Apple Watch Review Compilation

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The first pre-order day for the Apple Watch is nearly upon us! The new super-watch from Apple will be available this Friday (Thursday night), and we are very excited here at HQ! Apple's next big product promises to shake up the industry with incredible quality and excellent usability.

It turns out that the Apple Watch has already been reviewed by a number of web journalists. We thought it would be worthwhile to share a quick compilation of some of these reviews. This way, you can get an idea of what folks think of the Apple Watch.

The general summary/consensus of the reviews seems to indicate that the Apple Watch is undoubtedly the superior smartwatch compared to anything else on the market from any manufacturer. Many of the reviews also come to the conclusion that the Apple Watch isn't a device that will be a perfect fit for everyone. This is simply because its particular functionality is really more of an enhancement of what you can already do with your iPhone.

Ultimately, it's up to each individual to decide how useful the Apple Watch will be in your life. Perhaps these perspectives can help you make an informed decision. Here are some links below, along with a brief summation of some of them,

Yahoo: The Apple Watch Half Computer Half Jewelry Mostly Magical

The Apple Watch is light-years better than any of the feeble, clunky efforts that have come before it. The screen is nicer, the software is refined and bug-free, the body is real jewelry. First-time technologies await at every turn: Magnetic bands, push-to-release straps, wrist-to-wrist drawings or Morse codes, force pressing, credit-card payments from the wrist. And the symbiosis with the iPhone is graceful, out of your way, and intelligent.

But the true answer to that question is this: You don’t need one. Nobody needs a smartwatch. After all, it’s something else to buy, care for, charge every night. It’s another cable to pack and track. Your phone already serves most of its purposes. With the battery-life situation as it is, technology is just barely in place to make such a device usable at all."

TechRadar: Apple Watch hands-on review Mobile Phone Accessories hands-on Review TechRadar

One thing's for sure – now Apple has brought visibility of wearables to the wider market through the Apple Watch, everyone will benefit through higher consumer traction.

Will we see everyone wearing one? Probably not, but then again not everyone owned an iPad or iPhone at the start. This is phase one of a much longer product game – but the Apple Watch One still leaves some things to be desired.

Wall Street Journal: Apple Watch Review The Smartwatch Finally Makes Sense - WSJ

"With the Apple Watch, smartwatches finally make sense. The measure of their success shouldn’t be how well they suck you in, but how efficiently they help you get things done. Living on your arm is part of that efficiency—as a convenient display, but also a way to measure your heart rate or pay at a cash register. This is a big idea about how we use technology, the kind of idea we expect from Apple. […]

Yet the Apple Watch isn’t quite the gatekeeper to my digital life that I wanted. Take app alerts—there’s a fine line between being in the know and having your wrist jiggle all day. It never got horrible for me, because Apple lets you assign VIP status to individual contacts and specify which apps can trigger alerts. But setting up all of this is a tedious—and unfortunately ongoing—chore."

CNET: Apple Watch review - CNET

THE GOOD The Apple Watch is a beautifully constructed, compact smartwatch. It's feature-packed, with solid fitness software, hundreds of apps, and the ability to send and receive calls via an iPhone.

THE BAD Battery barely lasts a day and recharge time is slow; most models and configurations cost more than they should; requires an iPhone 5 or later to work; interface can be confusing; sometimes slow to communicate with a paired iPhone.

THE BOTTOM LINE The Apple Watch is the most ambitious, well-constructed smartwatch ever seen, but first-gen shortfalls make it feel more like a fashionable toy than a necessary tool.

Bloomberg: Apple Watch Review You ll Want One but You Don t Need One - Bloomberg Business

"The watch is not life-changing. It is, however, excellent. Apple will sell millions of these devices, and many people will love and obsess over them. It is a wonderful component of a big ecosystem that the company has carefully built over many years. It is more seamless and simple than any of its counterparts in the marketplace. It is, without question, the best smartwatch in the world."

NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/t...t-only-after-a-steep-learning-curve.html?_r=0

It was only on Day 4 that I began appreciating the ways in which the elegant $650 computer on my wrist was more than just another screen. By notifying me of digital events as soon as they happened, and letting me act on them instantly, without having to fumble for my phone, the Watch become something like a natural extension of my body—a direct link, in a way that I’ve never felt before, from the digital world to my brain. […]

What’s more, unlike previous breakthrough Apple products, the Watch’s software requires a learning curve that may deter some people. There’s a good chance it will not work perfectly for most consumers right out of the box, because it is best after you fiddle with various software settings to personalize use. Indeed, to a degree unusual for a new Apple device, the Watch is not suited for tech novices. It is designed for people who are inundated with notifications coming in through their phones, and for those who care to think about, and want to try to manage, the way the digital world intrudes on their lives."

TheVerge: Apple Watch the definitive review

There’s no question that the Apple Watch is the most capable smartwatch available today. It is one of the most ambitious products I’ve ever seen; it wants to do and change so much about how we interact with technology. But that ambition robs it of focus: it can do tiny bits of everything, instead of a few things extraordinarily well. For all of its technological marvel, the Apple Watch is still a smartwatch, and it’s not clear that anyone’s yet figured out what smartwatches are actually for."