Apple Watch Series 12 Review – Health First, Finally Fun

Apple Watch Series 12 Review

Product Name: Apple Watch Series 12

Product Description: The Apple Watch Series 12 is a smartwatch built around health, battery life and everyday convenience. It reads heart rate more often than the Series 11, adds a daily Readiness score, a machine learning pedometer and the double pinch gesture for the Smart Stack, and charges fast enough to top up for a full day in about 20 minutes. Powered by the S11 chip and running watchOS 27, it comes in aluminium, titanium and ceramic cases, in 42mm and 46mm sizes, with GPS or GPS + Cellular options in Malaysia.

Brand: Apple

Offer price: from 1,799

Currency: MYR

• Appearance - 8.7/10
  8.7/10
• Efficiency - 7/10
  7/10
• Features - 8.9/10
  8.9/10
• Materials - 8.2/10
  8.2/10
• Performance - 8.8/10
  8.8/10
• User Experience (UX) - 9/10
  9/10
• Value - 8/10
  8/10

Summary

The Apple Watch Series 12 is the first Apple Watch where the battery, the charging speed and the health tracking all clear my bar at once. It still needs seven days of heart rate and battery history on the wrist, and the heat while charging needs better handling, but nothing there outweighs what it does for me day to day.

Overall

8.4/10

8.4/10

Pros

• Battery lasts about two days of normal use
• Very fast charging, 20 minutes is enough for a full day
• Heart rate every five seconds with quicker high heart rate alerts
• Readiness score and seven day Vitals are genuinely useful
• More accurate machine learning pedometer
• Siri Modular watch face and double pinch Smart Stack

Cons

• Heart rate and battery charts only show today
• Watch runs warm and pauses charging on temperature
• Sound Recognition setup needs an iPhone and gives false doorbell alerts
• No gesture to wake the screen at bedtime
• Ceramic Shield 2 durability still unproven

• Shopee

Apple Watch Series 12 Introduction

Apple Watch started out as something that slightly annoyed me. When I reviewed the Apple Watch Series 9, I felt it was a little too health conscious, more like a medical device strapped to my wrist than something fun to wear. Then I came around. I started caring about my own health data, and by the Apple Watch Series 10 and the Apple Watch Series 11, I was the one asking the watch for more. That is exactly where I am with the Apple Watch Series 12. I am more dependent on it than ever, and the more I rely on it, the more I expect from it.

I wear it all day and all night, and the only time it comes off my wrist is when I shower. That is also why this Apple Watch Series 12 review is not a fresh start. When I set the watch up, I migrated everything from my Series 11, so it carried on from my existing tracking pattern, active features and habits. I did that on purpose to reduce battery bias, because a brand new setup always behaves differently from a watch that has been lived in for a year.

On paper, the Apple Watch Series 12 has been re-engineered around a new Health Sensing System and the S11 chip, with Ceramic Shield 2 on the aluminium models and new ceramic and titanium finishes. That is the pitch on paper, so the real question is what actually changes on the physical wrist. Let’s find out in my Apple Watch Series 12 review today.

Unboxing Apple Watch Series 12

The Apple Watch Series 12 comes in the same slim white box we are used to, with the band printed on one side and the watch on the other. The packaging is 100 percent fibre-based and recyclable at home. My unit is the 46mm Black Aluminium with GPS + Cellular and a Sport Band in M/L.

Here is what you get in the box:

• Apple Watch Series 12 (46mm Black Aluminium, GPS + Cellular)
• Sport Band (Black)
• Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger to USB-C Cable (1m)

There is still no power adapter in the box, so you need your own USB-C adapter. The rated charging speeds are based on a 20W adapter. The new charger puck is also worth a look. The label on it reads 5V 2A or 9V 1.2A, while the older puck I have from the Series 11 era reads 5V 1A. The wattage has doubled compared to its predecessor that is supposed to make charging time cut to half, and I will get into how it behaves in the review later below.

The first thing I noticed when I took the watch out was the weight. I have worn Apple Watches long enough to know how they usually feel, and the Apple Watch Series 12 felt denser and slightly heavier right out of the box. I checked, and I was not imagining it. The 46mm aluminium GPS + Cellular is listed at 38.6 g, up from 36.9 g on the Series 11, and the GPS model at 39.5 g, up from 37.8 g. That is 1.7 g heavier either way. It is also 1 mm wider at 40 mm, while the thickness stays at 9.7 mm. The Apple Watch Series 12 is also listed with a slightly larger battery, which probably plays a part in the extra weight.

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The second thing was the back of the watch. The sensor array looks very different from the Series 11, and it really is different. The Health Sensing System is completely new. The electrodes have a larger surface area for better skin contact during ECG readings, the photodiodes are arranged in a ring to capture light more efficiently, and the green LEDs are larger and more power efficient. The back crystal is marked Glass Ceramic, alongside the 46mm Aluminum Case, GPS, Cellular and WR 50M markings.

Setup was the usual routine of bringing my iPhone near the watch. I restored everything from my Series 11, so there was no fresh start.

Apple Watch Series 12 Specifications

The Apple Watch Series 12 comes in several configurations. Bolded options reflect the specific unit used in this review.

Looking Back at the Series 11 Durability

I cannot test the durability of the Apple Watch Series 12 yet, because a watch needs months on a wrist before it shows its scars. So just like I did with the Series 10 in my Series 11 review, I am looking back at the previous generation first. I do not use a screen protector on any of my watches, and I am rough with them, which makes them a fair test.

The Series 11 did very well here. Its Ion-X glass carries a ceramic coating that is rated at twice the scratch resistance of the Series 10, and after a year on my wrist, the glass shows drastically fewer scratches and micro scratches than my Series 10 did. That is a promise that was delivered, and I applaud it.

That sets a solid benchmark, and the Apple Watch Series 12 now has to sustain it, and sustain it harder. My review unit is the 46mm aluminium model in Black, so it is the one that gets Ceramic Shield 2. The aluminium models move to Ceramic Shield 2, which replaces Ion-X and is rated as 60 percent tougher than the Ion-X on the Series 11 aluminium models, and tougher than any smartwatch glass. I will wear it the same way, with no screen protector, and report back in next year’s review on whether it lived up to the claim.

Oh, and the titanium models keep a sapphire front crystal, which is rated even more scratch-resistant. So if durability is high up on your list, you should definitely opt for that instead.

The Good

Battery is where the Apple Watch Series 12 impressed me most. The Series 11 was already comfortable, and the Apple Watch Series 12 takes it up another notch, to the point where I would call it insanely good. Since I migrated everything over from my Series 11, this is the same wrist, the same habits and the same active features, so the numbers are not flattered by a fresh setup. In fact, the Apple Watch Series 12 has even higher frequency of heart rate readings so I was thinking it would either suffer in battery life or at most have similar performance as the Series 11.

In my two longer runs the watch took about two days to fall to 28 and 20 percent, and across all four runs it lost about 1.7 to 1.8 points an hour. The rating is 24 hours of normal use, and I did not copy the rating’s test profile, so I am only reporting what my own use looks like. I never switch on Low Power Mode, even when the watch prompts me, so all of this is normal use. Two of those tests are below, and I kept them separate so the results stay easy to follow.

Charge test 1 is the one I would show anyone who is worried about missing an overnight charge. On Tuesday 22 September at 11:14 AM my Apple Watch Series 12 was down to 28 percent, having been charged to 100 percent on Sunday 20 September at 3:49 PM. I put it on the charger, went for a shower and came back exactly 20 minutes later to find it at 76 percent, a gain of 48 points. The watch was running warm while charging, and it displayed a note that charging was on hold due to the watch temperature. I put it back on my wrist at 11:35 AM and carried on with my day. At 12:01 PM the next day, a full 24 hours and 26 minutes later, it was still sitting at 35 percent. If you forgot to charge it overnight and only had a shower’s worth of time on the charger, you will be fine.

Charge test 2 is the long run. My Apple Watch Series 12 was charged to 98 percent on Saturday 26 September at 4:54 PM, and I used it as normal until Monday 28 September at 11:40 AM, when it showed 20 percent. That is 42 hours and 46 minutes on a single charge, a drop of 78 points, or about 1.8 points an hour. I put it on the charger straight away. In 25 minutes it was at 63 percent, a gain of 43 points, and the watch was clearly heating up. The last stretch took longer, with 45 more minutes needed to reach 99 percent, another 36 points. I took the last screenshot at 99 percent on purpose, because a 100 percent screen would not prove how long it had been sitting at full. So the climb from 20 to 99 percent took 70 minutes, and the pace fell from about 1.7 points a minute to about 0.8 once it passed 63 percent. The watch showed charging on hold due to its temperature at both 63 and 99 percent, which probably explains part of that slowdown.

Fast charging is the part I love most about the new charger. Imagine coming home late and tired, forgetting to charge the watch, and waking up to almost nothing left. A short top-up while I get ready is enough to carry the watch through the entire day, and charge test 1 above is exactly that. The heat clearly needs better mitigation, but I would not trade the speed for it. The watch only runs hot while it is charging, never while I am wearing it, and my only concern is the battery wearing out faster because of it. I believe Apple will improve this.

The other upgrade I feel in daily use is how closely the watch keeps an eye on my heart. The Apple Watch Series 12 is rated to read heart rate every five seconds, compared with every five minutes in the background on the Series 11, and it takes HRV readings more often too. I have had several high heart rate notifications since I started using the watch. I am a busy person with a lot going on, my brain barely stops, and my stress level swings. Sometimes I can feel my heart rate climbing, and within a few seconds the notification arrives. That is my cue to stop what I am doing, take a deep breath, walk around and clear my head, and my heart rate usually starts to come down within seconds. The Health app keeps a record, like the notification from 15 October below, which flagged a heart rate above 120 BPM while I was inactive for 10 minutes from 12:23 AM. These notifications also go to my family doctor, who is on my emergency contacts. A single one does not worry her because the odd high reading is common, but if they keep coming back to back she gets a fuller report and can pick up the phone and call me. Having that kind of health assistant on my wrist, tied into my iPhone and the Health app, is something I really value, and the Apple Watch Series 12 improves a lot compared to its past siblings.

Readiness is the new daily score on the watch. Mine read 2, in the Pace Yourself class, when I checked it, not to be proud of at all. The watch broke the score into three factors: my recent sleep scores had been low and my activity had been higher than usual over the past week, which pulled the score down, while my overnight vitals were Typical, which helped it. Vitals on the watch can also be filtered down to seven days, with a summary of how things have been and any anomalies that need my attention, which is exactly the kind of history I want on my wrist. As for how it matched my days, it has been scarily accurate. When I am lethargic, Readiness reflects it, and I can tell how my day is going to go. The sleep score impresses me the most and I have been addicted to controlling my score since it was introduced last year – although I’ve been failing miserably most of the time.

The new pedometer is one of the most prominent proofs of what the S11 chip can do. The step model has been redesigned around machine learning and runs on the always-on processor, so it is also more accurate when my arms are stationary, like when holding a coffee or carrying my little one in arms whle walking, without costing battery life. In my own use, the step counts have been very accurate. A new Steps complication also puts the count on the watch face, and I love the new widgets in the Smart Stack, which I can finally bring up with the double pinch gesture.

For the first time, I fell in love with a default watch face, Siri Modular. In my Series 10 review, I said that a watch face needs the time, the date and the battery at the bare minimum, and the Flux was missing the last two, so I went back to an older face. Siri Modular has four complications, which cover all of that and more, and it can be customised with three layout styles, a choice of fonts and a range of colours, as shown below. Mine currently shows the date, my watch’s battery level, my next calendar event and my current heart rate. The style with a Smart Stack widget in the middle, which surfaces the top most smart stack like my calendar or sleep score, is one I like in principle, but I do not find it comfortable yet. A watch is always public facing, and I would rather not have my vitals visible to everyone around me, considering it automatically switches to the top most stack widget according to the current situation and might end up projecting my personal calendar events. So I use the version without it for now. If the watch had Face ID so private details could stay hidden until I verify, I would definitely use it. Regardless, I am really loving this watch face already, and it is going to be hard for Apple to make me change. Or maybe they will? We shall see next generation. It’s my personal challenge to Apple to see if they can build something that would make me change my watch face like this round, again.

The quick shortcuts menu is a small thing that I use all the time. Before the whole glorious list of apps, the watch now shows the ones I used recently, so most of the time I never need to scroll. Grid mode shows icons without app names anyway, which turns searching into a guessing game, and that is the last thing I want outdoors or in the middle of a sport.

Sound Recognition is a niche feature, and I do not use it myself because I do not need it, but I can see who would. You choose which sounds the watch should pay attention to, from alarms such as fire, siren and smoke, to animals such as cats and dogs, to household sounds such as doorbells, door knocks, kettles and running water, and you can switch off the ones you do not want. I can picture it helping with bedridden elderly relatives, where a scream or a cry can alert whoever is looking after them. Name Recognition sits alongside it; you teach it your name and a few variations, such as a nickname or a pet name, and it can alert you even when you are listening to music. It is listed for the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Ultra 4, and it needs the latest iOS 27 and watchOS 27. The setup is where I have a gripe, which I come back to under The Bad section.

The Bad

The biggest letdown is history. Heart rate on the watch gives me a live reading with a two-minute history and a chart for today only, and the day resets at midnight. Vitals can be filtered to seven days, so the ability is there, but the heart rate chart cannot scroll back. When I keep getting high heart rate notifications, I want to see the past seven days on my wrist, without opening my phone, to work out whether it is my behaviour, my movement, too much activity or stress. A longer history would also show what a heavy workout, a late night or a night out did to my numbers. It does not have to be a month, seven days would do. I have raised this in earlier reviews, and I will keep raising it until it is fixed.

The battery chart has the same problem. It only shows about the last 24 hours, so on my 42 hour 46 minute run roughly half of the discharge curve was out of view, and there is no way to scroll to a longer trend or export it, making me take multiple screenshots just to produce a substantial report. I complained about this in my Series 11 review too.

The new charger also makes the watch run warm. In my tests the watch showed “Charging was on hold due to Apple Watch temperature” at 76 percent on 22 September, and again at 63 and 99 percent on 28 September, so it is not a one-off. The heat only happens while charging and I never feel it when I wear the watch, but it needs better heat mitigation, and I worry that repeated heat will make the battery wear out faster. I hope this gets improved.

Sound Recognition also cannot be set up on the watch alone. You need an iPhone to turn it on and set it up, and there is no settings page for it on the watch, so everything lives on the iPhone. A feature that is meant to work from my wrist should be something the watch can handle on its own. If you’re owning the Apple Watch Series 12 and use anything other than the iPhone, you’re out of luck if you were hoping to use this feature.

Sound Recognition still needs work. I turned on the Doorbell sound, and my phone’s own message chime keeps getting picked up as a doorbell, so both the watch and the phone raise a Doorbell alert for a notification the phone itself just received. It does not happen all the time, only at random intervals, but it does happen, and the four alerts below alone came within a couple of hours. The phone knows it is playing a notification sound, so it should not count that as a doorbell. Apple is upfront in the settings that Sound Recognition should not be relied on in emergencies, and that policy is fair, but for anyone using it to keep watch over someone at home, repeated false alarms can be anxiety inducing. This definitely needs further improvement and my tests were based on the watchOS already updated to the latest version at time of writing.

The one thing I want added is a gesture to wake the watch. When it is asleep, like at bedtime, the screen goes totally blind, and the only ways to wake it are the crown or the button. When my right hand is occupied and I need to see the time, I have to put down whatever I am holding just to press the crown. Since the watch already has gestures, a double pinch could wake it up first. It is hard to do a double pinch by accident anyway, and it is about time the gestures on the Apple Watch got expanded.

Apple Watch Series 12 Verdict

Over the years, the Apple Watch has become one of the most personal products I use. When I reviewed the Apple Watch Series 9, I said it was a little too health conscious, to the point where it felt like a medical device attached to my body instead of something fun to play with. That is in writing, and it is not how I feel today. Health tracking was never something I lacked. I come from the era when infrared fingertip sensors showed up on smartphones and needed a scan to capture metrics, and I never bothered with them. I also sleep at insanely odd hours, and I can push myself too hard when I get focused on a goal. In the past few years that has changed, and I credit the Apple Watch for a large part of it.

These days, the first thing I look at after waking up is my sleep score, as soon as the notification appears. Those two digits are enough for me to realign my entire daily schedule. I can also sense when my body is overworked. More than once, I have told myself that the watch is about to send a high heart rate notification, because I could feel my energy draining, and then the notification really did arrive. That is my cue to drop whatever is bothering me and calm down, and the heart rate sensor shows it stabilising. Sleep apnea is part of this story too. I found out about mine the year before Apple introduced sleep apnea detection to the Apple Watch, and by then it was already at a critical stage. I suspect that many users around the world would have caught it sooner if their watches had told them. Health is something I used to take for granted, and the Apple Watch is what made me take it seriously.

This year, I love the Apple Watch Series 12 a lot. In my use, the S11 chip brings higher measurement consistency, the battery has reached my minimum desired range, and the charging speed is exactly what I needed, so much that I am willing to forgive the heat while charging this time. I do expect it to be improved, and I will keep an eye on the battery wear. The Siri Modular watch face is the one I have always wanted. The Ceramic Shield 2 durability claim still needs a year on my wrist to confirm, and the false alerts on Sound Recognition need work. The only truly annoying thing is that I need longer analytics on the watch, a seven day heart rate and battery history, so that I do not have to reach for the iPhone. None of that outweighs what the watch does for me day to day. With that in mind, I award the Apple Watch Series 12 with our Gold Pokdeward.

Apple Watch Series 12 Price List (Malaysia)

Apple lists the Apple Watch Series 12 from RM1,799 in Malaysia. Pick a case, finish, size and connectivity below to see the price and what that configuration looks like. Aluminium comes in GPS or GPS + Cellular, while titanium and ceramic come with GPS + Cellular only. The unit that is selected by default, is the one that I used for this review. If you enjoyed reading this review, you can support us by buying the watch from here.

Case

Finish

Size

Connectivity

Price in Malaysia

Every configuration at a glance

Prices in Malaysian Ringgit. Finish and band choice do not change the price.

Apple Watch Series 12 price list in Malaysia (MYR)

Case	Size	Connectivity	Price (MYR)
Aluminium	42mm	GPS	RM1,799
Aluminium	42mm	GPS + Cellular	RM2,299
Aluminium	46mm	GPS	RM2,049
Aluminium	46mm	GPS + Cellular	RM2,549
Titanium	42mm	GPS + Cellular	RM3,299
Titanium	46mm	GPS + Cellular	RM3,549
Ceramic	42mm	GPS + Cellular	RM4,049
Ceramic	46mm	GPS + Cellular	RM4,299