I reviewed the Apple Watch Series 11. It stacks big wins atop small upgrades

By Nadeem Sarwar Published October 8, 2025

The Apple Watch Series 11 doesn’t set a new standard in terms of wearable sensing. That’s not necessarily a knock against it. On the contrary, it builds on a formula that is already one of the most polished out there, and then sprinkles a few extra wellness perks into the mix. 

Not much is there to say about the looks, though the build is terrific as ever, and it’s the slimmest watch from Apple to date. It still fares pretty well at activity sensing, and does a better job than its archrival in the WearOS universe. 

What’s new this time around are a handful of new wellness features, with a side serving of AI. The new sleep score system will make sense to the masses, and the workout buddy is a genuinely good implementation of AI assistance for your exercise sessions. The hypertension alert is an FDA-cleared feature that will hopefully help users in the same vein as the Afib detection system.

The jump in battery life and fast charging chops is something that every buyer will appreciate. For the first time, I’ve dared to start my day wearing an Apple Watch and return home without any battery life anxiety. It’s reliable, and at last, a full-day warrior that many users have been yearning for years.

Support for 5G network is another practical convenience on this one. But as I mentioned above, it doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel when it comes to smartwatches. What it does well, is build upon solid foundations and continues to make minor, but meaningful, improvements without raising the bill.

The biggest reason I would recommend the Apple Watch Series 11 to anyone is the battery life. For the first time, Apple’s official battery mileage figures went from 18 to 24 hours this year. I can report that the claimed 33% gain reflects well in day-to-day usage.

I have a heck of a ton of apps installed on my phone and smartwatch, and I interact with them actively, without any app exceptions. I also pushed it for an hour each of running and an at-home workout on a daily basis. 

Yet, not once did I run into a situation where I had to enable the low-power mode. Even with my favorite watch face set to always-on mode all day long, the Apple Watch Series 11 managed to end each day with roughly 25-30% juice still left in the tank. 

That reserved power matters a lot, because you can wear the watch at night and use it to track sleep habits until the next morning without worrying about the battery draining mid-way through the shut-eye session. 

Simply put, if you fully charge the smartwatch once each day, you’re good for tracking sleep, workouts, and all your daytime chores without worrying too much. The advertised jump doesn’t quite translate exactly in terms of per-charge longevity, but the extra few hairs you get make a lot of difference. 

My brother, who is also an avid smartwatch enthusiast and maintains his own diary where he compares the figures he got from Samsung, Google, and OnePlus smartwatches, expressed his pleasant surprise. “It’s finally not terrible,” he pointed out bluntly. I have to agree, at least with my history of battery anxiety with previous Apple Watch models. 

The slightly faster top-up also lends a helping hand. In my most recent test, using the supplied charging puck and an official iPhone charging brick, the smartwatch went from empty to full within 80 minutes. In the early burst, expectedly, the depleted battery revitalizes faster and gives you 8-9 hours of usage with roughly 20 minutes of plugged-in time. 

Apple notes that the Series 11 is its thinnest out there. To be fair, you won’t notice a tangible difference compared to its predecessor, but if you’re rocking an older model, you will find this one to be a tad sleeker.

The fundamental design language remains unchanged, though I am a tad partial towards the jet black variant on the aluminum trim. This one tries to replicate the polished aesthetics of the titanium model, and looks much better on the wrist than the other shades.

I switched from a 45mm Apple Watch Series 8 to a 42mm trim on the Series 11, and the difference in size and heft is easily discernible. The strap lock mechanism is also unchanged, but I instantly switched from the supplied silicone strap to a more breathable third-party fabric band. 

The big change this time around is a layer of ceramic deposited atop the Ion-X glass that makes the display twice as scratch-resistant. That’s a big win, because I’ve scuffed the display of almost every Apple Watch I’ve owned so far. 

On the pricier models with a Titanium case, you get sapphire crystal protection that is even sturdier. The display serves up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness, which is sufficient for comfortable usage under daylight, but you still have to grapple with the occasional glare and reflections of bright objects. 

Unless you are particularly conscious about your sleep health, terms like REM and core sleep depicted on colorful graphs and broken down in hours mean little. With the Apple Watch Series 11, the company is introducing a far more accessible system called Sleep Score. 

It’s not just easy to grasp, but also a more holistic measure of a person’s sleep habits. Once you set a schedule for your bedtime and a sleep target, your sleep is tracked across stages as well as quantitatively. Based on your consistency relative to the daily target and the scientifically-measured quality, a sleep score is served each morning. 

I love this feature, though I am not entirely sold on its accuracy. For example, I set a target of sleeping at least eight hours each night. Yet, on my most recent tracking test, I was assigned an “OK” rating and 67/100 score, despite sleeping only 3 hours and 20 minutes. Moreover, my sleep was interrupted twice, and I vividly remember waking up in that spell. 

Across two nights, when measured against the Galaxy Watch 8, the Apple Watch Series 11 offered a more modest estimate of the REM phase, though the overall hours clocked by each device were in line. I, however, miss the snore detection feature that the Galaxy Health ecosystem has to offer. 

That’s pertinent because snoring is a sign of Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), something that the Apple Watch Series 11 also claims to detect using motion cues during sleep. It doesn’t, however, record or account for the snoring, but relies on accelerometer data. To get a sleep apnoea warning, the Apple smartwatch needs 30 days of sleep data before the analysis kicks into action. 

Something that Apple hasn’t quite managed to fix — just like its peers — is the lowered logging of intermittent wake times at night and the overestimation of deep sleep. But compared to the Google Pixel Watch 3 or Galaxy Watch 8, the Series 11 still fares better, based on my recollections.

One of the marquee features to land with the Apple Watch Series 11 is hypertension notifications. Just to be clear, the smartwatch won’t tell users the systolic and diastolic blood pressure values. Instead, it will analyze the volume of blood flowing in vessels relative to the heart rate. Just like sleep apnea, it will assess data over a 30-day period to look for signs of elevated blood pressure.

As per the World Health Organization’s estimates, hypertension affects over 1.4 billion adults globally. And if it goes undetected and not treated properly, it could spiral into life-threatening scenarios such as stroke, heart attack, kidney failure, vision loss, and reproductive impairment, says the American Heart Association (AHA). 

Eduardo Sanchez, M.D., FAHA, Chief Medical Officer for Prevention for the American Heart Association, recently told Digital Trends that heart diseases kill the highest number of Americans each year. So, it’s pretty reassuring to see that Apple is offering a system to help detect it. 

But do keep in mind that hypertension alerts on the Apple Watch are merely an early warning measure, and should not be seen as a proper medical diagnosis tool. If you live with blood pressure-related conditions, a medical-grade blood pressure cuff and proper doctor consultation are still the best way forward. 

As Dr Felix Mahfoud, chair of the cardiology department at the University Hospital Basel, puts it, “no one should ever base any treatment or management decision based on a smartwatch.” Simply put, if you’ve never paid attention to your blood pressure health, the watch’s system just might warn you about abnormal levels. And if it does, head to a hospital for further diagnosis and treatment. 

Apple did not break any ground this year in terms of the number of activities that its latest smartwatch can handle, or the accuracy of the sensors. But that’s not necessarily bad news. On the contrary, it continues to rank among the most accurate at heart activity tracking, especially during workouts. 

By default, you still get support for roughly 80 workout types on the smartwatch, but you can add more if you don’t find the required one in the list. What’s new this year is the Workout Buddy. It’s a feature powered by Apple Intelligence, and essentially puts an exercise coach on your wrist, and in your ears. 

The system can broadly detect eight types of activities — ranging from running and hiking to high-intensity training (HIIT) — and accordingly offers suggestions based on the data collected by the watch sensors. It’s fundamentally similar to the running coach feature on the latest Samsung smartwatches, but Apple’s implementation is more diverse. 

When you begin, it starts with a chirpy motivational announcement, followed by a quick update on your daily exercise goals. Once the activity ends, you see the stats on the screen while the workout buddy announces the key aspects, such as distance walked, progress on the activity circle, and more motivation, so that you maintain the streak.

Now, let’s dig into the more granular side of the debate. I tested the Apple Watch Series 11 at running, cycling, and elliptical bike against the Galaxy Watch 8, while using a chest-strapped heart rate sensor as the reference device. Across resting and workout phases, the Apple Watch Series 11 had the upper hand across sessions lasting 30-60 minutes worth of evaluation. 

The Apple Watch Series 11 was more accurate at logging the change in heart rate during the brief rest periods, and it also fared slightly better when the heart rate spiked during intense sessions. Apple’s smartwatch also proved to be the more trusty choice for my cycling session, though it tends to underestimate the heart activity zone behind its Samsung rival.

In outdoor cycling, the disparity was roughly around 12-15% at measuring the peak heart rate during the short bursts of acceleration. For the rest, both the watches delivered consistent results, with a 1-2% gain landing in Apple’s favor. Compared to my older Apple Watch Series 8, the Series 11 doesn’t break any new ground in terms of accuracy. 

If you’re still rocking the Series 9 or a later version, you arguably don’t need the Series 11. But if your wrist needs something slimmer with better per-charge output, you can consider upgrading. Oh, did I mention that blood oxygen measurement is back? Yeah, that too.

5G support, hypertension alert, and easier-to-grasp sleep analysis are other perks. But some of these features will land on the older models, too, so it’s worth keeping that in mind. If you are wearing a three-year-old model or something more antique, the Series 11 is a worthy, future-proof upgrade that leaves the doors open for more AI-powered wellness features down the road. 

You should buy the Apple Watch Series 11 if…

You should not buy the Apple Watch Series 11 if…