Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Anyone less enthusiastic about the 4?
- Thread starter iSheep5S
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I'm on the fence. I have an S2 Aluminum and am contemplating an upgrade to Series 4. I've given hard thought to LTE vs. Non LTE and have come to the conclusion that I'd be throwing money away on the watch itself to get LTE and I'd likely not use the features that come with it. I always have a phone with me. I love the looks of the SS versions and absolutely covet one. I thought my next time around I'd go the SS route but given they require LTE, additional costs that come with them, and the fact that this is tech so it will be obsolete in no time--to me it's just not worth getting SS version. I'm happy enough with my SG Aluminum and can dress it up to a satisfactory level by changing the band on it. I have plenty of non smart watches to wear in the event I really need to dress up. Not the right way of thinking for everyone but it works for me.
Those that have come from S2 to S4, how noticiable are the speed improvements? Workouts in particular are slow to load and a Bose Sountouch app that I have is also slow to respond. I am used to the screen size but certainly would appreciate a larger screen with or without same form factor.
Those that have come from S2 to S4, how noticiable are the speed improvements? Workouts in particular are slow to load and a Bose Sountouch app that I have is also slow to respond. I am used to the screen size but certainly would appreciate a larger screen with or without same form factor.
Last edited:
Two thoughts:
1. My comment about my S0 battery life is likely due to the amount of cardio I do. No doubt this drains the battery more than normal wear
2. It's a great thing Apple continues to evolve the watch. Maybe this update isn't for you. Maybe it's time to get last year's model at a discount. Maybe your decision to update will be in 5 years. Maybe you'll never update. It's all as economists will say down to your personal satisfaction function and marginal utility. One look at the thread "a new mac mini is coming soon" will detail people's view of when products are not updated. (insert a smiley icon here.)
1. My comment about my S0 battery life is likely due to the amount of cardio I do. No doubt this drains the battery more than normal wear
2. It's a great thing Apple continues to evolve the watch. Maybe this update isn't for you. Maybe it's time to get last year's model at a discount. Maybe your decision to update will be in 5 years. Maybe you'll never update. It's all as economists will say down to your personal satisfaction function and marginal utility. One look at the thread "a new mac mini is coming soon" will detail people's view of when products are not updated. (insert a smiley icon here.)
I upgraded from an S1 to an S4. And as a daily user that is riding a 319 day activity streak I have to say.... I’m not impressed
I think one of the problems is that the media overhyped this way too much.
Speaker - LOUD! Love how loud it is.
Fall Detection - I’m not 65. And if I was I wouldn’t charge a watch every day
ECG - My dad has heart issues so this is amazing tech. But still... see above
Bigger Screen - Love the screen. It’s nice but not life changing.
Taptic Crown - I’m trying to endure it but I’m close to turning it off. It’s obnoxious.
New Sensors - New is nice, but I never had issues with the last sensor
Thinner - Is it thinner? Yes. Is it noticeable? Not in one bit
Raise to talk - When it works its nice. When it doesnt you look like an idiot
I think if you take a step back then the real star this generation is WatchOS 5. So many of those new niceties were added across the product line so, while the S4 is a solid device, I’m just not sure if this is worth keeping.
I think one of the problems is that the media overhyped this way too much.
Speaker - LOUD! Love how loud it is.
Fall Detection - I’m not 65. And if I was I wouldn’t charge a watch every day
ECG - My dad has heart issues so this is amazing tech. But still... see above
Bigger Screen - Love the screen. It’s nice but not life changing.
Taptic Crown - I’m trying to endure it but I’m close to turning it off. It’s obnoxious.
New Sensors - New is nice, but I never had issues with the last sensor
Thinner - Is it thinner? Yes. Is it noticeable? Not in one bit
Raise to talk - When it works its nice. When it doesnt you look like an idiot
I think if you take a step back then the real star this generation is WatchOS 5. So many of those new niceties were added across the product line so, while the S4 is a solid device, I’m just not sure if this is worth keeping.
I couldn't agree more with the bolded above. I thought it sounded like a neat idea and was pretty excited because of how they hyped it but it really reminds me of jailbreak tweaks that added vibration to the keyboard. Unless you're moving slow enough to discern each tick, it just feels like my watch is vibrating needlessly.
Point 2&3 are dead on. I hyped up the Apple Watch to my dad who is 59. He contemplates selling it due to charging it so often.
Mine spends 99.9% of its life on airplane mode. Purely fitness.
How does this, the only face I’ve used since day one (and I mean all the AW’s I’ve had) look on the S4?
Edit, apologies for the aftermarket strap but it has really lasted and stood the test of time haha.
Attachments
Last edited:
Apple took a “legacy” watch feature like the crown and implemented it so wonderfully into their watches. It really was a brilliant move that ties future tech with old school practicality. But then here we are with this magnificent spinning wheel and then added fake taps to it. For example, scrolling the Activity page has 42 tiny clicks before you hit a solid click at the bottom. Why? What exactly is being emulated here?
Hopefully they add more granular Taptic controls in the future so that we can turn off some of the stuff because right now then it all just feels so gimmicky.
Last edited:
Hahaha! Yes, this is why I turn off "hey siri" on all my Apple junk. Half the time I don't get the desired result - unless I'm super careful with the phrasing of my request - and even when everything works 100% and even if nobody else is around I still feel like an idiot speaking into a gadget. Dick Tracy made it look cool talking to his wrist - me not so much!
The same. Except the bottom text has $350 worth of curve on it. (BTW, the similarities in our watches is creepy. Fake nike bands rule! And the old 42mm screen guard is because i might return this)
Seriously though, Ive been a happy S1 user for years and it wasn’t until actually using an S4 that I realized “Oh, my watch is slow and old”. So now I’m just stuck. While I think WatchOS5 has done wonders to make my old watch feel fresh, I think I do need to move up to an S3 or S4. So thats where I’m at. Keep this new watch or get last years S3 and save $200.
Attachments
Last edited:
I love that comment. $350 worth of curve.
I thought how bad can the cheap bands be? Dammed if they are not a cheap way to get the Nike look and they last. Mine has shiny bits from wear haha.
Mine is an S1 I just haven’t updated my sig. I did have an S2 but I went and sold it. I went S1, S2, S2 again then this S1. It’s useful enough to keep now imo.
The crown haptics can be turned off. Not sure if you were addressing that specifically or taptics as a whole.
I was super excited to upgrade from a 38mm SS S3! Got an Hermes 40mm double tour. I live alone and have a bad knee that'll pop out from time to time, so the fall detection was particularly attractive to me. When I went to turn on the fall detection setting (since it's automatically turned on only for those over 65), it said that some exercises can falsely trigger it, I was kind of disappointed. I discovered rather quickly during workouts that it was easy to trigger. It'd be easy to turn on and off, I just wish it was a little more intuitive with how it would modify the algorithm for exercise. Verizon wanted a $30 upgrade fee to move my LTE service over (which got waived through a promo when I got my S3) that I couldn't get removed when I spoke to them on the phone. I know $30 isn't much when tacked on to a $1k+ watch, it was just an annoyingly unnecessary fee to pay. Load times were noticeably faster than the S3, but not remarkably. The larger screen is lovely, the watch face with the ridiculous amount of complications was my favorite, but I never had much difficulty reading the 38mm screen anyways. If I was upgrading from an older watch, I think I would've kept it. The jump from S0 to S3 was much more drastic to me, but that's to be expected from a 2 year jump versus just 1. I ended up returning the watch and getting the Hermes double tour band separately since I like it so much. I'll be keeping my eye out for S5.
I went from link bracelet Series 2 to Hermes Series 4 deployment clasp. Skipped 3 as I don’t care about LTE. Unless you specifically wanted LTE it’s the 2 to 3 jump that I personally saw as very underwhelming.
I’m a long time mechanical watch wearer (still am) and the 4 is the first smart watch that, to my eyes, actually looks passably good. The screen is a enormous upgrade.
I’m a long time mechanical watch wearer (still am) and the 4 is the first smart watch that, to my eyes, actually looks passably good. The screen is a enormous upgrade.
Which shortcomings? Asking, not arguing. The biggest shortcoming IMO is the ridiculous monthly charge the wireless providers insist on charging.
Depends how you define ‘ridiculous’. Because for those I do know who have LTE activates on the watch, would gladly pay the $10-$13 a month given the circumstances that it has benefited them where they don’t have to carry their phone to the beach, or where someone else locked their keys/phone in the car, they needed to make a call from the Apple Watch, or simply just in case of an emergency.
The problem with LTE is that those of us saving money with prepaid plans are left out. If Apple ever finds a way for us to use LTE then I would jump on it. I can use my iPhone with prepaid, why not the Watch?
That’s fair. I can’t speak for prepaid situations, I do think that Apple and carriers need to have a better implementation in terms of making LTE accessible and having more of a set rate plan, if they want the consumers to adopt this functionality, which only would benefit those who want to upgrade to their Apple Watch.
Fair enough. "Ridiculous" is a personal call. I should retract that. My daughter-in-law has LTE hooked up and has almost ditched her iPhone, so depending on how you use the two devices, it might not be ridiculous at all.
For me, it still rankles, though. I pay $10/month for my LTE iPads (two), which burn a lot of data. My personal use of the watch wouldn't use much data, maybe none, since I don't see myself streaming music to the watch, much less doing the sorts of things I do on the iPad. So, for me, it would be just a sort of standby or convenience feature, and for that, $120/year feels like a lot. To others - not so much. It's all good.
Sadly, I agree. I upgraded from Series 0 to 4. It SHOULD have felt massive. Honestly, I’m considering just returning the 4 and sticking with the 0. There’s something about the overall shape of the original that felt right, whereas the 4 looks wide in comparison. I appreciate the thinness to make up for the added size in other dimensions, but for someone with a very thin wrist, the original 38mm might have been as big as I could go.
I’m going to give it a few more days. I’ve worn a series 0 every hour of every day for years, so I’m very used to it and very used to not relying on it to do much at all... so maybe I can I re-train myself to try to push more uses onto the watch now that it isn’t so slow. In the end, getting notifications on the wrist has always been the killer feature and remains the only feature I care about on S4. The time / date / texts / email notifications has always been overwhelmingly enough to wear the watch every minute I’m awake. I was hoping the multi-generation leap would give me new reasons... so far, not really at all. It’s more of the same... ridiculously faster... but faster at things I don’t do on an everyday basis anyway.
Series 4 is 2mm taller. If yours is wider you might have received a knockoff.
Series 4 is also about 1mm wider. Honestly shouldn’t be noticeable, but maybe it’s because I switched from silver stainless to black. So now the screen is kind of blending into the casing, creating one single look, whereas before you kinda only noticed the shape of the black glass atop the silver case.
It’s mostly an optical illusion. Just like the actual display size makes it feel larger even though it’s mainly smaller bezels. Same way my X feels way larger than the 7 even though it was very similar in case size.
I’ll get used to it. Really hoping third parties can make these new complication sizes though because it’s a bummer there are such few options for certain spots on the new modular.
I went to check the case dimensions, so I could prove you wrong. However, I was surprised to see that Series 4 is in fact wider. I had not seen this mentioned anywhere before - just the height.
S1 38mm owner here.
Impressed with the s4 in person - the screen is stunning.
However, since I use my s1 as a fitness tracker, to unlock my Mac (and for a few notifications), I’ll pass - this time.
Not that I’m damning it with faint praise.
The Watch is already amazing and is going to become even more amazing as it turns into an ambient health monitoring device with a better ambient proactive Siri, so when that happens, I’m sure in 2019 or 20 I’ll be upgrading.
Impressed with the s4 in person - the screen is stunning.
However, since I use my s1 as a fitness tracker, to unlock my Mac (and for a few notifications), I’ll pass - this time.
Not that I’m damning it with faint praise.
The Watch is already amazing and is going to become even more amazing as it turns into an ambient health monitoring device with a better ambient proactive Siri, so when that happens, I’m sure in 2019 or 20 I’ll be upgrading.