Apple Watch Series 12 review: A new standard for health tracking and active living for iPhone users
The live heart rate complication provides real-time heart rate data, offering instant insights into your cardiovascular health at a glance. Picture: Apple
The Apple Watch Series 12 impresses with advanced health sensing, a familiar design, and smart features that make it an indispensable daily companion for iPhone users. The new watch has more accurate heart rate tracking and a host of intelligent features.
The Apple Watch Series 12 keeps the sleek, familiar design of previous models. However, a closer look reveals subtle improvements. My 46mm review unit has a black finish and comes with a black sport band, which is probably the safest option for those who don’t want to stand out. Like all Apple Watches since the original, it uses compatible bands.
The base model has an aluminium case, for a comfortable, lightweight feel without sacrificing durability. The rounded edges slide smoothly into pockets and under clothing, making it a great daily companion.
Compared to the Series 11, the Series 12 looks the same from the front. But turn it around, and the difference becomes evident thanks to the new sensor array.
The base model features Ceramic Shield 2 glass and an IP6X rating, built to withstand normal daily use. However, it falls short of the sapphire glass on the premium Series 12 models, which use ceramic and titanium. This difference will be noticeable in real-world use, especially if you often expose your watch to rough conditions.
The Apple Watch Series 12 Retina display is stunning, with a 416 x 496 pixel resolution. Thanks to the latest OLED technology, it delivers a sharp, vivid visual experience with deep blacks and vibrant colours, making it easy to read notifications, workout data, and more, even in bright sunlight thanks to a peak brightness of 2,000 nits.
I prefer the larger display on the 46mm model, which makes full use of watchOS. It shows more information at once, making it easier to read detailed data like heart rate metrics, workout summaries, and navigation directions. The screen size also makes the watch more versatile for tasks that need more visual space.
One of my favourite features is the refresh rate, which can go as low as 1Hz. This helps save battery, but it also lets certain clock faces display the second hand in real time with the always-on display enabled.
One of the most significant improvements in the Apple Watch Series 12 is its enhanced health-sensing capabilities. The watch now features a larger electrode surface area for better skin contact during ECGs, redesigned photodiodes for more efficient light capture, and larger, more efficient LEDs for more accurate heart rate monitoring. Apple claims that this combination delivers the most accurate heart rate sensing of any wearable, according to an internal Apple study.
The watch now samples heart rate data every five seconds, even when at rest. That’s sixty times more frequent than before. This high-frequency data enables features like the live heart rate complication, which shows your heart rate in real time on the watch face.
The watch also tracks recovery heart rate variability (HRV), a metric that offers insights into stress and recovery.
Battery life on the Apple Watch Series 12 remains one of its weakest features. With moderate use, including daily notifications, GPS tracking, and occasional workouts, the watch lasts just shy of two days before needing a recharge. While this is a slight improvement over previous models, it’s far from class-leading. For dedicated workout enthusiasts, the watch can track workouts for up to 10 hours.
The new fast-charging cable included in the box provides a substantial boost: a 15-minute charge adds another 18 hours of use, keeping the watch fully functional throughout the day.
The Apple Watch Series 12 continues to improve activity tracking and smart features. The new health-sensing system enables a wide range of health metrics, including continuous heart rate monitoring, ECG, blood oxygen levels, and the new recovery HRV. These features provide a comprehensive view of your overall health and wellness.
The new Readiness app offers similar features to Whoop’s Recovery Score. It analyses your recent activity, vitals, and sleep to give you a clear score and recommendation on how to approach the day. This is incredibly useful for both serious athletes and casual users looking to prioritise their daily routines. The app also integrates well with the new daytime vitals view, which provides real-time updates on your health status even before they show up overnight.
Siri AI offers a more capable and context-aware assistant. It can provide quick access to world knowledge and personal context, making it a valuable tool during workouts or daily tasks.
Audio Intelligence features like Automatic Shazam, Sound Recognition, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap are new additions that take advantage of the S11 chip's power.
Live Rewind on the Apple Watch Series 12 is a pretty interesting feature that lets you see a text transcription of the last 15 seconds of spoken audio. It’s all about keeping things local and private, so you don’t have to worry about your conversations being stored or shared.
To use it, you just need to double-press the Digital Crown. It’s not something that happens automatically or in the background, so you’re in full control. The watch constantly captures a rolling 15-second buffer of ambient audio and stores it in a secure area called the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip. This means the raw audio is completely off-limits to the operating system, apps, or Apple.
When you activate it, the watch sends the buffered audio to your paired iPhone for on-device speech recognition. If your iPhone isn’t nearby, the audio gets deleted right away. To make sure you and others know it’s active, the watch plays an audible chime (even in silent mode) and shows a full-screen animation with a microphone indicator.
The text snippet appears on your watch face and will disappear after 30 seconds if the screen dims, unless you manually save it to the Siri app. And here’s the cool part: no audio recordings are ever created or stored, so your privacy is rock-solid.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t test Siri AI or Audio Intelligence because it’s not available in the EU, and Apple hasn’t shared a timeline for when they might arrive.
The Apple Watch Series 12 is a compelling upgrade if you’re coming from an Apple Watch that’s a few years old. It offers enhanced health sensing, smarter features, and reliable battery life. For those looking for a comprehensive health and activity tracker, the Series 12 delivers the best overall package for iPhone users.
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