Why my Apple Watch Series 4 feels ancient after getting the Series 10

I’ve been a passive Apple Watch user ever since Apple first launched its smartwatch lineup. I first purchased the Apple Watch Series 2 and kid you not, solely used it for its simple watch face functions. A couple of years later, I upgraded to Apple Watch Series 4, where I became more invested in the connective tissue between the iPhone and the wearable. This past month, I’ve since upgraded to the Apple Watch Series 10 and watchOS 11. The change is impacting my life and how I interact with wearables for the better.

For the first time, I feel as though I’m buying into the full vision of the Apple Watch. Although the Apple Watch Series 4 and Apple Watch Series 10 share a lot of similarities, the company has worked extensively to refine and improve the user experience over the years. Being blissfully unaware of how these improvements would impact my life, the generational refinements have stacked up, making the Apple Watch Series 10 a shining star among the current pieces of tech in my repertoire.

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Apple Watch Series 10’s display is impressively better than the Series 4

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This may be blasphemous to some Apple Watch Series 4 users, but I’ve always found the 44 millimeter display to be exceedingly middle of the road. It served its purpose and was a relatively nice size for a wrist, but the LTPO OLED Retina display never truly popped in my opinion. I never had an issue with the amount of information I could garner from using it, but I was also never truly impressed. The Apple Watch Series 10, on the other hand, tops out with a staggering 46 millimeter display option. To put that into perspective, the Apple Watch Series 10 can provide at least an additional line of text in most cases. Despite being two millimeters larger, the 46-millimeter Apple Watch Series 10 is 0.3 grams lighter than my previous device.

I’m frankly astonished by how vibrant the Apple Watch Series 10’s display is. Upgrading to an LTPO3 OLED Retina display, Apple now offers Always-on capabilities which, truthfully, I could take or leave. The color brilliance and depth of its hues are what speaks to me. Across the app icons or the fitness rings, everything seems to pop much more across the Apple Watch Series 10. Brightness is also drastically improved — the Apple Watch Series 10 features up to 2,000 nits of brightness, doubling what the Series 4 supports. There’s also a 40 percent increase in brightness when viewing the watch’s face at an angle. This makes it far easier to catch a glance of the time or a notification while at my desk.

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Apple Watch Series 10 has a noticeable bump in performance

Coming from the Apple Watch Series 4, I feel like I’m living in the future

The Apple Watch Series 4 ran off the S4 chipset. For its time, the S4 processor ran efficiently, allowing users to quickly set up workouts, conduct onboard app use, and power the device’s GPS functions. Apple Watch Series 10 features the S10 chip, which, to no surprise, is far more efficient at handling tasks and navigating through apps. Apple optimized the state of navigating through menus using the Digital Crown, and now, it’s effortless to go from the refined Smart Stack widgets straight into an app.

Although both devices provide around 18 hours of battery life, the efficiency of the S10 processor helps achieve that allotment much, much easier. I can typically go a day and a half using the Apple Watch Series 10 before it needs to be charged. However, that could easily be extended for up to 36 hours using the Low Power Mode. Apple Watch Series 4, on the other hand, always sits on its charger before I go to bed simply because battery drainage happens more frequently when I use the fitness apps.

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Apple Watch Series 10 has a lot more health and fitness features

Access to the Vitals app feels like the culmination of years of work from Apple

Fitness has always been a focal point for the Apple Watch. As I became more heavily invested in my own fitness journey, my use of the Apple Watch Series 4 only grew. It helped me track steps, sleep patterns, as well as performance throughout my workouts.

The Apple Watch Series 10 does carry over many of the health and fitness features, with a few notable additions introduced throughout the year. One of the big ones is the sleep apnea notification system — I’m an infrequent snorer, so I’m not battling sleep apnea like I know some friends and family do. However, I do like to have a track record of when it may flare up so I can keep an eye out. Another of my favorite fitness additions is the Training Load feature. After each workout, the Apple Watch Series 10 has me rank my effort from one to ten. Using this, the device grants me a far better metric of whether I’m pushing myself or going easy during a workout.

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Apple Watch Series 10 also has its Vital app, which draws from many facets of the device’s health and fitness tracking systems. The app reads your heart rate, respiratory rate, sleep duration, temperature, and blood oxygen levels (in Canada). The Apple Watch Series 10 can provide a much more textured and tailored rundown of key metrics, and due to the limitations of the Apple Watch Series 4, it’s something the older device just isn’t capable of rendering. The Vitals app and what it provides truly feels like the endgame of so much work Apple has poured into the Apple Watch. It’s easy to read and understand in detail when a key metric fluctuates from one day to another.

Apple Watch Series 10 has a plethora of quality-of-life features to enjoy

The double tap function is killer when I’m busy

Upon the launch of watchOS 10.1, Apple introduced the double tap gesture for the Apple Watch Series 10 as well as the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which is a brand-new way to control the wearable. By tapping the index finger and thumb of the hand wearing the device, the Apple Watch Series 10 can perform some common actions — I’ve been regularly using it to open and scroll through widgets across the Smart Stack. Flipping through email notifications, the weather, and scanning a text message now requires no physical interaction with the watch’s display itself.

I’m also enjoying how the Apple Watch Series 10 is untethering itself from my iPhone 15 Pro. Supporting on-device Siri capabilities, I can ask Siri for info and gain responses much quicker, as it no longer has to process and relay info from my phone. Apple Watch Series 10 also has a shockingly good speaker — it certainly won’t replace my headphones, but if I want to listen to a podcast while quickly doing laundry, I can queue up songs on my watch rather than carry my phone around with me. As someone who missed the Apple Watch Series 9, there’s been an adjustment using the QWERTY keyboard for texts and responses. But I’m slowly getting used to it.

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When should you upgrade to the Apple Watch Series 10?

It depends on which model is currently on your wrist

For those who have been keeping up with the Apple Watch on an annual or bi-annual basis, a lot of these features may not be the end-all-be-all. However, for anyone coming from an Apple Watch Series 4 or perhaps Apple Watch Series 5, I recommend upgrading to the Apple Watch Series 10.

It’s a night and day’s worth of difference with so many little touches that improve the user experience. It was a worthwhile purchase for my wallet, and it was also one that felt inevitable after the Apple Watch Series 4 was the last model to receive watchOS 11 support. It’s almost certainly going to be left behind around this time next year when the new software launches.

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