Apple Watch SE In-Depth Review for Sports and Fitness // Nike Edition By DesFit

With, the Apple Watch, SC apple, is aiming to split the difference in their current lineup of apple watches, between the high-end series 6 and the entry-level series 3 with a watch that has a lot of the features that most people will need, without necessarily having to break the bank. It's kind of a mashup of features between the series, four five and even the six, and in today's video we're gonna, find out that mashup actually works. How's it going folks I'm DES with, despite this is the Apple Watch, SE in depth, review where I'll be going over all the features of the SC, as well as what I liked about it and what I didn't like about it, as both a smartwatch and a fitness device in particular I'll, be going into a lot of detail about how the SE performs in the sports and fitness capacity, where I test it for running cycling, weight, training and swimming. Just to give you a good idea of what's going to be right for you- and I know this review has been a long time coming, but I saw some differences with the SC versus the series 4 and series 5. So I just really wanted to make sure that I was collecting enough data just to give you a good idea of how it's going to perform and if you do find the information in this video useful. Don't be shy about hitting that like button down below, as it definitely helps the channel a lot, and I appreciate it and if you're interested in the series 6 and how that performs in the sports and fitness capacity.

I already published my in-depth review of that. One and I'll have a link for that down in the description below so the Apple Watch. Sc sits right in the middle of apple's current lineup with more features than the long-standing series 3, but not quite as many as the series 6. It comes in both a 40 and 44 millimeter versions, and it shares the same dimensions of the series 4 5 and 6, which is slightly more updated than the series 3. It's water resistant down to 50 meters, and it comes in both a GPS and a GPS plus cellular version, and this is the 44 millimeter GPS.

Nike edition that I'm covering today in terms of the differences between the Nike edition SC and the regular SC, is that the Nike edition is going to have a special watch band. It's going to have some exclusive watch faces, and it's going to have. The Nike run club app pre-installed in the watch, but you can install that Nike run club app on pretty much any other Apple Watch. So deciding on whether you want the Nike edition basically has to do with whether you want to rock the Nike branding, and I'll. Have some more details about the Nike run club app when we go over the workouts here in just a bit.

One of the big differences with the SC is going to be the heart rate sensor. It's similar to the ones found on the series 4 and series 5, which is an update from the series 3, but where the SE differs is that it doesn't have the ECG functionality from the series 4 and series 5. The series 6 will have the latest and greatest heart rate sensor, and that includes the ECG functionality, as well as the new spo2 sensor for measuring blood oxygen levels and in theory the SA should perform nearly the same in terms of heart rate, accuracy versus the series 4 and series 5. But I did notice some differences, and we'll go over those when we get into the sports and fitness performance. Another area where the SC differs is that it uses a raised awake gesture that was found on the series, 1 2, 3 and 4, but it doesn't have the always on display, like the series, 5 and 6.

One feature that the SE has, which also does come with the series.6 is what apple calls their always on altimeter now. This is most definitely some extra special apple marketing, because tons of watches already have altimeters, including the series 3. Four and five. It's just that the difference is that the SC, along with the series six, has a special complication that you can add to a watch face. That will show your altitude in real time, and this is a software-based feature that in theory, should be able to be added to older devices.

I generally give apple a lot of credit for coming out with new software features that can be ported to their older devices. But for some reason, if you have an older Apple Watch, you're not going to get this feature. At least at this point for battery life apple kept with their expectation of most people getting 18 hours of all-day battery life, which is definitely short. But the good news is. I generally found this to be pretty conservative.

So for me, I was easily getting 24 hours out of it and in most cases, 30 to 36 hours, and that includes even recording an outdoor activity. Battery life will most definitely be dependent on how much you're, interacting with your watch, how many calls texts and notifications that you're getting as well as how much time you're tracking outdoor activities now one tip. I do have for you, when you are tracking an outdoor activity, is try to have your phone with you, because what happens in that case is that the watch will actually be relying on your phone's GPS, which will actually save on the battery life on the watch itself, because the watch won't have to use its onboard GPS now for battery life for tracking and outdoor activity. If you don't want to have your phone with you and using the SES onboard GPS, apple's claim is that you should be able to get about six hours out of it, and I found this claim to be pretty spot on now six hours. It really isn't a lot in the whole scheme of things, especially compared to a lot of other watches in the market, and I have another video where I have tons of examples for different battery life scenarios, where I compared the SC directly to the series six, as well as some tips and tricks on how to squeak out even more battery life out of your SC, and I'll.

Have that linked down in the description below the SE? Also, has sleep tracking just like any watch that can run watch OS 7, which is basically the series 3 and newer, and I found this sleep tracking to work well, at least for what information it provides. It's accurate in the sense that it's pretty spot on with the time I went to bed as well as the time I woke up, as well as the interruptions during the night, but I wish it gave more detail that you could find on some competing devices like fit bits, Garmin and polar okay. So now on to what you all are probably really here for and that's how the SC performs in a sports and fitness capacity for what the SE offers in terms of features in the sports and fitness department. It's basically exactly the same as the series 3 4, 5 and 6, with lots of different sport profiles to choose from it. Has profiles for running both indoors and outdoors cycling both indoors and outdoors, pool, swimming and open water swimming, as well as plenty of gym based profiles like weight, training and high intensity interval, training, the elliptical rowing and stair climbing, and a really quick side note for those of you are interested in Nike run club app.

I like the fact that it has a lot of coaching with guided, runs as well as a community aspect with leaderboards and challenges, but it's an app just for running and doesn't have the multitude of sport profiles that you'll find with a stock workout app, there's also a lot more customization with the stock workout app where you can customize a lot more of the information that it collects. And since I wanted to test out more than just running, I use the stock workout app for most the examples that you're going to see, so we're first going to start out with GPS performance as well as how the altimeter did, and then we'll wrap up with heart rate. So, as I mentioned earlier, when we went over battery life, when you have your phone with you when you're tracking outdoor activity, the watch will try to use the GPS from your phone. Since GPS can vary from phone to phone. I want to test the GPS on the watch itself, so what I did for all these tests was either turn my phone completely off or just not have it on me to kick things off.

Let's take a look at some examples with running so on this run, the total distance lined up with the other test devices which resulted in similar metrics, like average pace from a high level. Everything looks pretty good from a GPS perspective, but let's dive in for some more detail on the right side of the map, the SE actually did the best with staying on the same track as the bike path that I was running on. But let's also look over here on the left side of the map up here you can see that the SC's GPS track is just a bit too smooth around some of these sweeping terms. It just draws nearly a straight line where these were in fact sweeping s-bends and then down at the bottom. I specifically made some tighter turns just to see how well it would do for that finer, GPS detail and it kind of nearly ignored those turns altogether.

But then, on this run, things were a bit better. Overall, the SE did a pretty good job over the course of the run and on the upper portion of the map. Where I made some tighter turns, the SE did have a tendency to smooth out the tracks and cut the corner slightly, but overall I'd say this is pretty good so now on to some cycling examples and on this ride, the SE did great in tracking all the metrics, including distance, as well as elevation gain, and the same thing can be said on this ride good stuff overall, but the SE did track the elevation just as much higher than the other devices. But that's not a big deal, though, and taking a look at the actual GPS tracks that, from a high level, it's hard to even see the GPS track of the SC, which is actually an orange, but once we zoom in we'll be able to see it. This is pretty darn good for the entire ride, but let's zoom in a little closer at the bottom of the map for a bit more detail.

So what we can see is that there were a few corners where the SC overshot just slightly. It's nothing earth-shattering by any means, but it was slightly less accurate than the other test devices. Overall, I found the GPS performance of the SC to be about the same as the series three four and five, where the total distances they always lined up for the most part. But the level of detail when it came to the actual GPS tracks left a bit to be desired, and it mainly has to do with the corners where legally cut in on the corner a little too much, or it'll go around the corner, all together kind of like it's skidding around the corner. As what my buddy ray dcrammaker.

com calls, Mario carting, the corners for the vast majority of people. I think the GPS performance on the sew ill be just fine, but just know that the SE won't be quite as detailed as some other devices on the market. So before we get into the heart rate performance. I also quickly want to go over how well the SE did in terms of estimating indoor running distances on a treadmill. So what I did first was, I made sure, to run outside a handful of times at some varying speeds, so the SE could get a good idea of my running dynamics using GPS along with the accelerometer and just like all apple watches, that I've tested the SC did extremely well at estimating distances on the treadmill.

It's always amazing to me how good apple's algorithms are for indoor running, and again I'm impressed- and this was both with the stock workout app, and the Nike run club app, and I'm guessing their, using the same algorithms here and now on to heart rate- and I have a lot of examples here where I tested it for running cycling swimming as well as weight training, and I tested this over the course of many firmware updates. So let's first start with some cycling. So for indoor cycling, the SD did a perfect job on this ride being nearly identical to two external heart rate. Straps, there's not a lot to complain about, and we can see that it was quite responsive to the heart rate, with the decreases in increase in heart rate over the course of this session, and if I had nitpicked, there's a little blip here and a little blip here, but no big deal and then on this ride here from a high level, pretty darn good. But we do see a few blips, but a little more pronounced this time with a little of shakiness at the beginning and then a few little spikes here and taking things outside where there are more variables involved.

That could throw off heart rate. Readings like bumps in the road things were pretty good, but there's going to be a few more discrepancies than what we saw with indoor cycling. A few interesting portions to look at would be right here where it was slow to track the increase in heart rate. But after that it was pretty good, and it was also good at tracking the rise here. But then the heart rate started to get a bit shakier on the second half and where we see it wander more is on the last 20 minutes or so where it had some higher than normal readings.

On this ride, there was a spike right around the 16-minute mark or so from the SC, but then things settled in nicely not much else to complain about during the rest of the ride where it followed along. There were a few spots at the end of the ride where it wandered, but other than that spike. At the beginning, things were pretty good and now for some running on this run, the SE started out. Super solid was actually tracking the ramp up and heart rate really well. It was a little low about seven to eight minutes into the run, but that's totally okay.

What's not as good, though, is that for the last four minutes, or so it kind of wandered, and it was tracking low, and on this run there was a bit of variance from the arm. Heart rate strap that's highlighted in blue, but we'll want to pay attention to the green line, which represents the chest. Heart rate strap. The see was about six to eight beats per minute high around this middle section, but then around 8 to 10 beats per minute low at the end, and it took almost a minute for the SC to start tracking heart rate, and then here's a run that I did pretty recently. It started out reading high for the first six minutes or so before, locking on, but on the tail end of the run it started to wander in the other direction, a little lower than the external heart rate sensors.

I was wearing and here's an indoor run on the treadmill at the beginning. Again it had some issues and started out high, although this time it was just for about a minute, but then it locked back on and then things were pretty darn good for the rest of the run. It was kind of interesting with running and cycling where, with the SC, it was pretty much the same as a lot of other apple watches, where it doesn't necessarily track heart rate accurately for the first minute or two. But then the middle portions of the workout were actually perfect. But the strange thing is that at the end of the workout, regardless of the duration, I started to see the heart rate wander a little.

So I guess there is some consistency with those inconsistencies so now onto some weight training, and this is an activity, that's very challenging for any wrist-based heart rate sensor. Just because there's going to be a lot of arm movement, there's a lot of wrist, flexion, there's a lot of gripping action, and so basically, if a wrist-based heart rate sensor can even get in the same ballpark as a chest, heart rate, strap I'd, say that's a pretty good sign and what we can see from this example is that it's not bad again at the beginning of the workout. It was asleep at the wheel, just like pretty much all the other examples that we saw, and then it followed along the trends. For the most part, we can see that, on the sudden increases in heart rate on these sets right around the 15 to 19 minute mark. It was running a little behind, but not bad, a few little spikes here and there.

But overall this is actually a pretty good result for heart rate for weight, training and here's another example where, for most the workout it was doing pretty good. But then, on these higher intensity intervals, here it was running a little behind and the Apple Watch SC will also collect your heart rate in the water for swimming. Now again, this is another activity, that's really challenging for wrist-based heart rate sensors, but this time there's going to be another variable involved of the possibility of water getting in between the watch and your skin. But the Essie did an okay job. I'm not looking for perfection when it comes to swimming heart rate from a wrist based heart rate sensor, but I am just looking for the correct trends and for the most part, that's what we can see at the beginning.

It took about 30 seconds for the SC to pick up the heart rate yet again, and it tracked a little high at first, but then it started to fall along better with a chest. Heart rate strap it tracked a little higher on the last half of the session. But again it was following, along with the overall trends and produced an average heart rate for this session. That was pretty close to the external chest. Heart rate strap and then for the rest of the day, the sew ill collect for swimming it'll, also automatically track your laps and distance.

It also has stroke detection that worked well. It will also automatically track your splits as well as sets with a nice breakdown of each interval with your stroke type distance swim time, and it will even automatically track your rest periods, and it does this all very well and to wrap things up. The SE also has automatic workout detection, which is designed to automatically detect when you're walking running on the elliptical, the rowing machine as well as swimming. It takes about three to six minutes for the SC to recognize that you're working out and up pops a screen that prompts you to start a workout. It worked really well for all the activities I tested, and it's perfect at retroactively, giving you credit for the few minutes that you've already been working out before actually pressing the start button.

The only real complaint I have about this is that it doesn't collect the heart rate for those first, three or so minutes, but I suppose that's on par for the course, with the heart rate tracking for the other workouts, so to wrap things up. The SC performs pretty similarly to the series 3 4 and 5 and the GPS department, but I saw a few more differences with heart rate, and it was kind of interesting because we definitely saw some examples where the heart rate was actually really darn good, like some of those indoor cycling. Examples as well as even those weight training examples which were good for weight training. But it was just kind of interesting to see some of those variances with some running and outdoor biking. I do still think that the SC is a good watch, but I think it could be better and if you're considering the SE, you may also want to try to see if you can find a series, 4 or series 5, because I think they do a little better in the heart rate department, plus you're, getting ECG and then with the series.5 you'll be also getting always on display and if you're curious about how the SE compares to the series.6 I'll, also have another video coming up. Where I'll be going over.

All the differences between these two, as well as showing you test results where I was using the SE and the series 6 back to back on the exact same test, so make sure to subscribe, to get a notification when that video comes out and if you haven't done so already make sure to hit that like button down below. If this video helped you out at all and in the meantime, have fun out, there stay safe, and we will see you in the next video.

Source : DesFit