Apple Watch Series 6: Sports & Fitness Hands-on Tests By DC Rainmaker

Hey folks, it's ray dcrambricker. com here, and today I've got you're complete. First look hands-on first run. First, everything of the new Apple Watch Series 6. , so I just got back from my first run with it a bit of a challenging run in terms of trying to push the watch to its limits and see how it might do, and all that kind of fun stuff, and we're going to get to that in just a moment. But first I want to talk about some new kind of sport, fitness and health features of the series, 6 watch and just sort of walk through them step by step so getting right into it.

I'm going to take these series 6 off my wrist and put it next to the series 5 right here, thanks Siri um, and so in this case, what you see first off from the very top, is the slightly brighter display. But what's far more important to that to this watch from a sports and fitness standpoint is the new optical heart rate sensor uh. This is stuff that was kind of skimmed over a little. But on the back here this is an entirely new optical heart rate sensor system and on this one here, they've added another additional green led to it. In the left hand, side, which is a series 5.

Only has a single green led and when it comes to optical heart rate sensors, you can use different color LEDs, you can use green or orange or yellow those are the primary ones for heart rate, and you tend to see red used more for pulse ox or sp02 type sensors. So green is pretty common. You can see. These have really kicked up into high gear right now and the reason for that is because when they can't detect a pulse, they add more power to try to figure it out, and so you can see now they're way brighter than before. Coming in there and in a changing of optical heart rate, sensors and the arrangement of the sensors is very, very common for wearable manufacturers, but with that and the reason why they probably change this is that they added the spo2 sensor in there.

So that's adding in additional lights and additional LEDs to be able to take advantage of that. So let's turn that on instead, but the way you use this is you go and press this button right there, and you go down you go down here, and you will find this little icon right there and that is the spo2 icon for blood oxygenation, and then you put it on your wrist, so we're going to do that right. Now there we go, and then we just simply press the start button at this point it just simply counts down 15 seconds. It's really as simple as that now you'll note. I've got my wrist on this block here, just keeping it nice and still nice and stable, and that's the recommended test procedure again.

If you're trying to get this device FDA certified and there we go blood oxygen level of 97. Now let me show you the sensor on the bottom there, and this is a bit tricky, because the way this test works is that once you rotate your wrist more than roughly 90 degrees, it's going to turn off that sensor because it assumes you're screwing up a test again, another safeguard or fail-safe. If you will against people screwing up a test and get inaccurate results that the other companies out there don't have. So I'm going to try to trick this into doing this here. Let's see if I can get it to work right this way, so I'm going to try to just do it a little like halfway, so you can maybe can see it there you go.

You can see the red lights there. You can see the red lights in the back, as opposed to just the green lights and by the way, when you screw it up, it'll actually go back and show you the steps on how to do it correctly. Furthermore, you can see this right here. The arm is raised uh. If your arm is raised hanging down place, it flats go ahead and try to keep it a certain position, and so on so again just this continual effort by apple, to try to simplify things and give you the best shot of getting it correct.

Oh and hey, because I forgot, as always, if you found this video interesting or useful, just simply whack that, like button at the bottom there, it really helps out this video and the channel quite a bit. Now the next new feature introduced in watch OS 7, but not actually the Apple Watch Series 6 was sleep. I'm just going to show you what that looks like after the fact. So I wore my Apple Watch Series 5 last night to bed, so you can see the sleep data and there you go right there. So I'm going to slide this off the side see I can put that there and put the screen right here of what it looks like in my phone, but I can see my time total of sleep.

Uh was five hours and 30 minutes between those two, and I can go ahead and scroll down. You can see that's a decrease over the last 14 days, and it's a very basic implementation of sleep data compared to most other watches out there, but that's something I noticed when I looked at it in beta this past summer. Very, very simple. They've also spent a lot of time in trying to get you to bed on time. In fact, it's like over the top when you first set up you go through all these screens like a whole slew of screens on setting up a bedtime and setting up.

You know this sort of quiet time before the bedtime, and it just keeps ongoing like you get to the end of this whole thing like. Are we done yet uh, but there's a purpose there, and the purpose is that they make it more difficult for you to get into your phone later on? So by doing all that on the watch, what it's actually doing on your phone is going ahead and setting up this sort of like gated portion of time, ahead of when you're supposed to be going to bed. So I get it is can be annoying at first, but it makes sense if the goal is to get you to get better sleep. Finally, the last feature before we start running is the vo2 max bits. They talked about this in uh, the presentation there, and- let me just let me play it back to you real, quick, well watch OS seven can now measure a full range of vo2 max, which is a powerful predictor of your overall health.

So at that point you may be saying yourself cool. We got something new. No, not that's actually been there for years, so vo2 max measurement in the Apple Watch has been there for a long time. In fact, you can see it in Apple Health uh, even for my old data going back in quite a while. So that's not new.

What is new but isn't here. Yet today is vo2max alerts and coming later this year you can receive a notification if your vo2 max drops to those lower levels. So that brings us to the run, and I'm looking for two things in this run, I'm looking for one GPS accuracy is it accurate. Is it good? Is it better? Is it better before? What's the state there and then two optical heart rate, sensor accuracy, given this is a brand new optical heart rate sensor that introduces risk and most times with most wearables, when I see new optical heart rate sensors, usually things aren't too solid. The first couple updates, so let's head outside and see how it actually played out okay.

So here we are outside, I kind of walk you through all the devices I've got. I've got the Apple Watch Series 6 right there. Under this right there I've got the whip, strap that's going to capture some heart rate data on this side. Here I've got the polar oh1, also capturing heart rate data. Under my shirt here, I've got the Garmin HRM pro chest, strap again more heart rate data on this wrist over here I've got the Fitbit sense for both GPS and heart rate data, and then I'm going to hand hold up here, uh the Garmin 400 745, and that's going to capture data from this heart rate.

Strap here. So lots of data to compare with uh. With that we're going to get started, I've got a route, that's all over the place. I'm going to go under some bridges through some buildings. Uh do the running track couple loops into the forest a bit.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of push the thing to the paces and see what happens there. So let's go ahead and get running, and I'll catch up a little down the road. Okay, our first stop on our journey today is the track. I'm going to do, I think, probably four loops of it. Uh so we'll see for loops and see what the accuracy on the track itself looks like now, of course, with the Apple Watch.

There is no map view in the native working app, so you can use third party apps for that, but not the native workouts' app. That was the garment. We just heard coming for one mile and the app watch just set it right there as well. So a couple second difference there, so we'll really have to see afterwards what things look like from a track accuracy, standpoint, sort of island down the river, and it's a good place to test accuracy in the smaller loop got two football fields in size. Look at this part later on in the accuracy test.

Here we go Olympic stadium, we're going to do a full loop around this home to the 19. I think 30 40, something Olympics somewhere in that range there. I also finished at the Amsterdam marathon as well. Okay, so leaving the stadium behind, and the reason I wanted to go to the stadium was to get really close to a big building that can impact GPS coverage. I'm not looking for, like you, know, tiny little alley between two giant buildings, but in this case there was open air on one side, the entire way around so curious.

How that looks afterwards? Okay, next up, we got a bunch of giant bridges about 150, 200 meters, long of these huge bridges that are both highways and one of the main train lines uh through Europe through Amsterdam. So you see this goes on for a while, I'm looking to see how satellite accuracy does here in some ways, this is actually more difficult than just one giant tunnel. That is, you know, 200 meters long, because each time we get solid reception, it's got to figure out if that's accurate or not before it loses it again. So it's always fun to see how well watches do here. Okay, now we're in the forest here uh doing a little trails off-road, where I can, I just you know, checking out the nice big trees and seeing how they're blocking uh signal and stuff like that is really the goal in here.

More than anything else, okay, now it's time to have a little of fun with a heart rate reaction time and do some sprints right now, I'm cruising at 7 30, a mile, I'm going to drop it down to around uh, 5, 45 or so mile, just for like 20 seconds or so at a time, and then I'll do a walk, see how quickly it recovers and repeat there we go okay, so 5 35 a mile- and I put it on the camera because I didn't want to hold my arm up to impact the readings any on the other side, wouldn't change an Apple Watch, but still it's good accuracy, hygiene, okay! So right about where we started there, we go 6.24 miles, 6.2 miles, basically finishing up on 10k right there, nice easy 10k! So wouldn't stop this there we go total time, total distance average pace, cadence calories, average, heart rate elevation gain 58 feet and honestly, a bit optimistic. It was pretty much pancake minus like two little bridges that were all of eight feet of pop. I guess so. You know whatever um, and you can see my elevation summary on the bottom. There maximum was 12 feet.

Uh minimum was negative, 20 feet, which is actually accurate, 4am here, okay, so this point I'll hit done, and we'll head on inside and check all the data out. Okay, so, with our run all set. Let's take a look straight into the data here, starting off with the heart rate side of things. What you see compared here is the Apple Watch Series, six, the whip strap the polar oh1 and the HRM pro chest strap. Now the green is HRM pro and one of the things I realized like two to three minutes into it is that I've been standing there, trying to shoot some stuff and the strap dried up a little.

So it wasn't until three minutes down the road that I just simply licked it, and you can see the exact second. I do that boom it locks in place, which is totally normal for heart rate straps. They should have a little of moisture there everything's the same except the whip, strap, which is the whip, strap. It's usually not terribly accurate, but the Apple Watch 36 the polar oh1, the HRM pro are virtually identical, I'm pretty happy with. If you look at those intervals, I did later on here.

If we just zoom into those real quick you'll, see pretty darn consistent. What about GPS accuracy, glad you asked going across those train tracks. I talked about both directions. No issues, that's good there as well that little like loop that you see right here, that's actually correct. I'm going around a fence there up through here.

The Apple Watch is a little into the marsh, though so that part right there not a deal around the track. Looks super crispy! That's that's great! Here we go toss the track on there very, very sharp from both the Apple Watch and the Garmin watch uh when it came to going around the stadium. Now the Garmin was more correct. I stayed in the roadway, and you can see the Apple Watch put me in the bleachers both times around the back side there. So not quite correct, and one thing that's fascinating.

And finally, this is the first time in all the apple watches, if it's not Mario Kart anymore, so Apple Watch has this thing that it does where anytime it takes a corner, it doesn't take it sharp it like just Mario Kart skids around. It goes off to the bushes, and it's been like the Apple Watch, signature, GPS, signature since the beginning, uh, and I've talked about it for years, and I think it's gone. I don't see a single instance of it anywhere here, and this is the first time like, like it nailed this like this little spot right here right into the track is where it always Mario karts. Every year, I've done this sort of tests, and this is the first time it has not Mario's card around that corner and so props apple actually nailed it the first time around now accuracy. Aside, is this the watch for you from a sports standpoint, fitness standpoint.

It's honestly just going to depend on what you want out of it. If you're going off and doing you know, long endurance runs, and you know tough intervals, all that kind of stuff, a touchscreen display, probably isn't the best choice, and this isn't like anything new we've been using apple watches. Now for many years, it's obviously series six right, so I'm not telling anything- you probably don't already know, but for day-to-day fitness, if you're going out running 5k, 10k, even half-marathon, maybe even a marathon with an Apple Watch, there's not really an issue. There depends on how serious you are about that versus the features. There's of course, many many many apps out there for the Apple Watch, whether and how they compare to a Garmin or polar watch tends to vary quite a bit in the case of a Garmin watch, you're paying for all those app features to be in one watch versus.

If you get the Apple Watch, you have to go and kind of collect the apps a bit like a squirrel collecting nuts and put them in the watch to get that same sort of effect. So there you go a first look at the Apple Watch Series, six uh. Speaking of first looks swing on back on Tuesday Wednesday. I don't know something like that next week, uh for the Fitbit sense right here, the kind of in-depth review of that of sorts and uh. Whatever else floats down the pipe between now and then so, thus, don't forget to go ahead and hit the like button and, more importantly, the subscribe button.

If you want to stay tuned for all that, goodness as soon as it hits the channel or whatever the case may be with that, have a good one. You.

Source : DC Rainmaker