Why I won’t be buying an Apple Watch”. Here are six reasons why nobody is talking about anything else:

Money, money, money

The big news is the price. The Apple Watch Sport (aluminium, plastic strap) will start at $349 for the 38mm watch and the standard Watch with stainless steel casing will reach all the way up to $1099 for the 42mm size. Never mind all that. The 18-carat gold Apple Watch Edition will sell from $10,000 to $17,000. Apple is placing it into the luxury market — alongside Rolex or Omega, which would each set you back upwards of $20,000.

As Paul Lamkin, editor-in-chief of wearable tech site Wareable notes, “£8,000 is a lot of money for a watch that could be out of date in 12 months time”. But those who buy Rolexes aren’t necessarily purchasing family heirlooms and Apple Watch Edition will undoubtedly find a market among those who just want the latest fancy. They probably won’t even mind that when the watch is resting by your side it will just look like a black square, since it saves battery life by only switching on the face when you raise your wrist. This launch is as much (maybe more) about fashion as it is about tech — hence the many attractive iterations of the watch, the hiring of former Burberry chief Angela Ahrendts last year, huge adverts for the watch in Vogue and inviting Christy Turlington on stage at yesterday’s launch for an otherwise pointless cameo. Even if they only sell 1m Edition units, that’s $10 billion.

More smarts

Missed the memo? There are other smartwatches on the market. Google dropped an ad campaign for Android Wear — it’s wearable operating system — to nicely tie in with the Apple Watch launch.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month, Huawei announced its watch with some similar features to Apple’s. LG announced a slightly better-looking update to its range with the LG Watch Urbane.

Pebble has returned to Kickstarter to crowdfund a new watch with seven-day battery life and has raised more than $17 million.

The Moto 360 (priced at just $249.99) recently brought out new silver- and champagne-coloured steel straps. Samsung, meanwhile, is taking a hiatus from developing its Gear smartwatches.

For dummies

You know how your mum calls every smartphone an iPhone? Well, she’s about to start calling every smartwatch an iWatch. Consumer electronics forecasting company Futuresource is predicting that smartwatch sales will go up from about six million units in 2014 to more than 25 million units in 2015. “The Apple Watch will be a significant driver behind this growth,” it says.

Apple says it has a market of 200 million users of iPhone 5, 5s, 5c, 6 and 6 Plus (with which the watch is compatible) but surely there will even be some who will ditch their Samsung phones and buy an iPhone, just so that they can have a watch?

Phil Libin, CEO of the successful note-taking app Evernote says, “We’ve built apps for just about every wearable device that’s come out in the past and we always knew that we were building for people like me: nerds and early adopters. When we’re building for the Apple Watch, we know we’re building for the mainstream... Everything before this was practice.”

Apple has rarely been first — it aims to be better. By attracting attention to smartwatches it may boost the rest of the market too.

Bringing Appyness

“The best apps on the Apple Watch are going to be beautiful and useful enough to attract millions of users,” says Libin, and to start with it has a few favourites. You’ll be able to use Facebook, Instagram and (phew) Uber on your Apple Watch. Less useful will be viewing your pictures on that miniscule screen. It will also let you open hotel doors (but only if it’s a W Hotel) and store your flight boarding passes to scan as you breeze through the airport (although I’d love to see you fit your whole arm under one of those scanners — I foresee people having to remove their watch from their wrists to bleep). Progress will come.

Not very British

It’s no coincidence that Apple CEO Tim Cook pre-ambled on Apple Pay before talking about the Watch. He wanted to point out that Apple’s payment system now has 700,000 participating retailers and 2,500 participating banks, meaning the Watch will let you magically pay with a flash of your wrist. If you’re in the US, that is. Apple Pay doesn’t exist in the UK and Cook mentioned nothing about it launching here. Also, if you want to use some of the more fun features, such as sending little sketched messages transmitting your heart beat or tapping someone on the wrist to get their attention, you’d better have the cash to buy all your mates an Apple Watch as it only works from wrist to wrist.

Time for luxury: the Apple Watch Edition is made with super-strength gold. This rose gold version will cost from ,000

Healthy obsession

While smartwatches have had limited success so far, fitness bands have been gaining traction. Android Wear has Google Fit which can track your movement and workouts, but Apple wants its HealthKit to be better. The Apple Watch has a heart rate monitor and will track your daily activity and tell you to stand up if you have been sitting too long. Trouble is, my Fitbit Charge HR also tracks sleep (Apple Watch can’t — you need to charge it at night), the forthcoming Up3 by Jawbone will track stress and hydration levels while the Basis Peak knows what exercise you’re doing without you having to tell it.

Then again, none of those devices can turn you into Dick Tracy by letting you answer calls through the watch (as Cook announced yesterday that the Apple Watch will). Android Wear doesn’t do that either, although the Samsung Gear does. The health offering will get more interesting if yesterday’s announcement of ResearchKit, which allows you to participate in medical research studies through your iPhone, eventually makes it on to the Apple Watch. I’m betting it will.

PS. It also tells the time.

FACE OF THE FUTURE: EIGHT GREAT FUNCTIONS

1. 18-carat gold casing on the Apple Watch Edition model. The Sport is aluminium and the standard Watch is steel.

2. Changeable watch face, each with multiple customisable elements

3. The “Digital Crown” watch dial is used to scroll and replaces pinch to zoom

4. Calls can be answered through the watch — Dick Tracy-style.

5. Lift your arm up to activate the watch face.

6. A pressure-sensitive screen allows for hard and soft presses for different functions.

7. Taptic feedback will give you a buzz on your wrist. Contacts can send you a tap to get your attention.

8. Launch apps include Uber, Twitter and Instagram. At some hotels it will let you check in or unlock your room.

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