Apple Watch SE 3 reviewed: fantastic

Wearing your phone on your wrist as a wearable can be a little costly for something great, but the Apple Watch SE 3 brings value to the Apple Watch experience.

It’s been ten years since the first Apple Watch arrived, and since then, competitors have been trying to capture the magic of Apple’s wearable.

There are others, and plenty of competition, but few seem to hone in on what Apple has made over the past decade: a wearable that delivers the time, notifications, and then some, offering a health gadget that many just simply can’t live without.

But there’s also a bit of a catch: the cost.

The Apple Watch not only needs an iPhone to work, but it tends to come with a $600 to $700 starting price that can be just too much for everyone. If you don’t need every cool health feature, that price can just seem like too much.

That’s where Apple’s “Watch SE” comes in, a less expensive variation on the theme that packages almost everything you might want in an Apple Watch, except the high price.

This year, that model is getting an update, and it might just make the Apple Watch SE 3 one of Apple’s best releases yet.

Design and features

Some things never change, and in the case of the Apple Watch SE design, that definitely seems to be true, as Apple keeps the same style it has seen in the past two generations.

The Watch SE 3 is the spitting image of the SE from 2022, offering a 40mm and 44mm option, up from the original 38mm and 42mm models, providing a slightly bigger screen. The bezels are still there, but the watch is a lovely aluminium model with improved durability thanks to new glass on the top, this year’s revision of Apple’s Ion-X enhanced glass, which is the same as on the Series 11 and offers up to four times the durability for scratches.

Apple’s design on the SE 3 is fairly simple — a relatively large screen encased in an aluminium body with a Digital Crown wheel and a button, and then a connector on each side for your straps.

Inside, there’s the same processor from the Series 10 last year, also appearing in the Series 11 this year, the S10 chip, paired with 64GB storage.

WatchOS 26 appears on the phone out of the box, as does an assortment sensors, including an optical heart-rate sensor, temperature sensor, compass, altimeter, and light sensor, among others. You can track heart rate, sleep, noise, and cycle tracking, and the system supports an assortment of exercises and workouts, as well.

Every Apple Watch SE 3 unit supports GPS, too, but you may need to opt for the cellular model if you want to keep the phone downloading and connected to the web.

Overall, outside of the S10 chip, the Apple Watch SE 3 looks and feels a lot like the Apple Watch we last checked out a few years ago.

In-use

Not much has changed on the outside, and you’ll probably see that using the Apple Watch SE 3. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Apple’s watchOS 26 is one of the more polished smartwatch experiences, and so using it is basically just pressing the main button for apps, the back button, and then just using the touchscreen the way you’ve learned to for your phone.

It’s an easy watch to use, and one where you don’t need a degree, or even a reason to read the manual. Is there even one?

However, one of the biggest new features this year is a control feature: gestures and wrist flicks. It’s actually a continuation on something we’ve seen on the Series 10, with a way for the watch to pick up on the action of squeezing your thumb and forefinger, as well as the motion of flicking your wrist away.

Each of these has a defined response on the Apple Watch SE 3, and allows you to control some of the menus easily so you don’t even need to touch the screen. You can simply gesture a double click to pull up your list of widgets, do that same double click gesture to go to the next one, and then flick your wrist away to go back to your home and clock.

Display

It’s not just wrist flicks that have been added, but also a slightly newer screen now supporting an always-on display.

That’s a premium feature for the Apple Watch world, though one that may affect battery life.

Otherwise, it’s an OLED screen in either a 40mm or 44mm size, essentially accounting for small and large.

Performance

Whether you end up using the Watch SE 3 as a watch to simply check the time, or even a reliable extension of your iPhone, the performance using the S10 chip inside is great, with virtually no lag when you’re jumping between apps, clock faces, notifications, and the like.

Wrist flicks and double click finger gestures can sometimes take a quarter or half a second to register, but these feel more like the system identifying the gesture, as opposed to the system being slow.

Overall, the performance on the Apple Watch SE 3 is about as good as it was on the Apple Watch Series 10 last year, which should come as no surprise: it’s the same hardware.

Battery

The battery is a little different, though, with roughly a day of use for most people, especially if they leave the always-on display, well, always on.

We found roughly 10 percent of the battery would drop overnight, so if you go to bed with 100, you’ll likely end up around the 90 mark, and if you go to bed with 80, you’ll probably have something near 70.

In either situation, we didn’t find much battery life waiting for us at the end of the day, making this another wearable that needs a charge either nightly or while you’re having a shower. But good news: the Apple Watch SE 3 supports fast charging, so it doesn’t need much time on the charger.

Conversely, you could also turn off that always-on screen and get a slightly better battery life, maxing out at a little over a day, though a charge is likely on the cards before you get home.

Value

Next up is price, and ever since its inception, the price tag of the Apple Watch SE model has been one of the more compelling features, as Apple gets the cost down to a wallet-friendly level.

Indeed, as everything seems to rise in price, the Watch SE range holds its own, starting from $399 for a 40mm model that lacks mobile support, a feature which adds $90 for the privilege.

You may not need mobile calls or data access from the watch itself, something that also requires an extra eSIM mobile plan, so if you don’t, you’ve just saved yourself roughly a hundred bucks.

What needs work?

While the improvements in durability and speed are welcome, the omission of a couple of sensors that have been around for years is a bit of a surprise.

As such, there’s no SpO2 blood oxygen sensor, even though it’s been included in fitness wearables well over five years, while electrocardiograph checks — the ECG — is also a feature missing in action.

Those two features are focused on the “Series” models and the more expensive “Ultra”, which this year includes the Series 11 and the Ultra 3.

And look, we get it: Apple needs to leave a reason or two why you’d pick the more expensive models over its more wallet-friendly sibling.

The thing is SpO2 isn’t a new thing, so it’s a surprise it’s missing in action completely. Apple has offered them since the Apple Watch Series 6, and we’re now up to the Series 11. It’s just surprising that it’s still not here.

What we love

Omissions aside, the Apple Watch SE 3 still wins major points because it offers almost everything a smartwatch owner would want in a design that’s not only still lovely, but one of the best out there.

Sure, you won’t get the thin bezels of its more expensive siblings, now will you get that domed glass of the option of a sapphire screen.

However, you’ll get almost everything else, including that excellent watchOS look and feel, the solid app support, great watch face design, and the ability to use an assortment of easily replaceable watch bands, something not every wearable maker has managed to get right. Almost none have.

Apple Watch SE 3 vs the competition

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Apple Watch SE 3 is how few competitors there appears to be for it. It’s really at a price point that most smartwatch makers stay out of, and that gives Apple extra points.

Just to put this into perspective, CMF has a sub-$200 smartwatch, Garmin has a few options, and there are some other older models that haven’t seen updates in ages.

In the Android-specific camp, you can find last year’s Pixel Watch 3 for under $400, as well as the ageing Samsung Galaxy Watch5 if you look, but neither of these work on the iPhone. Neither does the Galaxy Watch FE, Samsung’s only SE-competing model, though we’ve heard this has largely been pulled from market locally, so it’s probably not even a real player anymore.

In terms of models that do, Huawei has a variation of the Fit Pro watch plus a band, and then there’s the Fitbit Versa 4, a model we’re surprised still exists given it seems Google has left it for software and services, and is probably on the cards for retiring soon.

Simply put, there isn’t much that manages to compete with the Apple Watch SE 3, which puts it in a league of its own.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

Even though neither blood oxygen nor ECG make an appearance, what Apple delivers in the Apple Watch SE 3 is value. This is unmistakeable value for an excellent wearable with solid health insights.

Most people won’t need the the bits we’re complaining about, and they may totally be fine with charging their watch nightly. Frankly, they still probably would whether they ended up on the more expensive Series 11 or this one.

But if what you’re looking for is a smartwatch for iPhone owners that doesn’t mess around, this is it.

It’s one of the best value wearables around, and the Apple Watch for most people. Fantastic value, fantastic experience. Recommended.