JANUARY 2022 MACWORLD 55the way you use the Apple Watch. And while
it’s nice to have a brighter always-on display
when in direct sunlight, it won’t make a huge
difference in your day-to-day use.
As someone who needs reading glasses,
I can definitely appreciate the fact that all the
interface elements and text are larger on the
Series 7, thanks to the bigger display. For the
first time, Apple has optimized the watchOS
interface for a specific watch, and if I’m being
honest, the interface is the only real upgrade
here. Everything else about it is minor to the
point of near-irrelevance.
FASTER CHARGING, SORT OF
What we want more than anything else in an
Apple Watch is dramatically better battery
life. Apple’s competition has multi-day
battery life, and while there’s no Fitbit with
nearly the same capabilities as an Apple
Watch, that sort of longevity really changes
how you use your watch.
We didn’t get more battery life this
year. Rather, we got a new USB-C charging
cable and some new electronics that allow
for faster charging. Sort of.
You need a 20W USB-C power adapter
(no power adapter is included), and with
that you can get up to 33 percent faster
charging. That means charging from zero
to 80 percent full in about 45 minutes
instead of an hour or so.
Faster charging is always nice, but I didn’t
find the Series 7 charged so much faster that
it was all that noticeable. Apple says you can
get a full eight hours’ worth of sleep tracking
in just eight minutes of charge, but the same
amount of battery life only took about 10
minutes with earlier Apple Watches. If I could
“charge up for the day” in 15 minutes, it
would make a real difference in my Apple
Watch usage. Instead, a day’s charge still
takes about an hour. I put it on the stand, do
something else for a while, and pick it back
up later...same as I always have.
In other words, the battery life isn’t any
different and the charging, though slightly
faster, is not really improved enough to
change the way you use the device.STILL IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN
There are a few other tiny differences in the
Series 7. The front glass is a bit thicker and
more crack resistant. The silver and space
gray colors have been replaced with
“starlight” and “midnight” shades that are
close enough to silver and space gray so
it’s annoying that they’re not, well, silver or
space gray. The blue shade is lighter than it
was on the Series 6, and it looks worse.
Besides slightly worse colors, you’ll
notice the display is a little brighter
indoors, and there are a few new watch
faces that don’t really need to be exclusive
to the Series 7 but are, at least for now.
Everything else is the same. The design is
nearly identical, the processor is the same, the
sensors are all the same...there’s simply not