Apple Watch Series 11 finally brings long-rumored hypertension notifications, along with other new features that make it a great incremental upgrade. Chief among them are 24-hour battery life, speedier 5G connectivity for cellular models, and a more scratch-resistant screen.
“Today, we’re making the best watch in the world even better,” said Stan Ng, Apple’s VP of Apple Watch and health marketing, as he introduced Apple Watch Series 11 during Tuesday’s Awe Dropping product launch. “It’s our thinnest and most comfortable watch, and it’s even more durable.”
The new features look promising, but those hoping for a redesign will be disappointed. Series 11 rocks the same curves as its predecessors.
Apple Watch Series 11 launch: New hypertension alerts, 5G and more
Image: Apple
Over the years, Apple Watch has layered on an impressive array of health metrics as Cupertino’s pitch for the smartwatch pivoted from geek fashion to fitness essential.
The original Apple Watch could measure your heart rate. Later models upped the ante on health features, adding an ECG app for electrocardiograms, a blood oxygen sensor that seemed perfectly timed for the COVID-19 pandemic, and wrist temperature monitoring.
In recent years, the pace of innovation has slowed. (Apple even had to disable the Blood Oxygen app due to a patent dispute, before coming up with a workaround this summer.)
It seemed Cupertino was running out of things it could reliably detect on our wrists. But this year, Apple Watch Series 11 delivers a brand-new health metric: blood pressure monitoring. (The feature also will come to the new Apple Watch Ultra 3 as well as some older Apple Watches: Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.)
New hypertension alerts could identify potentially deadly conditions
Like some other Apple Watch health features, the new hypertension monitoring runs in the background and could identify high blood pressure, a disease sometimes called “the silent killer” because it often causes no noticeable symptoms. Hypertension affects approximately 1.28 billion people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
“We’ve developed a groundbreaking feature that can alert you to possible hypertension just by wearing your Apple Watch,” said Dr. Sumbul Ahmad Desai, Apple’s VP of health, during Tuesday’s event. “Using data from the optical heart sensor, the algorithm looks for chronic high blood pressure by analyzing how your blood vessels respond to beats of the heart. The algorithm works in the background, reviewing data over 30-day periods, and will notify you if it identifies patterns of hypertension.”
This is not a replacement for medical-grade blood pressure monitors and their inflatable cuffs. Apple’s ambitions in this area are far more modest. Apple Watch Series 11 monitors how your blood vessels respond to your heart to identify patterns that could suggest you have hypertension (aka high blood pressure).
Apple said it expects to notify more than 1 million people with undiagnosed hypertension in the first year after the Apple Watch Series 11 launch.
Still, Apple admits this feature can’t detect all cases of hypertension. So you shouldn’t be complacent if you don’t get a warning. Food and Drug Administration clearance for the hypertension monitoring feature in Apple Watch Series 11 is expected soon, with a rollout in 150 countries (including the United States and Europe) planned for this month.
Apple Watch Series 11 brings an even more rugged screen
Apple Watch Series 11 also boasts brand-new screen glass that borrows from Apple Watch Ultra to deliver twice the durability of Series 10, Cupertino said. That’s thanks to some serious materials engineering wizardry.
“It starts with our proprietary Ion-X glass, which is the toughest in the industry,” Ng said during the taped Apple Watch Series 11 launch. “We then apply a custom, Apple-designed ceramic coating that bonds to the glass at an atomic level, making it significantly harder. So now it’s two times more scratch-resistant, perfect for everyday use and the challenges of an active lifestyle.”
5G cellular for faster data and better coverage
The most significant connectivity upgrade to Apple Watch Series 11 is its leap from long-in-the-tooth LTE networking to state-of-the-art 5G. According to Apple, this won’t just deliver faster data. You’ll get better cellular coverage and better power efficiency, too, thanks to the new modem and antenna architecture.
For people who use Apple Watch’s cellular connection, the upgrade to faster 5G networking is a big deal. It’s crazy the watch has been stuck on sluggish LTE for so long.
Sleep score … and a battery boost to get you through the night
Apple Watch Series 11 also adds a new sleep score metric that attempts to grade your slumber.
“The quality of your sleep is influenced by several factors, such as sleep duration, bedtime consistency, how often you wake up, and the time spent in each sleep stage,” said Desai. “Sleep Score analyzes these factors each night and provides a classification plus a score. You’ll see how the score is calculated, so it’s easy to understand what you can do to improve.”
To make it easier for Apple Watch wearers to get that Sleep Score, Apple says it re-engineered the smartwatch’s battery.
“Series 11 now gets up to 24 hours of battery life, so you can wear it all day and all night,” said Ng.
Series 11 looks like its predecessors … mostly
Why change perfection? Apple Watch has a timeless design. Apple Watch Series 11 comes with the same basic look in aluminum and titanium casings. The screen sizes remain the same as last year’s models: 42 mm and 46 mm.
If you want a visual refresh this year, you could pick the new space gray color option. There are a couple of new watch faces, too, including a Flow design with Liquid Glass numerals, and a quirky Exactograph design. Apple launched new Apple Watch bands too, including reflective sport loops from Nike.
Apple Watch Series 11 will run on watchOS 26, which brings Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language as well as the motivational Workout Buddy.
A solid incremental update
If you already own an Apple Watch Series 10, there may not be much about Series 11 to tempt you. It’s still the same S10 SiP Apple silicon under the hood, after all. The new features are significant, especially the hypertension monitoring and the leap from LTE to 5G for cellular models. But overall, this update feels incremental.
That said, if you haven’t updated your Apple Watch in a while, maybe now’s the time. And who knows, if you get a hypertension warning, you could be the next person to write Apple CEO Tim Cook about how your Apple Watch saved your life.
The aluminum Apple Watch Series 11 starts at $399 (42 mm) and $429 (46 mm). Titanium models start at $699 (42 mm) and $749 (46 mm). 5G cellular connectivity adds $100 to the price (and you will need a separate phone line for the watch).
All models, with a variety of bands in rubber, textile and stainless steel, are available for preorder now. They should arrive on September 19.
Lewis Wallace contributed to this report.
Graham Bower is a designer, writer, fitness geek, and long-time Apple user. He is the co-host of Apple Core a podcast about the history of Apple. In his spare time, Graham writes fantasy and sci-fi novels. Connect with Graham on Bluesky or at www.grahambower.com.
