Apple Watch review

Picture the scene: a modishly lit restaurant. You sit surrounded by tables with couples face-deep in their smartphones, the eerie blue-grey glow lighting their faces more brightly than the restaurateur’s careful ambience.

You: Well, honestly, look at them all. They’re not even talking to each other. I mean what’s the point of going to dinner if all you do is bury your head like that. It’s a disgrace. Ooh, hold on, I think I’ve got a text. *dives for phone*

Tackling that is the primary job of any smartwatch, and Apple’s smartwatch does so with characteristic grace. But it’s only the first job. What the Apple Watch does is apply a little extra grace to almost every aspect of smartwatch design, and while its capabilities each have their own small impact, they combine to make life just a little bit better.

Take them all together – and factor in the possibilities presented by the Watch’s powerful platform, and the fact that it’s lovely – and you have one of the most desirable gadgets of recent years.

Apple design, Apple pricing

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The Apple Watch comes in two sizes. The case, measured vertically, is either 38mm or 42mm. Every single person who’s seen the 42mm model I’ve been testing immediately presumed it was the smaller one – this is not an oversized watch.

David Phelan