On the arm – 2023 Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 first look

Straight out of the box I’ve got to tell you this isn’t a “review” in any way, because in reality the new Apple Watches are improvements in incremental ways to do with performance and capabilities, many of which I’ve barely had time to really get into in just the last 6 days.

With all that said, there’s no doubt these are a marked improvement on previous generations, which of course you’d expect. Let’s start with the Apple Watch Ultra. The brand-new Apple Watch Ultra 2 has increases screen brightness and has this new internal processor the S9 “SiP”.

It’s the same S9 processor that powers, the Series 9 Apple Watch and the both of them therefore, carry a whole range of new capabilities – some of which I don’t think we can really appreciate until we look at what we can do with it.

One of the key things you can do with a powerful chip like this is use Siri in an every so simple new way.

Right now on most devices, especially all Apple watches up until now, when you ask Siri something your request is sent off to the cloud and the answers are sent back to you, not because the cloud is listening to you or needs to know what you’re wondering – but because your WATCH simply didn’t have the power to process what you’re asking.

With the S9 processor on both the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Series 9 Apple Watch, the device itself is powerful enough to hear what you say, understand what you say, and give you an answer. If it can’t give you an answer, it will send the request off to the cloud where the answer might be.

We’re talking about things like live sports scores or questions about public figures those things need the Internet.

But if you’re just asking Siri to set an alarm or you’re asking Siri to set a timer or something like that, particularly health information or starting a workout – all of that is done on your device. If you were without any mobile coverage without any Wi-Fi, your watch can hear you, understand you, and respond to you – that’s how powerful these two watches are.

That is the biggest change with the Apple watches for 2023. This is a generational leap that you don’t really know in day-to-day usage.

Day-to-day usage it’s really the screen brightness that stands out to you – peak 2000 nits on the Series 9, 3000 nits on the on the Ultra 2. These are big numbers these make them very very usable in the Great outdoors.

Importantly, when you’re sleeping and you’re in sleep focus mode, both these watches can go down to just 1 nit of brightness. That’s a remarkably low screen brightness, which means you’re not going to be woken by the brightness. While also preserving battery at the same time.

The new watchbands might look similar, but are actually a completely different thing for Apple. The rubber bands have specs of old cut off bands built into them away of using materials in a recycled manner and the woven bands are made of more environmentally friendly materials.

All these things combined with the fact that that watches themselves have an increased amount of recycle materials in them makes these devices in the reconfiguration with the right wristband 100% carbon neutral.

These are the first Apple devices to be carbon neutral and that’s happening six or seven years ahead of Apple 2030 target.

I’m not a raving environmentalist, but I have massive respect for a company that is genuinely investing genuinely making changes to do things that are better so if you’re environmentally conscious that little green symbol that appears on the boxes will bring a smile to your face and know that you’re doing your bit.

Heck even your actual usage of the device – that is the power you use to charge the device over the years and years – is being offset by Apple.

I don’t think these watches are something that you would consider if you’ve got last years or even the year before, but for me, the Ultra is the best Apple Watch on the market it’s all very expensive but it’s a big watch and that’s the kind of thing I want in WATCH.

Series 9 is probably the kind of watch that series 3 and Series 4 owners will now absolutely consider as a genuine and viable upgrade. If you got a series 7 or series 8, you’re probably not thinking about upgrading your watch anyway..

Both these devices go on sale on Friday alongside the iPhone 15 and the new AirPods Pro with USB.