Launched in September 2023, the latest Apple Watch Series 9 marks the most recent addition to the Apple Watch lineup since its debut in 2015, succeeding the Series 8.
The Series 9 maintains the aesthetic of its predecessor, offering no notable changes in design. It retains familiar features such as the rounded edge display, sapphire crystal back, and the Digital Crown with tactile feedback. The watch is available in both 41mm and 45mm sizes.
A key enhancement is the Always-On display, which is now brighter than ever. Its peak brightness reaches 2000 nits, doubling that of the Series 8, ensuring better visibility in bright sunlight. Conversely, in darker environments, the display can dim to one nit for comfort.
The Series 9 is robust, featuring a crack-resistant front glass, IP6X dust resistance, and a WR50 water resistance rating. It supports Apple Pay with credit and debit cards saved in the Wallet app and offers the same rapid charging capabilities as the previous model.
A significant upgrade is the introduction of the new S9 chip, offering enhanced speed compared to the S8 chip in the Series 8. This chip includes a 4-core Neural Engine, capable of processing machine learning tasks at double the speed, while maintaining efficiency for all-day battery life.
One of the standout features enabled by the S9 chip is the Double Tap gesture. This allows users to perform various actions such as stopping timers, playing or pausing music, answering calls, and more, by simply tapping their index finger and thumb together.
The S9 chip also brings improvements to Siri, allowing for on-device processing of certain commands for quicker responses and enhanced privacy. Dictation accuracy has also been improved by 25%. Users can use Siri to access data from the Health app, including activity progress, heart rate, sleep data, and medication information.
Continuing from previous models, the Series 9 includes health monitoring features like heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen detection, ECG readings, sleep tracking, fall detection, noise alerts, and built-in temperature sensing.
Another critical safety feature is the Crash Detection capability. Utilizing the watch's gyroscope and accelerometer, along with a sophisticated sensor-fusion algorithm, it can detect severe car crashes and automatically contact emergency services if the user is unresponsive after a 10-second countdown.
The battery life remains consistent with up to 18 hours, but can be extended to 36 hours using Low Power Mode, which disables certain functions like the Always-On display and background heart rate measurements.
Enhancing connectivity, Apple integrated a second-generation Ultra Wideband (UWB) chip into the Series 9. This chip supports Precision Finding to locate a misplaced iPhone with visual, haptic, and auditory cues. It also improves interaction with HomePod, triggering the Now Playing interface when the watch is near a playing HomePod.
The Series 9 is available in aluminum and stainless steel variants, with multiple color options including Pink, Starlight, Midnight, Silver, and (PRODUCT)RED for aluminum, and Silver, Graphite, and Gold for stainless steel. The luxury Hermès model comes in Space Black. Alongside the Series 9, Apple also offers new band colors and materials, moving away from leather bands.
Alongside the Series 9, Apple continues to sell the more advanced Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the more affordable second-generation Apple Watch SE.
Purchasing the Apple Watch Series 9
The Apple Watch Series 9 is available through the Apple online store, Apple retail locations, and third-party retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, and Target. In the U.S., due to regulatory reasons, the blood oxygen sensor is disabled in the Series 9 models currently sold by Apple.
The pricing for the Series 9 starts at $399 for the 41mm GPS-only aluminum models, with the price varying based on size, LTE connectivity, and material choice.