Apple Watch 5 vs. Apple Watch 4: Which Apple Smartwatch Is Right for You?

The new Apple Watch 5 has been announced alongside the new series of iPhone 11 – it's the new Apple smartwatch with all the new features.

The Apple Watch 5 looks a lot like the Apple Watch 4, but there are some very important changes under the glass – starting with the fact that Apple finally made an Apple Watch that tells the time All the time. The smartwatch now has a permanent display.

We were expecting Apple to drop Series 3 and make Series 4 the first tier, but that was not the case. Instead, the Series 4 has disappeared from the store, with the Series 3 now positioning itself as the most affordable Apple Watch.

You may not be able to buy a Series 4 from Apple, but it's a lot better than Series 3 and there should be good bargains on the second-hand market when retailers offload stocks and adopt early adopters. eBay with one year appliances.

Let's not forget that until recently, the Apple Watch Series 4 was the best smart watch in the world. Does the 5 Series have enough power and practicality to make it the best buy, or should you look for second hand sellers for a 4 Series? Let's find out.

Design and display

Series 4 increased slightly over Series 3, with the 38mm model becoming 40mm and the 42mm 44mm. These sizes have been kept for Series 5, which looks identical until you turn it on.

That's when you'll see the most dramatic difference between Series 5 and Series 4: The Apple Series 5 Watch has a very intelligent permanent display that darkens but does not disappear completely when the watch's display is not active. The corresponding faces have been designed so that the time is always perfectly legible when the screen is dark.

The 5 Series is also offered in a wider range of colors and materials than the 4 Series. The range now includes aluminum, stainless steel, ceramics and titanium. New Nike and Hermes models are also available, including a black Hermes model.

Fitness and features

Series 4 has introduced an electrocardiogram (ECG) that can help detect heart problems such as atrial fibrillation. He also introduced fall detection and improved accelerometer and gyroscope, as well as standard and LTE varieties.

The 5 Series takes all this and adds a compass for better navigation and enhances the SOS emergency feature that can be activated automatically on cellular models: the Cellular Series 5 offers international emergency calls (without any need for emergency calls). An iPhone is connected to it) n 150 different countries.

In the 5 series, watchOS 6 also incorporates the new noise detection feature that can warn you if noise levels are potentially harmful to health, but it is a software feature, not hardware.

OS, power supply and battery

The 4 series was running WatchOS 5 and the 5 series running WatchOS 6. You can upgrade the old version of Watch to the latest operating system.

The series 4 chipset is the Apple S4, supported with 16GB of storage for applications or music. The life of the battery was supposed to be 18 hours, according to Apple, which seemed quite accurate during our year of use: we were able to spend two days on our 44 mm without much effort.

The 5 series is equipped with a 64-bit dual-core S5 processor (the amount of storage has not been announced) and Apple has again claimed an autonomy of 18 hours. Thanks to a new consumption management and the very attractive low temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) screen, a much more energy efficient OLED variant than the OLED used in the 4 Series.

LTPO uses less energy to keep the screen up-to-date and is particularly efficient at lower refresh rates: in the keynote speech, we were told that it could go effortlessly with refresh rates up to 60Hz at a frequency of 1Hz, lazy, according to your needs. .

Price

The entry prices for Series 5 are the same as for Series 4. 399 $ / 399 £ / 599 AU $ for the 40mm and 429 $ / 429 £ / 649 AU / 649 $ AU for the 44mm watch. If you want to use the cell phone, prices start at $ 499 / £ 499 / AU $ 749 and $ 529 / £ 529 / AU $ 799 for the 40mm and 44mm models respectively.

These prices are for aluminum models. If you want a stainless steel, prices start at $ 100 higher, and if you want a ceramic or a Hermes, you should perhaps ask your butler to discreetly inquire about the price (Apple does not we having not yet indicated).

The 3 Series is now very affordable, with the smaller 38mm version priced at $ 199 / AU $ 199 / AU $ 319 for the standard model and $ 299 / $ 299 / $ 469 for the cellphone, so if the price of the Apple Watch 5 is too high, it's a viable alternative for you.

To take away

Apple had us at "always", which was at the top of our wish list since the very first generation. The ignition of Series 4 is much faster than any previous Apple Watch, but having to wake up our watch always annoys us and makes it almost impossible to check the time sneakily when we are bored meeting . For this feature alone, we would say that the 5 series is better than the 4 series.

But the Apple Watch 5 is not limited to the screen. The compass slightly improves this type of navigation – land, sea or air. There is a greater choice of materials and colors, although some are so expensive, most of us will not even see their section of the Apple Store. And it will be a little more fluid thanks to its S5 processor.

The 4 Series remains an excellent smart watch and a strong second hand purchase, but the 5 Series is a little better. Did we mention that the screen is always on?