With the Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch SE, Apple has created its most expansive Apple Watch lineup ever. And with this new lineup, Apple now has a watch for almost anyone.
With a mature platform packed with a plethora of features, these devices have never been more capable and accessible. This means if you aren’t wearing an Apple Watch yet, you need to.
Here are the reasons why you need an Apple Watch in 2024.
One of the first reasons why you need to be wearing an Apple Watch is for fitness. Actually, that is my number one reason for strapping the Apple Watch onto my wrist every single day and why I won’t leave the house without it.
The Apple Watch activity rings are key to helping me maintain a healthy lifestyle. I’m able to see how many active calories I burn throughout the day. I’m always checking my ring progress, and if I see that my red move ring is behind, or if I get an alert that I’ve been sitting for too long, I know it’s time to get up for a quick walk or remind myself that I need to put in time at the gym later in the day if I’ve been sedentary for most of the morning.
When I first bought my original Apple Watch back in 2015, I was a lot heavier—like a lot. I weighed in at around 280 pounds. The photo that I took nine months after getting my first Apple Watch, I was touting how much the Apple Watch helped improve my health by losing 60 pounds, down to 220 pounds. I still look that old photo, pretty amazed that I just kept it going eight years later, and how much more I’ve progressed since then.
Not only did I lose more weight—my best goal is around losing 100 pounds in total—but I also improved my overall cardiovascular health. First, by taking it easy, just making sure I was hitting everyday step counts of around 10,000 per day, and keeping my activity rings full. The most basic exercises can really go a long way, and I lost most of my initial weight just by walking and being a little bit more mindful of my activity.
From there, I learned new ways to stay healthy, from running something as small as one mile to increasing that to a 5K, and eventually even a 10K. The Apple Watch’s new activity zones have been really helpful in those longer runs, letting me know how long I kept my heart rate in those higher zones—not only for more endurance but also to focus on fat loss. It also lets me know when it might be a good idea to scale back, take a break, and cool down.
Keeping the exercise rings full, and even going beyond that 30-minute recommendation, has made me feel healthier, raised my energy levels, and let me master the StairMaster. If you can do one hour on the StairMaster at level 10 or above, my hat is off to you because this, to me, is an exercise that relies as much on willpower as it does on physical endurance.
If you have a pair of AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones, the Apple Watch is the only thing you need to bring with you on your run or to the gym. You can listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks directly on the watch with the built-in 32 gigabytes of storage, or even stream music and podcasts directly on your watch if you’re on WiFi or anywhere that you have a cellular connection with a cellular Apple Watch.
If you run outside, just taking the Apple Watch with a pair of AirPods is a magical experience. It’s so much easier to focus on your form without a big iPhone bouncing around in your pocket. Pro Max users know where I’m coming from.
The Apple Watch has grown with me this entire way—from walking to running my first mile to running a 6K. Now, I’ve actually been weight training for the past few months. In each small step on this fitness journey, my Apple Watch has been an invaluable tool, helping me keep weight off, and more importantly, improving my overall health.
Speaking of health, it’s probably the second reason why I continue to wear an Apple Watch every single day. Even the most basic Apple Watch comes with life-saving features like heart rate monitoring, which can alert users of abnormally high or low heart rates.
These also support features like fall detection, which isn’t just for the elderly. It’s also helped younger people get help if they needed emergency services after a hard fall. It can automatically dial emergency services even if you aren’t responsive. It potentially really is a life-saving feature, so please don’t dismiss it.
The Apple Watch SE and above even support features like car crash detection, which came out in 2022. I’m sure you have read similar life-saving stories about this feature as well.
An Apple Watch also helps you manage your health in other ways, letting you track your sleep with actual useful data metrics, like how long you were awake in bed, your total deep sleep, your REM sleep, and your core sleep.
The Apple Watch SE is a great start, providing the health features that will help the most users overall. But beyond that, there is the Series 8, Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra, which are packed with more health features like taking an electrocardiogram right on your wrist. This can alert users of possible atrial fibrillation, which is basically an irregular heartbeat that may require medical attention. It can also measure blood oxygen readings, and the new body temperature sensor on the Series 8 and newer can help women track their cycles and ovulation.
These are a growing list of health features, and they can be very important depending on the user. I feel like almost anyone can find a feature I mentioned above that they might want to be monitored. Even something as simple as fall detection, again, could prove to be life-saving.
Of course, the Apple Watch isn’t just for health and fitness. Let’s be honest: even though these health features are amazing and might help you out, they’re features we hope we never have to use. You probably don’t want to buy an Apple Watch solely with that in mind—for a feature you possibly won’t ever have to use, and hopefully won’t have to use.
Thankfully, there are a ton of other great reasons why you need an Apple Watch.
One of the most helpful features is getting notifications, alerts, messages, and phone calls that are always easily within reach on your wrist. It’s hard for me to remember a time dealing with constant notifications before the Apple Watch or the anxiety of waiting for an important phone call or message, constantly having my phone glued to my hand.
The Apple Watch surfaces those important notifications with a gentle tap on your wrist, letting you see something as trivial as when a new podcast episode is released, or letting you get notifications from certain Twitter accounts. For example, if you want to know the secret to scoring any rare pre-order on a gaming device, you gotta follow Wario64, enable notifications, have an Apple Watch, and as soon as the PlayStation 5 is ready to be up on Amazon when there’s a listing, you get the notification, and you’re able to buy it right away.
It’s how I scored two PS5 pre-orders in the initial batch. People are always coming to my house and asking, "How do you have two PS5s?" And it’s like, you gotta follow Wario64, and you gotta get an Apple Watch.
I also like seeing messages on my watch, letting me know if there’s an urgent one I need to reply to. If you do need to reply, you can even answer it on your watch using the scribble keyboard or dictation. If you have a Series 7, Series 8, Series 9, or an Apple Watch Ultra, you can even get access to a full QWERTY keyboard. This makes using my Apple Watch as a messaging device much more handy, because even though dictation works really well, if I’m in a public situation, I don’t like talking into my Apple Watch. It’s just a stigma I haven’t gotten over yet.
My Apple Watch also provides a lot of handy features I use every day. Unlocking other devices is a big one. If I wear my Apple Watch, I can instantly unlock my Mac or even my iPhone if Face ID fails to authenticate me.
The built-in calculator is very handy at restaurants, where I need to quickly calculate the tip and split the bill between multiple people.
When it comes to paying at stores, there are so many contactless payment terminals that support Apple Pay. All I need to do is double-tap the side button on my watch, press it against the terminal, and yeah, it pays like that. It’s so quick—there’s no need to fumble in my pocket for my phone or wallet. Best of all, there are times where I leave my phone behind, so especially when I’m going to the gym, if I don’t have my wallet on me, I always have my watch on me, so I always have a payment method ready to use.
Another big reason to get an Apple Watch in 2024 is because they last even longer on a single charge. WatchOS 9 and newer supports low-power mode that doubles the battery life on an Apple Watch. It does disable some background features like the always-on display and some health features on certain models, so you may not want to enable this if you want those health features. But if your main concern is that you didn’t want to charge an Apple Watch every single day, well, I was easily able to make an Apple Watch on low-power mode last for two full days with battery to spare, sleep tracking included.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 promises even more battery life for those of you who need it for multiple days and don’t want to sacrifice features. One regular charge without low-power mode can last the same amount of time—36 hours on a charge. Apple also added optimized battery mode on an Apple Watch that will last up to 72 hours of battery life.
With that Ultra and the lower cost of the SE model, there’s now an Apple Watch for almost anyone, and it’s easy to recommend almost any of these models. It’s one of the reasons why in 2024, it may be the best time to get your first Apple Watch. You can start as low as $249 for an Apple Watch SE, which gets the same exact performance as the $399 Series 9 and even the $799 Apple Watch Ultra 2.
It does lose out on some health features and the always-on display, but as far as a first Apple Watch goes, this is a great experience for anyone. It’s an excellent watch for parents who want to give their kids messaging or location tracking capabilities, but feel like they aren’t ready for the full responsibility of a smartphone yet.
The Series 9 is a good step up, providing a lot of health features like the electrocardiogram, the blood oxygen sensor, and the new body temperature sensor. It can be dressed up with stainless steel finishes. It also includes an always-on display, something that may have prevented you from buying the original Apple Watches when they lacked one during the first few iterations.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a whole new category, targeting more extreme users. It has the battery life to last hours and hours no matter what you’re doing, even if it’s tracking exercise all day. It can withstand extreme elements, up to 100 meters of water, so if you’re scuba diving, you can use it for that. It can survive the blaring hot sun in the desert, and it’s made from a tough titanium design that is focused more on durability rather than being sleek and thin.
If you thought the previous Apple Watches couldn’t withstand your more extreme regimen, or if you’re like me and you’re probably just buying one because it has a bigger display, a different look, and longer battery life, well, then there’s not that many excuses anymore to pick up an Apple Watch. There are a lot of great models now.
The Apple Watch lineup is the best it has ever been, with more options than ever. A better Apple Watch at the lowest end, a full-featured watch in the middle, and a new class of watch that should win over a new audience entirely.
So if you’re reading this and you own an iPhone and you aren’t wearing an Apple Watch yet, you need to. And if you are on an older model like a Series 3 or below, well, some of these newer features might be the extra push you needed to upgrade your model this year.
All right, everyone, I hope you really found this article helpful. There are so many Apple Watch features now, but these are some of the few reasons why you really need an Apple Watch in 2024.
Feel free to let me know if you are planning to buy an Apple Watch after reading this article, or if you already own one, let me know how you use yours and if you are planning to upgrade this year.