Interesting Read: Inconvenient Truths About The Apple Watch

[dread]

Odd medium review

Just read this review. https://medium.com/@flyosity/inconvenient-truths-about-the-apple-watch-11bafa44551b

One thing that immediately stands out are the comments about the quality of the screen, which are very negative. A picture is provided that has digital noise and makes the screen look like crap. I haven't seen the watch in person, but it seems unfair to characterize the screen as poor based on what are clearly poor photography skills.

He does have a point about the leather bands. They are a complete ripoff and appear to be processed garbage, but again I haven't seen them in person.

 

[dotnet]

I'm worried about the leather bands. What if somebody puts several of the same kind next to each other and discovers that the grain pattern is identical on them?

Leathergate...

 

[dBeats]

I'm wiling to bet big bucks that if you put the screen of the Apple Watch that close to your face, you won't be able to focus your eyes enough to see the alleged horrible detail. It only matters what your eyes can see when you are using it, hence "retina display"

I'm also willing to bet medium bucks that the demo units and display units are pre-production runs with less stringent yield cut offs since they had to get something out there to show people. The fact that the try-ons are only demo models running a script and the store actually only has a few interactive units glued to giant slabs, I'm thinking they are using the slight rejects for screen and S1 chip for the try-ons and the marginal screen rejects for the interactive units.

Probably only the review units given to journalists are 100% up to spec with what Apple intends to deliver. But a macro shot of a screen is all good for clicks, but your eyes will never see that.

 

[FrankySavvy]

This is a very personal device. So reviews will tend to vary. However, when reviewing the watch people should put personal preference aside a bit.

Not only was I extremely surprized at how high quality the stainless steel casing was, I felt the screen was vivd and bright. I thought the 38mm was perfect for someone with small wrists and the 42mm was perfect for me. It didn't feel heavy or bulky.

The U.I did have a learning curve, but anything new has one, so no big deal. I was also surprised as how good the bands felt. I pre-ordered the classic buckle and was nervous how thin the leather would feel, but was very impressed with how high end the classic buckle is. I also want to pick up a sport band.

 

[zmunkz]

Thanks for that link, that was a very interesting read. I think the guy makes all valid points, and his rather long throat clearing in the preface does seem to disqualify him as a troll just trying to get readers from a contrarian headline.

His comments on the leather I agree 100%, but that doesn't affect me as I didn't go for a leather strap. The screen brightness and visibility of pixels, I have to say I didn't notice either when I played with the watch in store, but I admit I wasn't looking for that specifically. And the observation about the size is a good point, and something I had not considered, but also not something that bothers me. I tried it on and I was happy with the size, although I did miss the icons a few times and open the wrong app because they are so small... but an extra few mm width wouldn't have helped that.

In any case, I think all his points are valid, but clearly not major issues, just points where marketing might diverge from product.

 

[iThingsGurl]

Apple’s leather bands feel terrible.

The above statement is something that I do not agree with. And even if that is indeed so, the number of people going for a leather band, rather than a sports or a loop, is less.

 

[dotnet]

I'll have to defer judgement on this until I've looked at it through a loupe, or taken a close-up shot.

Ok, here's the promised close-up shot. It's of the grey camera remote icon on the home screen:

It's not a Pentile screen but from what I could find pretty close to Visionox's Z-Type matrix. This article from one year ago has a picture:

It says:

Visionox developed a new RGB pixel arrangement for OLED technologies that allowed them to reach 570 PPI. The company refers to this new technology as Z-Type arrangement and it includes 3 sub-pixels (RGB) per pixel (unlike Samsung's Pentile displays). The sub-pixels are densely packed (the aperture ratio seems very high) in a way that does not suffer from jagged edges.

It seems to match my own shot almost exactly, minus the half-pixel offset between lines. The Apple Watch display has none of the drawbacks I've seen in Pentile AMOLED screens, such as poor viewing angles, skewed colours and green tinges around edges. It shows the same high aperture ratio as the Z-Type screen.