Don’t Buy the Apple Watch Series 3 (and What to Buy Instead)
Looking for your first Apple Watch? You may be tempted to choose the company’s cheapest offer. If you don’t know if you’d like to wear a mini iPhone on your wrist, the $199 Apple Watch Series 3 price might be more enticing than losing $399 for the latest Series 7. If this is a train of thought, you’re begging you to rip it off: don’t buy Series 3 in 2022.
It’s not that the Series 3 is a bad watch. Apple still supports it with the latest watchOS; although it will be slower than the top model, it still works great; and while it lacks the latest bells and whistles, it probably offers all the features you’re looking for. But it has a specific drawback: storage space.
The Series 3 only comes with 8GB of internal storage, which is what you would expect from a mid-2000s iPod. This may not seem like a deal breaker unless you plan on downloading a bunch of songs, podcasts, or photos to your watch. However, those 8GB of storage will still be a problem when it comes time to upgrade your device.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that Apple still supports watches released in 2017. I’m all for the durability of the product. I believe that you can extend the life of your old Apple Watch simply by replacing the battery . In 2022, however, watchOS updates will be too big for the 8 GB Series 3. In order to update, Apple forces you to disconnect your watch from your iPhone, erase the contents of your watch, and then install the update.
And since the Series 3 is so old, these updates take forever . My fiancé recently updated hers and after the disconnect process, the update itself took about two hours just to upload to the watch. I even tried to turn off Bluetooth on her iPhone , which can speed up the download of the update, but this did not have much effect. After waiting even longer for the final installation of the update, she needed to restore data from her previous backup in order to use her watch as it was before the update was installed.
Possibly the worst device update process—certainly by Apple—that I’ve had to deal with. That doesn’t mean it’s going to ditch them – the Series 3 still tracks workouts, receives messages and notifications, and sets an alarm, along with all the other basic features you’d expect from a smartwatch. Unpleasant updates are something she will have to deal with from time to time.
What to buy instead of Apple Watch Series 3
The new buyers are in a different boat. Sure, $200 is a good price for a working Apple Watch, but for an extra $70 you can buy an Apple Watch SE that gives you a lot more hours without the frustrating update issue. The SE comes with a state-of-the-art S5 processor, a bigger and better display, improved heart rate sensor and fall detection, among other new features. Oh, and you can install updates without first rebooting the watch, so that’s a plus.
I cannot in good conscience recommend that you buy a product that you intend to use for years when there is something so fundamentally wrong with it, especially when there is another option available that will serve you much better.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple dropped the Series 3 from the lineup this year. At WWDC 2022, the company will introduce watchOS 9 and, if it wants, it can stop software support for this legacy model. There’s no guarantee this will happen – Apple still supports the 2014 iPad Air 2 – but it’s worth considering before buying.