It's sometimes easy to think of Apple as a miracle worker – the brand with a Midas touch. There's nothing the company can't turn to gold. But with the Apple Watch – its first foray into wearables, two years after Pebble smashed the market wide open – Apple faces its toughest challenge yet.
Apple has the opportunity to define the smartwatch – something that Android Wear, Pebble and Samsung have largely failed to do. But it's faced with the same challenges of screen size, battery life and user experience as everyone else – so can it work another miracle?
Apple Watch: Design
Whether you find the Apple Watch a terrific example of fashion blending with tech, or a square boxy abomination is a question of taste. But for our money, it's the best looking smartwatch made to date.
The build quality is superb, and the footprint of both the 38mm and 42mm watch is much smaller than you'd expect – and it goes some way to excuse the thickness of the design.
We tested a 38mm watch with a green silicon band – noteworthy because it's the cheapest of the line-up at $349. At 38mm the watch is rather dainty, and most men will certainly prefer the 42mm band, which also benefits from a larger battery.
The main elephant in the room is that price tag. With a basic 42mm Apple Watch Sport clocking in at $399 and the main Apple Watch $599, it's a staggering premium even for Apple. And when you compare the price of thebest Android Wear devices – $299 for the Sony SmartWatch 3 in Steel or $349 for the LG Watch Urbane – it's hard to qualify exactly what you're getting for the extra money.
Part of the appeal is the 340 x 272 pixels, 290 ppi screen (390 x 312, 302ppi for the 42mm one), and while it's not quite as sharp as the Samsung Gear S, it's one of the most vibrant we've seen from any smartwatch to date and shows off the deep colour palette of watchOS 2.
The bands themselves are the first true indicator that you have an Apple product on your wrist. The silicon feels reassuringly weighty, and the unique design means the excess strap slips through a hole, so you don't get that accidental flapping that's all too common with cheap watches. What's more, the extra straps feature the same attention to detail. The Milanese number, which has been much lauded, fixes magnetically with a pleasing snap.
The straps are easily changeable using a typically Apple proprietary mechanism, but that means you can't use any old 22mm strap off the shelf – and Apple's straps are eye-wateringly expensive.
Underneath is an optical heart rate sensor, which bulges from the rear, just out of sight. The whole thing is IPX7 rated, which means it's splashproof, but not waterproof – meaning you can shower with it if you must, but don't take it for a swim.
