Apple Watch Series 11 review: The best (but don’t buy it)

Best Prices Today: Apple Watch Series 11 (42mm)

In contrast to the iPhone Air, this year’s new flagship Apple Watch sprang few surprises. The Series 11 is very much more of the same, in most respects following the same formula as 2024’s excellent (and also conservative) Series 10 and breaking little new ground.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course. The Apple Watch has always been a high-quality product capable of effortlessly dominating its market. And while aesthetically speaking the Apple Watch has evolved at a glacial pace, its design has a timeless charm. If the Series 11 can only address the few weaknesses of the previous model, while delivering top-tier performance, it should earn a hearty recommendation.

So let’s find out. In our in-depth Apple Watch Series 11 review, we put the device through a gruelling battery of tests and help you decide if this is the best Apple Watch for you.

Apple Watch Series 11 design: Timeless, or tedious?

In terms of both big picture and fine detail, this is the same design from last year. The case is the usual squarish rectangle with rounded corners, the brushed metal around the edge contrasting pleasingly with the big glossy screen. There are just two hardware controls: the Digital Crown and an unobtrusive button, both on the right-hand side. Everything is smooth, neat, and minimalist.

It looks good, it feels good, and it’s easy to use. The fact that the design hasn’t changed since last year–or, in any really significant way, since the first model came out in 2015–doesn’t need to enter your thinking at all unless you’re tired of an existing model and looking for a bold new fashion accessory.

At 9.7mm thick, the Series 11 is slimmer than the SE 3 or indeed any Series model other than last year’s Series 10 (which is also 9.7mm). This relatively slimline profile is a boon when wearing the watch at night; I found the (12mm) Ultra models, by contrast, completely unsuitable for sleep tracking. But bear in mind that the Series 11’s convex underside does press down into your wrist and, after prolonged use, can leave a slight divot. This is one of those things that you get used to but may feel odd if this is your first Apple Watch.

Consider too that thickness isn’t the only factor when it comes to comfort. The Ultra was a bulky distraction not only because it’s 12mm thick but also because its front surface measures a whopping 49mm by 44mm. Even the larger Series 11 isn’t quite that big, but it still took up a fair old chunk of area on my wrist. I moved from the smaller (40mm) SE 3 to the larger (46mm) Series 11 and found it significantly more obtrusive because of its footprint, despite being slimmer.

One last note on the design: the Series 11 is very slightly heavier than the Series 10, probably because of the bigger battery. The differential varies depending on the size and material, but the biggest increase I could find was just 1.6g, and I’m fairly confident in predicting that you won’t notice the extra weight.

Apple Watch Series 11 display: Bright, tough, and always on

While the overall design hasn’t changed very much over the years, the screen has certainly improved. The Series 11’s display is big (by smartwatch standards), bright (up to 2,000 nits, which is twice what you get from the SE 3), and easy to see in all weathers. The corners are rounded off to match the case and more optimally exploit the space available. The screen is an attractive and superbly usable element of the design: its crowning glory, really.

This is an always-on screen, too, which means you get to view the time and important information even when the watch would previously have turned itself off to preserve battery life–a useful option when you’re exercising and can’t easily turn your wrist or tap the screen. Each watch face has been designed to have an “off” version which is dimmer and less colorful, and uses fewer animated elements. Some are better at achieving this balance than others.

A clever colleague of mine has argued that always-on screens can be a negative on smartphones because they are fundamentally distracting. I think that’s a great point. But smartwatches are a different matter, because an “always-on display” is exactly what we grew used to on traditional wristwatches. Seeing the time doesn’t make you want to start interacting with your watch. It doesn’t have that effect on me, anyway.

At any rate, all of this was true last year, and it’s still true today… which, again, is fine. But there is a change to the screen for the Series 11, which is a new anti-scratch ceramic coating on the Ion-X glass for aluminum models. Apple claims the Series 11 in aluminum is twice as resistant to scratches as the equivalent Series 10. Titanium models aren’t affected by this change because they keep the same sapphire front crystal.

Scratch resistance is a tough quality to test scientifically without subjecting a review sample to extreme punishment, but I can confirm that my Series 11’s screen didn’t pick up a single imperfection in a couple of weeks of reasonably careless use.

Apple Watch Series 11 features: No news is good news

Most of the things you’ll do with your Apple Watch have been part of the feature set for years, or even from the very start: Workout, Activity, accessing notifications from your iPhone without having to take it out of your pocket. Swimming workouts were added as far back as 2016, sleep tracking in 2017, and the compass in 2018. It’s been the consummate fitness tracker and health companion for the better part of a decade and it would be unwise to expect any groundbreaking additions to the Apple Watch’s repertoire in 2025.

To be clear, that’s a good thing for users, even if it might make Apple’s life harder when trying to persuade customers to upgrade their older watches. When you’re trying to remain active during the day, your Apple Watch will monitor your metrics and track your workouts (including routes if you go outdoors) and present the data in a user-friendly way; when you’re trying to get a good night’s rest it keeps an eye on your sleep “performance” and shows you a handy Sleep Score in the morning. I found Sleep Score, which is a new feature in watchOS 26 and is available on older watch models too, a little optimistic, certainly by comparison with my gloomy old Fitbit. But the main use of this information is comparative rather than scientifically objective: you just need to know if changes to your behavior result in more or less sleep.

Features added since the early days tend to come under the category of peace of mind, by which I mean you don’t interact with them on a regular basis (or at all), but it’s comforting to know they’re there if you ever need them. One would hope you’ll never use Fall or Crash Detection, for example, or have to resort to emergency SOS; and no news is good news when it comes to hypertension and sleep apnea notifications. Apple’s engineers love to add a new health sensor each year, but these generally add additional data points to the device’s overall understanding of your health rather than being an exciting or transformative upgrade.

In fact, when compared to the Series 10 or SE 3 (which this year gains wrist temperature tracking, retrospective ovulation estimates, and sleep apnea notifications), the Series 11 doesn’t have any exclusive new health features. To bang the drum one last time, that’s because it doesn’t really need any more, and the remaining few that may be on Apple’s wish list (blood glucose, perhaps) aren’t viable or cost-effective quite yet. The Apple Watch Series 11 can monitor your health just about as well as a wrist-mounted computer could be expected to, and Tim Cook will no doubt receive plenty more letters from grateful owners whose lives have been saved by its various wellness features.

The most significant new hardware feature is support for 5G connectivity, which means those who pay extra for a cellular model can enjoy faster connection speeds when away from their iPhone. There’s more 5G infrastructure out there now than when the iPhone gained support for the technology five years ago, but this is still a deeply niche upgrade for the Apple Watch. Many of us don’t think cellular is remotely worth the extra money, and most of the time, you’ll have an iPhone and Apple Watch close together. This sets up the Apple Watch to be a standalone device in the future, but for now, it strikes me as a relatively minor upgrade.

Apple Watch Series 11 battery life: Stunning longevity

Every non-Ultra Apple Watch, from the first model in 2015 to the Series 10 last year, has had exactly the same estimated battery life: 18 hours. In reality battery performance has fluctuated over the years, as specs have been upgraded and power-hungry features have been added, but they’ve been close enough that Apple has lumped them all together under that same estimate.

But that run ended this year, and the Series 11 has been given a more generous estimate of 24 hours. After all this time, that’s a major statement of intent.

And the Series 11 doesn’t just talk the talk, battery-wise. It performed superbly in testing. On a first run-through, it lasted a day, then a night, then another day, and finally expired (based on sleep tracking data) at around 5 am on the morning of a third day. On a second run-through, it was still alive when I woke on the third morning and lasted until 8 am. Two-day battery life doesn’t match some smartwatches and fitness trackers on the market, of course, but such devices achieve their greater longevity by offering fewer features, dimmer screens, and so on. By the standards of Apple Watches, this is a return to the glory days of the Series 2, and yet the Series 11 achieves this despite its inclusion of an always-on screen, sleep tracking, and much more.

And it appears to be consistent, too. My eternal refrain when discussing Apple Watch battery performance is that it’s very subjective, heavily dependent on workout activity in particular. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Series 11. A 30-minute treadmill workout, which I’d normally expect to deal a heavy blow to power levels, merely caused a drop from 100 to 97, and regardless of usage, the Series 11 consistently hit the two-day threshold during the testing period. You can expect that to drop a little in the long term, as the battery starts to wear out, but this is such an excellent performance that you’ve got plenty of wiggle room before it becomes a problem.

And the good news doesn’t stop there. I’m pleased to report that while the Series 11 loses power slowly, it gains it very quickly.

The Series 10 had fast charging last year, and the Series 11 has the same estimate for getting from zero to 80 percent power: 30 minutes. I actually found this slightly optimistic, and my test sample needed something closer to 40 minutes to achieve this. But that’s still strong, because that 40-minute charge (very doable while you’re getting ready to start work or go out in the evening) is going to set you up for a good day and a half of use.

And the really impressive work happens when you shrink the charging time further. Unlike the Series 10, the Series 11 also gets a fast-charge estimate for just 15 minutes, which Apple claims is enough for up to eight hours of “normal use”. And this is absolutely legit. I charged for 15 minutes, and the Series 11 jumped from zero to 40 percent. And that 40 percent was enough for it to last, not for eight hours, but for more than 16. Wild stuff.

Slightly ridiculously, Apple even gives an estimate for just five minutes of charging, which it says is enough for up to eight hours of sleep tracking. That one I’m less convinced by, because five minutes of charging only took my Series 11 from zero to just 6 percent, and a night’s tracking generally costs me somewhere in the region of 15 percentage points. But if you can’t spare more than five minutes for charging, it seems to me that you’ve got bigger problems in life than your Apple Watch failing to complete a full night’s sleep tracking.

Apple Watch Series 11 price: A premium option

The Apple Watch Series starts at the usual $399/£369, but the exact price you pay depends on the case size, case material, connectivity, and strap you choose. It’s a premium option; if your budget can’t stretch this high, consider the Apple Watch SE 3, which does many of the same things at a lower price.

• Apple Watch Series 11 (42mm, GPS): From $399/£369
• Apple Watch Series 11 (42mm, GPS + cellular): From $499/£469
• Apple Watch Series 11 (46mm, GPS): From $429/£399
• Apple Watch Series 11 (46mm, GPS + cellular): From $529/£499

Should you buy the Apple Watch Series 11?

The Apple Watch Series 11 is a truly excellent smartwatch: it looks great, it feels great, it’s easy to use and offers a wide range of health and fitness features. It’s hard to think of any way this product could be improved. But I have two issues with it.

The first is minor, and that’s the almost total lack of upgrades from last year. Same design, same S10 chip, same health features. The only changes worth talking about are 5G (which won’t make a difference to 90 percent of customers 90 percent of the time) and battery life… which admittedly is really impressive, but probably isn’t enough to justify the upgrade over last year’s model. Still, for everyone who hasn’t got a Series 10, this shortage of change doesn’t have to matter at all.

The second and more serious issue is that the Series 11 is overpriced. Not because it’s gone up in price from last year (it hasn’t) or because it’s a worse product (it isn’t), but because the new and very much improved SE 3 has suddenly changed the market. Now, for the first time, you can get a brilliant Apple Watch for $249/£219, and in that context $399/£369 for a watch that’s better, but not a lot better, seems like a bad deal. And so, regretfully, I would advise most readers to ignore this beautiful smartwatch and get the SE 3 instead.

Best Prices Today: Apple Watch Series 11 (42mm)