Apple Watch SE: Fitness First Impressions Untangled By DC Rainmaker

Hey folks, it's ray dcramricker. com here, and today we've got the Apple Watch, SC a bit of a fitness like first impressions. I've been using a couple of days now. I've got a couple, runs in it, a couple workouts, basically to figure out if it's better than the series 3 the series 4 the series 5. Obviously you've got the series 6 at the top, but the SD is a quirky little watch and for that we've got to kind of dive into the nuances of all the features primarily again from a sport and fitness standpoint. But the first most obvious thing is the display.

So what I want to do is basically kind of walk through the core features of the SE and where it differs from the series six and the series three, because those are like the three in the main lineup going forward, but to understand that you have to pull in all of Apple's past watches because they kind of cherry-pick different things, there are some things that are like series. Five features, some there's series, four, some that are series six. It is what I think gadget called the Frankenstein of the Frankel watch, and that is the most accurate way of describing this. It's confusing and unfortunately, as you're going to find out. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Okay, so you see right off top about SC and the 6 have the same size screen and the same clarity look the same on a brightness. It looks really, really nice, it's great, except in just a second. The SC is going to turn off and that's because it does not have the always-on display, which means that actually, both of them turn off, because I'm not touching them, but normally the six will stay on the entire time as long as it's on my wrist, and it goes into that low power mode that you can see just the time there versus the SC. As soon as you put your wrist down, it turns off now that's the exact same behavior as the Apple Watch Series one or the OG series, 2 series, 3 series 4, but in series 5. I always introduced on display this one right here, but not in the SC, so again kind of the first differences that you see there.

Next is battery life now in case of battery life, all of them are claimed at 18 hours. But what I care about here is the GPS side of things, and GPS is like the stepping stone block down with each level. In the case of the series six, they claim seven hours of GPS on time. In the case of the SE, they claim six hours of GPS downtime. In the case of the series three, they claim five hours uh for the series four and the series: five, they claim six hours so keeping the SC in that same ballpark right there.

What about charging? Well? The big advantage of the series six from a charge standpoint is the fact that it charges faster, so 80 an hour versus the SC 80 an hour and a half in the case of series, 3 uh, 80 percent, as well in an hour and a half so the same kind of older, slower technology. Oh, and a quick note from the accuracy testing future because I forgot, if you're finding this video, interesting or useful, go ahead and like that like button at the bottom there, it really helps up the video in the channel quite a bit, and we'll get to the accuracy in just a second. But now we need to get to the core of the perplexity, the complexity with perplexion. It's just reflection, perplexing per it's just a whole pile of confusion and Apple is doing themselves no favors here. So I started looking things this weekend because on apple site it says that the SC and the six share the same second generation optical heart rate sensor, uh, which I thought was strange, because I started doing my math backwards and said myself.

Well, wait a second series, one two and three here: I'm going to show you this, because this is. This is somewhat funny series one two and three have effectively the same optical heart rate, sensor uh. It looks like they add a little of reflective material on two and three, but move that out of the way. Then we got to series four here. Oh- and I know this is probably gonna- get a little confusing and technical, but it actually matters.

It has real world implications as you'll see, in my run as to why this matters- and it's its pretty substantial in my mind, so look at the series 4, and you can see that it's got a single led in the middle there. It's actually four LEDs in the inside of that, but we'll ignore that for now, and then it's got these photodiodes around the outer edge inside there, you can just see them kind of reflect uh. That's where it's reading the information that the LED basically pushes into your skin. So that's the four series. Five is the same there, and you can see very, very similar designs in the case of series.

Four and five you've got the split portion on the outside there. So you see that kind of like the two half rings, uh, that's for the ECG functionality that was introduced in series five, and then you've got series six over here. There we go and series 6 is obviously completely different. So I know the reflections on this suck. I'm sorry there's not a lot.

I can do about that, but you've got the series 6 right there totally different four LEDs: four photodiodes, the LEDs are actually two by, so they're red and green. So technically eight LEDs uh best. I can tell- and it's still the ECG functionality on the outside there all makes sense right. So we've got basically gen one gen, two and gen 3. Now introduce the series 6.

It is essentially a series 4 and 5. It's exact same thing, a different pattern here, because there's no ECG, you know upper half and lower half. Furthermore, it just goes all the way around, but that which begs the question: why does apple claim? They only have two generations of optical heart rate sensors and that the SC and the six are the same generation they're. Clearly, not one two three, I don't really know so. I asked apple, I said: what's what's a deal and I haven't heard back yet in any case, there's only two core like feature things.

You need to know about the optical heart rate sensor in the series six uh number one put it there, so you know which one we're talking about number one is that does not have ECG again introduced on series four captain on series 5 john 36. It is not on the SC and then two it does not have the spo2 functionality introduced on the series 6. Okay, now before we head outside. Let me talk about sleep tracking here, so let me just clean this whole situation. Up there we go.

You can see the summary of your sleep time on the watch itself after you wake up each morning, very, very basic information showing you when you went to bed and then when you woke up in kind of very brief graph of the night, you can also see it in the app itself. As you can see here, different kind of my bed times whatnot over the course of the last week. You can see the schedule that I set there's a lot of steps with setting up sleep tracking on the Apple Watch. It is without question the most unintuitive experience of any watch I've ever tested. You can't just like go to sleep.

You have to set up a whole schedule, and then it doesn't record if you have a schedule. It's really kind of weird but in any case, there's your data so with that let's go ahead outside and check out the accuracy of GPS and the optical heart rate sensor and see how they differ from the series 6. So just a quick recap on the watches that I have with me. Obviously the Apple Watch SE on this side. Here I've got the Fitbit sense.

There we go right there. I've got the Garmin 4runner 745 here, and then I've got a Garmin chest, strap right here paired to the 745 for heart rate up here I've got the wood band and on this side I've got the polar oh1. So plenty of options, so we'll get this watch started, and then we'll just talk about the run as we go along here. First, up on our adventure today is the running track. Hopefully we won't get hit by the first time, shot putters there, but we'll get this going.

I'm looking here for GPS accuracy won't really be able to see that, though, until after the run, but okay now seems like a good time to throw down some intervals and cruise along at 7, 30 mile drops down to 530 mile for a 200 meter, sprint, and then I'll catch up. The other side put the camera down, though so doesn't impact accuracy any okay, so that I'm looking for quick responsiveness and heart rate so seeing it pop up, then also since I'm walking right now on purpose, quick responsiveness to back down to recovery heart rates. So those are the two things. So I like this little island here, because it's a good test of this sort of small trails in particular not so much the tree covers or anything. But these turns like this right here so seeing how well it handles a sharp, almost 180-degree turns and if it blocks that correctly.

So here we are at Olympic stadium, doing a loop around the road that you see that was around the edge of it home of the 1928 Olympics. I believe, and you can't actually run inside certain weeknights, but you have to go with the group or whatnot see inside there, pretty cool okay. So this next section here is all about these huge bridge tunnel, like things and there are tons of train tracks up there and highways everything else, and what I'm looking for in particular here isn't so much that doesn't lose GPS. Of course, it will, I'm looking for the reacquisition, so I want to ensure that these little gaps that you see in between it doesn't get bad signal there um and when it finally exits it exits where it's supposed to and not somewhere like 100 meters away, which can often happen with GPS. Again, these little gaps like this.

It thinks it's got it's at the wrong spot and back under again, so again, something we'll look at afterwards. In the uh accuracy analysis, some nice, dense, trees leaves haven't gone anywhere yet for the most part, so giving this a whirl. The series six is pretty well in here and, generally speaking, I've seen most watches do pretty well in here. So don't worry. Just the firefighters practicing drills, they're um scuba team actually practices there as well.

On the right hand, side of the canal, they were in there diving and then the guys up top there practicing too. So seeing a lot out here. Okay, so here we are run all done. Uh you can see there's a total time at the top there total distance 5.58 average pace 736 a mile average cadence below. So, let's head on inside and check things out, we've got the summary of my run on the fitness app used to be called activity in the past renamed as part of watch OS 7.

, and you can see there is my run of 5.58 miles before we do that. I want to mention one thing: if we go down there's this trends area here, this is introduced last year at launch and the problem with the trends is: it requires 180 days of activity. That's absolutely bonkers, like no other device on this planet. No other sporting thing on this planet requires a half a year of activity to get trends. Imagine if, like in the middle of the NBA or baseball or football seasons, they said, ah we'll tell you the stats next season.

What in any case my run there we go, so there's my run right there. You can see the same summary stats as in the past. You can see the splits if I expand that out my heart rate graph over the course of the run. There's that first springs and the second sprint right there. I can swipe to the right and see recovery and then, if I scroll down, I can see the map and then here we can change the satellite mode by tapping the globe up there in the corner, and you're already starting to see a couple of issues right there.

So if I look at the track when I exit the track- and this is probably a good time to switch over to the accuracy side of stuff, so we can kind of dig into this a little more okay. So here's a look at the data from this run. I've got the Garmin 745 with the chest, strap connected to it, and I have the app watch SC in there from a polar oh1 standpoint, the one that was up my upper bicep here that one I apparently didn't press the start button on uh and then the whip strap did record but didn't properly export to strata, which how you get the data out of whip, because whoop doesn't allow you to export your own data uh. So we'll get back to that in just a second though anyways optical rate, for the first few minutes is fine. It's cruise along all is good there.

You can see it's ramping up nicely very, very similar to the chest, strap which is good and then there's that first sprint on the track right there and the Apple Watch just spikes. It spiked it way. High up to 188 and the garment is at 178. I can tell you, I don't have basically 190 beats per minute heart rate. I wish I could, but hopefully don't play that game.

Furthermore, I just can't get that high. So I know that's incorrect and even the whip strap like whoop is rarely correct, very rarely correct, but even it knew that wasn't correct, and it said 176 for the peak there, which is almost the same as Garmin, so no major issues aside from that first sprint on this heart rate wise. It was pretty close overall, but still not as good as a series.6 was. If we go down to GPS, though that's where things get a little interesting, so zooming on down here a couple of things to note one is we see the telltale apple, Mario karting or swooshing or whooshing, whatever you want to call it when it just ignores churns like so right here? If you look at this little thing, the apple is in green, and it just like cuts through the trail, whereas the garment goes around and shows me going around and going underneath here. The apple just ignores it and the same thing again when we exit the track- and I purposely recorded the video of me exiting the track, because I had a feeling it would do this, and you can see right here that green line cuts across the edge of the track and then over the trees and all that kind of stuff versus the purple line shows me running on the track, as I'm doing right now in this video and then running up the path and over to the other path, again a telltale case of apple, just like Mario karting around a corner.

Just like I did right here when I went on the island, it's like no, I'm going to go through the water, I'm going to walk on water, I'm going to be as apple as I can walk on. Water then cut across the grass through the trees and over the top again without going on the trail, and that's exactly what I've seen in the past from almost every other Apple Watch, but something that they got away from on the series six. The series six did this course almost flawlessly like none of these Mario karting issues. It just nailed it and there's many other cases of Mario karting throughout this run, but those are sort of the examples of that. You can see even right here, cut in the corner.

Uh, it just cuts the corner everywhere it can, and the problem is that's going to reduce your mileage in some cases and then overshoot it, in other words when it goes off to nowhere land, and that has a real impact if you're trying to pace for a race, and you find out that you're either short or long on distance, and you get to finish like oh, I thought I had it. No you, you were short and therefore you're pacing was off and all kind of fun stuff. So it's disappointing to see. They didn't fix that on the SC, when they did clearly fix it on the series 6. Now will that matter for everyone? Nah, probably not.

I mean it hasn't mattered from the grand scheme of things for the tens of millions of people that have bought apple watches over the years, but it does matter if you care about accuracy. So that's something you've got to decide for yourself and figure out whether those are core things that uh, you know, change your decision on purchasing now. Yes, I know that the SC has the compass and the kind of slightly more advanced altimeter, but when's the last time you used a legit compass and when's the last time that you needed the altimeter on the watch, face itself versus somewhere else and up to the second keep in mind. They all have altimeters this one just has up to the second on the watch, face uh differences, and so for that I'm, like yeah you're, probably not going to need that either. So hopefully that helps you decide whether you want to spend the extra 110 dollars realistically for the uh SC versus a series 3 or if you just need to jump up to the series six which in my testing so far, seems to be the most accurate watch that apple has made today with that.

Hopefully, you found this review interesting or useful, or something like that. If so go ahead and like that like button in the bottom there or hit the subscribe button for plenty more sports technology stuff, this is a busy week. We've got this review coming up tomorrow. Another thing on Wednesday and more later on this week, so there's some good stuff. I'm going to hit the channel here shortly, have a good one.

Source : DC Rainmaker