Welcome to the third part of T3’s developing Apple Watch Series 5 review, in which I’m taking a look at the new activity features, plus how things have changed for the better when it comes to health and fitness.
In part one of the Apple Watch Series 5 review, I took a look at the design (especially the new titanium body), and the new always-on screen.
In part two, I talked about the performance and battery life.
Next, I’ll post the final review, with a full verdict and score, and a place in our best smartwatches guide.
You’ll just get a little nudge if the noise levels break the warning threshold – no need to worry if it’s just a momentary sound.
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple Watch Series 5: health
The main new feature for health-watching is noise detection. If you’re in an environment that exceeds 90 decibels, you’ll get a notification warning of that fact, with a note saying what length of exposure at that level will cause hearing loss.
Think of this just like the elevated heart-rate notifications: it’s not intended to nanny you, and if you get that notification when a motorbike races past, you can just ignore it.
But if you find that this warning comes up a lot when you’re somewhere you can’t avoid, like your workplace, maybe it’s something you should address.
You can change the threshold for the alert, if you want, to something higher or lower, and you can also just use the new noise app (and complication) to keep an eye on the levels around you at any time.
Apple emphasised that the noise app doesn’t record any sound at all – it’s just looking at the level.
The other new health feature is more of a software addition, on both iPhone and Watch: period tracking. There’s a dedicated app for it on Watch, and it’s rolled into the new-look Health app on iPhone (more on that in a bit).
The Cycle Tracking app focuses a lot on the timing element of your menstrual cycle, aiming to make it as predictable as possible.
(Image credit: Apple)
You have to set it up on iPhone, telling it when your last period was, and how many days your cycle is usually. Then you can add in information on a day-by-day basis to do with what’s actually happening: how heavy the flow that day is, and any other significant symptoms, such as spotting, increased acne, tiredness, breast tenderness, and a bunch more.
On the Watch, the app basically gives you a faster way to input this information, and to see your predicted cycle progress. And perhaps the most useful part: you’ll get a notification when you’re within seven days of a predicted start of your next period.
Fertility tracking is an optional part of all this – you can also have it tell you when your likely most fertile times are, so you can, uh, act on it.
The Health app won’t make any medical recommendations of all this – the point is to give you information you can mix in with your other Health data to get a better idea of how your body behaves. You might find that you get headaches a lot during your period, but you’ll also notice that you don’t get them on days you exercised, or something like that – it’s just about giving you an actual reference to look at.
Now, I’m not exactly the target market for this, so I ran it by someone with an actual menstrual cycle. She couldn’t talk about whether it works well long-term, because that would take months, but she’s still given it a test.
Before trying it, she thought it was something she wouldn’t bother with, but having set it up and looked through the options, she felt really positive about being able to get all the data and see if there were any definitive patterns with particular discomforts and timings (or activities).
She said the apps were usefully and logically laid out, and the warning about likely start dates particularly appealed, since it gives you a chance to make sure you’re stocked up on supplies everywhere you need them.
There’s nothing here that other cycle tracking apps haven’t done in the past, but having it built into the Health app and Watch is a boon, and Apple is about as trustworthy with your data as companies get in 2019.
Elsewhere, watchOS 6 adds warnings about irregular heart rhythm taken from the optical heart rate sensor – meaning you don’t need an ECG to detect it any more. That said, the ECG is built into the Series 5 (like the Series 4), and is definitely your next port of call if the Watch does think its spotted an irregular rhythm. It’s extremely simple to use – you just open the app, basically.
The fact that it can spot an irregular rhythm without the ECG is more of a bonus to older Watch models than anything useful in the Series 5, but it’s still a good upgrade all-round.
The Series 4’s other major health innovation, fall detection, is here again. If you have a rough tumble, your Watch will ask if you’re okay via a notification. If you don’t respond, it will call the emergency services, and ping a message to your emergency contact.
This is a such a fantastic feature. Obviously, you hope it’ll never have to be used, but we’re talking an actual life-saver here.
You can also still call the emergency services using the Emergency SOS feature from the side button – again this sends your location to your emergency contact, and can be triggered with a single button hold, so no fiddling required.
The Series 5 does have one extra innovation here: cellular models of the new Watch can contact the emergency services internationally – it doesn’t matter where you bought the Watch, it will call the local services for wherever you are, even if you haven’t activated a cellular plan.
The compass does exactly what it says on the tin, which has not always been a guarantee in these kinds of devices…
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple Watch Series 5 review: outdoor activity
The only hardware change in the Series 5 other than the always-on screen is the addition of a compass and altimeter. The altimeter is a new, upgraded version that Apple hasn’t used before: all its previous devices could detect changes in elevation (ie, how far you’ve climbed or descended), but not your absolute elevation (ie, what height you started from).
The Watch Series 5 can just straight up tell you how far you are above or below sea level, which is great for tracking yourself on hikes ands seeing exactly what you managed, or just if you’re curious at any time.
Now here’s the key thing we need to tell you about the compass: it’s actually good. Like, really.
The magnetometer compasses built into phones (including iPhones), have always been a bit iffy, frequently several degrees off your orientation, and twitching around even when you’re not moving.
This does not do that. It points. It points consistently and, as far as we’ve seen, correctly.
It’s not a flashy feature, but it makes using the Watch for walking navigation infinitely more useful. In fact, with these two new options, Apple suddenly seems to be gunning for Garmin.
The likes of Garmin’s Fenix range have all kinds of other features (and much longer battery life), but for your average hiking holiday, the Watch just became a seriously capable companion.
Well, it will be, once the specialist apps with walking maps get updated to include compass support – we’ve been testing pre-release and immediately after release, so it’s a bit early.
The ‘Trends’ screen gives you more nuanced information than just the pass/fail of hitting targets.
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple Watch Series 5 review: fitness
There are no hardware changes for fitness, or even significant software changes in terms of usable features.
However, Apple has made some key changes in both the Health and Activity apps that drastically improve them, so even though it can’t take in any new kinds of fitness data, that data is now much more helpful.
First up is trends in the Activity app. You now get told not only how you’ve been doing recently, but also how that compares on average with recent periods. So you can now see in the app that, for example, you’ve been doing 31 minutes of exercise per day recently, which beats the targets. But you were doing 40 minutes of exercise per day.
Having this context is so useful – it’s a reminder that hitting your targets doesn’t automatically mean everything is as good as it was before. If you’re drifting downwards in an area, you can now identify that and correct it before you start struggling.
The Health app’s redesign is all about a new Summary feature, and we absolutely love this. You choose which kinds of information that the app stores that you’re most interested in, and this is all shown right up front – no need to dig through sub-menus.
Because the Health app can draw from so many different sources, this can be tailored in specific ways. If you want to lose a few pounds, maybe you have weight tracking from your smart scales, plus graphs of your active calories burned and your food intake, all next to each other.
If you’re worried about stress, maybe you have your blood pressure taken from a smart gauge, resting heart rate graphs, and sleep tracking, and a note of how often you did your breathing exercise.
Maybe you’re training for a cycling tour. You could bring in your VO2 Max, overall heart rate, cycling distances tracked via workouts, resting energy…
You can still browse everything that’s in the Health app through all its many categories, but we think this Summary feature is a game-changer – it makes Apple’s health push about you, not about some more abstract version of healthy living.
Again, none of this is specific to the Apple Watch 5, but if you’re thinking buying any kind of Apple Watch, it’s important to know about.
