Review: Apple Watch Series 9

This week, the Watch Series 9 prompted me to say “pfffft” out loud. The official version of watchOS 10 dropped on Monday with a new feature called State of Mind. In the Health app, you can pick how often you want State of Mind to ping you, whether it’s at the end of the day or throughout the day. When prompted, you twist the watch's crown to scroll through colors on a flower-shaped graphic to dial in exactly how pleasant or unpleasant you’re feeling, then answer a question or two about what the feeling is and why you’re feeling it.

I opted to let State of Mind ping me throughout the day. (If I let it ping me only at night, I would mostly say “tired.”) My wrist now buzzes throughout the day, and sometimes at the most inopportune times, like right when I’m lifting the blender down from the shelf. Another time, it buzzed in the middle of my frantic morning rush to get my 6- and 8-year-old kids fed, dressed, and off to school. I laughed heartily at the idea that I had time to log my feelings.

But then I stopped. Who was I? I’m not a paramedic. No one was coding on the table. Was my kid’s first-grade teacher really going to ruin his life if we arrived at 7:51 instead of 7:50? No. I logged my state of mind. Then I went to the bathroom. It’s OK to stop and take a minute. Maybe several. I might even finish my cup of coffee before sitting down to work!

Despite the occasional misstep, Apple has carved out a reputation for itself as a privacy protector. Beyond going toe-to-toe with agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect its customers' privacy, Apple has built a suite of products and services that are for the most part safer to use than the competition. When you log your health data in an iPhone or Apple Watch, it is encrypted on the device and accessible only to you. It’s also encrypted on its way to and from your iCloud storage. These layers of security let Apple offer ever-more-sensitive health-tracking features with each iteration of its products, like adding the ability to log your medications or track your menstrual cycles.

The new Watch Series 9, which is on sale and arrives in stores this week, is built around Apple's new S9 chipset. This is the same processor inside the new Watch Ultra 2. The S9 chipset lets both watches process simple Siri commands on the device itself. When your voice commands don't have to travel to and from the cloud to be processed by Apple's servers, the watch can deliver what you're asking for much more quickly. This scheme also theoretically makes your interactions more private. That level of protection is reassuring when you're noting your mental state, marking down the days of your period, or logging your weight after stepping on the scale.

Another thing enabled by the S9 chip is a new interaction called Double Tap. When you swing your watch toward your face and tap your index finger and your thumb together twice, the watch registers this as something like a button press. By default it triggers the primary button currently on your watch screen. So you can use Double Tap to answer a call for example, or to hang up at the end of one. The ability to dismiss an alarm or swipe through your smart stack while your hands are full is a bonus. The feature—itself an extension of Apple's accessibility software for its wearables—utilizes the watch's gyroscope, accelerometer, and blood flow sensors to determine when you're tapping your fingers.

Double Tap will be available via a software update in October, but Apple sent me a device with Double Tap enabled so I could experience it early for this review. The new feature comes with some limitations. If you’ve set up the AssistiveTouch features that let you pinch or clench your hand to control your watch, you won’t be able to use them with Double Tap. Assistive Touch must be turned off for Double Tap to work. You also can’t stop a workout mid-run, because there’s a lot of shaking and hand movement and just a lot of blood flowing all over the place. In my limited experience with the feature, I mostly liked using Double Tap to stop and start music on my HomePod Mini and to start and stop timers. Other functions, like responding to texts, were a little confusing. I'll need more practice.

A couple more things to note about the chips. The S9 processes tasks much more quickly, which makes the battery more efficient. The difference is notable. I have the smaller 41-mm Series 9, and the battery life on Apple's smaller watch models has historically been not so great. It’s a pleasant surprise to wake up in the morning and see the Series 9 has 40 to 50 percent of its battery left. Also useful is the new second-gen ultra-wideband chip, which enhances the device's precision finding features. The watch can pinpoint my iPhone almost anywhere in my house and lead me right to it. It works pretty much the same as locating an AirTag in the phone's Find My app.

Apple has claimed that pairing the Series 9 watch with a recycled nylon sports loop makes the Watch Series 9 a carbon-neutral product. (Apple even designed a new carbon-neutral symbol for its marketing.) We have suggested that you regard such claims about carbon neutral gadgets skeptically, since producing any new gadget is going to harm the planet more than not producing one. I have the Series 9 in the new pink color paired with the recycled sport loop ($49). It is very nice. The sport loop is my favorite Apple Watch strap anyway, as it doesn't trap sweat or irritate my skin. The Nike sport band ($49) with recycled plastic flakes in it also feels dense and weighty. So yay for more recycled materials in the straps.

WatchOS 10 draws on the improved hardware capabilities of Apple's wearables—those newly-redesigned apps and gorgeous new Palette face do look nicer on the Series 9’s brighter 2,000-nit screen than on the Series 8's dimmer 1,000-nit display. While WatchOS 10’s outdoor features seem designed for the Watch Ultra 2, many more health features work just fine on the Series 9.

Probably my favorite of these is the new Ambient Daylight feature, which now uses the ambient light sensor on your watch to track how much time you are outside. Personally, I find that spending time outside is a veritable panacea to all my ills, physical and mental. I’m interested to test this feature once the weather starts becoming more gray and cloudy where I live in Portland, Oregon, but in the late summer it’s shockingly accurate. It’s inarguably a sign that something is wrong when I go from my usual 200-plus minutes outside to just nine. (I was hungover.)

But State of Mind and the new Journal app, which rolls out later this year, are other things entirely. So many of my memories are just digital photos and Instagram posts. Now, in addition to collecting images, we are being encouraged to log our very complicated, human feelings on the iCloud—regardless of whether you consider Apple’s reputation for privacy to be earned. (Apple seems to have taken a great many steps in this regard; however, I know better than to promise you that your data will never be leaked.)

As someone who has struggled with anxiety for years, State of Mind is simultaneously inadequate and painfully intimate. Tracking your sleep is one thing, but it's weird to take an assessment outside of a doctor’s office that asks you whether you’ve ever considered ending it all. How are you feeling right this minute? I love my kids, but getting them to school gives me heart palpitations. Cleaning up one of my kids' expensive toys that my dog chewed up is annoying, but when she dies, I'll be destroyed.

When the watch buzzed my wrist at one of those inopportune moments, I took a second to log my anxiety on the app. Then, breathing deeply and quietly, I took the Series 9 off my wrist, put it on the charger, and went to help my kids get dressed. It’s true that many of us could use some help with our mental health. Personally, I have found that a better way of dealing with the abyss is to stop looking inward and logging it on a screen, and start looking outward—at the trees, my kids, the dog—instead.