You Don’t Need a New Apple Watch to Get the Latest Health Tracking Features
I have good news for Apple Watch users. If you’re using an older Apple Watch, like the Series 9, Apple is offering you a couple of features that we previously thought would be exclusive to the new Series 11. Yesterday, at its “Awe Dropping” event, the company unveiled three new Apple Watch models with new health-related features, but there’s a good chance you’ll get them on the device you already own, too.
That’s because Apple didn’t mention on stage that these new features are actually software updates coming in watchOS 26 and iOS 26 , and some of them don’t require new hardware. That means you may not have to update your Apple Watch to get the new high blood pressure notifications or Apple-generated sleep score.
Blood Pressure Notifications Now Available on Apple Watch Series 9 and Later
Apple has a new blood pressure monitoring system that sends you a notification when it detects chronically high blood pressure. Apple doesn’t use a blood pressure monitor with a cuff. Instead, it uses an optical heart rate sensor to analyze the response of the user’s blood vessels to heartbeats. The system analyzes 30 days of data to determine if there is a pattern that indicates possible hypertension and notifies you.
Since this feature is based on the optical heart rate sensor, it turns out that it is not only available on the Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3. In fact, it is also supported by the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 (but not the Apple Watch SE 3). The feature will be available to users after the watchOS 26 update and regulatory approval. Apple says it should be rolled out to 150 countries by October.
Sleep Score is available on all Apple Watches starting with Series 6
The new Sleep Score metric on Apple Watch is, again, a data analysis feature. It combines sleep data like sleep duration, sleep phase duration, wake frequency, and more to create a single score that reflects the overall quality of your sleep. It uses data from multiple sensors, like heart rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen levels, and breathing rate, to estimate your overall sleep quality.
This number can help you decide whether you want to do a more intense workout or whether you want to take it easy and go to bed earlier that day.
And as it turns out, the feature will be rolling out to all Apple Watch models that support sleep tracking. That includes all Apple Watch Ultra models, Series 6 and above, and the Apple Watch SE 2.
Likewise, several other software features mentioned in the report are not exclusive to Series 11. The new wrist flick feature in watchOS 26 will be supported on Series 9 and later, as well as the Apple Watch Ultra 2.
In addition to the Apple Watch, this also applies to the AirPods Pro 3. The live translation feature Apple introduced with the AirPods Pro 3 will also work with the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 when paired with an iPhone 15 Pro or later (as long as your phone supports Apple Intelligence). That means you can use your old AirPods to translate speech in several supported languages without having to shell out $250 for the new AirPods Pro.