Apple Watch Series 12 Review: Useful data, health tracking upgrades and better battery makes it a winner

Summary

The Apple Watch Series 12 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but offers important upgrades in health and fitness tracking data and better battery life. It is still the smartwatch to beat

Your wrist is prime real estate, and Apple knows it. Year after year, it has to make a convincing case for having the Apple Watch strapped on, especially as it faces competition from adventure-focused wearables, a new wave of screenless trackers and, for some, a return to good old timepieces.

The Apple Watch Series 12 ( ₹56,900 onwards) has its work cut out, particularly when its predecessor already got most of the fundamentals right. The Series 12 then needs to be better without necessarily reinventing the wheel. It does just that, with better health insights, quality-of-life tweaks and features you don't realize you need until, well, you do. But are they enough to make this year's Watch tick?

What's different?

You'd be hard-pressed to tell the Series 12 apart from its predecessor. The core Apple Watch essentials remain unchanged, as does the overall 42mm/46mm design, save for a slightly larger watch casing. Notably, the display itself retains the same size and pixel resolution, which makes the bezels appear more pronounced (pro tip: choose a lighter case).

There's a new Dark Bronze aluminum finish that, paired with the right band, looks surprisingly posh. It's the sort of combination you could comfortably wear to a formal dinner without looking like you've just finished a run. The stunning new Pearl White Ceramic case marks a return to the material for the first time since the Series 5, and at ₹124,900, it's aimed squarely at the fashion-conscious and the well-heeled.

Depending on which model you pick up, you get the tougher Ceramic Shield 2 glass or the sapphire crystal protection on the always-on, 2000-nit (peak brightness) LTPO3 OLED display, and water resistance is rated at 50 meters.

Underneath the familiar exterior, though, Apple has made the most consequential internal changes to its smartwatch in years, starting with a completely redesigned heart rate sensor array on the back of the watch. It moves up from the old two-petal layout to a 32-petal design with a second-generation electrical heart sensor, ring-arranged photodiodes, larger and more efficient green LEDs, and a larger electrode contact area for ECG readings.

Coupled with the new S11 chip, the increase in data resolution is dramatic, with background heart rate checks now happening every five seconds, whether you're working out or sitting at your desk, compared to roughly every five minutes on prior models when stationary. Heart rate variability (HRV) readings are also more granular, giving the Watch a more detailed picture of how your body responds to stress, activity and rest.

All of this data feeds into the new Readiness score, a 0-10 measure that combines a week's worth of sleep, recent activity, training load and health metrics. This helps you decide if you should push yourself, take things easy or perhaps take some time much-needed time off! It's a useful addition, particularly if you've ever stared at a wall of health statistics wondering what any of them actually mean.

The Readiness score puts Apple in direct competition with the likes of the Oura Ring and the Whoop band. Of course, as with all scores, it's best used as a guide, not a medical verdict. Step tracking is also more accurate than before on distance measurements during indoor walks, as is the GPS-based outdoor tracking.

Performance, AI and battery

The S11 chip ensures that watchOS 27 on the Watch Series 12 remains snappy in use, despite it collecting all of that extra data in the background. Meanwhile, the new Siri AI brings personal context understanding and broader world knowledge to the Apple Watch, much in the same way as it has on iPhone models.

There's a new Audio Intelligence-branded suite of always-listening features specific to this generation (Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4) that courted some privacy controversy at launch. The Live Rewind feature, for instance, which shows you a text transcription of the last 15 seconds of audio, or Siri Recap which can generate conversation summaries in the Siri app.

As a safeguard, neither feature stores recordings on device and the Watch emits an audible chime when activated, which is far more privacy conscious and deliberate than what the new breed of AI-wearables offer, to be fair. Both features are opt-in and will roll out in beta later this year, so I can't yet speak to their accuracy, effectiveness or how folks around me will react to the privacy implications. These features are worth revisiting when they're available, but not a reason to buy the Series 12 today.

More handy today is the faster Music Recognition feature (to identify nearby music) or the Sound Recognition feature that alerts users with hearing impairment to sirens, alarms, doorbells or other important environmental noises.

Battery life remains unchanged, which means that normal use will get you a day's worth of use, although the Watch can go longer, upto 10 hours, on GPS-enabled workouts. A zero-to-80-percent charge in 20 minutes ensures that you can keep the watch on for sleep tracking and wear it to work the next day with just a quick top-up while you're showering and getting ready.

Verdict

At ₹56,900 onwards, the Series 12 is a substantial investment, and one that makes the most sense for owners of older Apple Watches. A few generations of upgrades should add up to a noticeably better experience, with more comprehensive health tracking, polished software and the seamless iPhone integration that remains Apple's biggest trump card.

Tushar Kanwar is a tech columnist and commentator, and tweets @2shar.