While Apple’s new foldable iPhone stole the spotlight at the company’s product reveal on Wednesday, the refreshed watch lineup gained a host of updates that nudge the devices back comfortably in line with its wearable rivals.
The Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 both get noticeable battery life improvements that users will welcome, but this year’s revamp is all about the boost in the health metrics department, as Apple has finally included its own readiness feature that other brands have had for years.
Apple’s version gives users a concise head start to answer the important question of “how prepared am I for my day today?,” and issues a report that is a variable of several sources instead of a single measure like heart rate.
The readiness score is assigned from 1 through 10 and analyzes sleep, heart rate, activity, training load, vitals and HRV (heart-rate variability) and puts the final tally into categories that are easy indicators of what the day will likely look like.
And the scores tell the story that makes it clear how to proceed, with 0–2 urging the user to recover and prioritize much-needed rest, while 3-4 is a warning to keep the pace light throughout the day. A 5–7 score means that the user has the green light for normal activities and training and 8-10 is the all access pass to push much harder without having to worry about fatigue.
The metrics to devise the score are constantly evaluated and updated as more data is pumped in throughout the day. All of the information used in the readiness score is personalized for each person using their past data and is a new (for Apple) insight indicator that has been absent on the watch while Whoop and Oura devices have made the feature a major selling point for years.
Google’s recently-released Fitbit Air also comes packed with its own readiness metric, while Garmin has used its deep roster of watches that offers arguably one of the more sophisticated readiness systems of its competitors.
Whoop’s score falls under a three-category baseline of 0-33 percent for low recovery, 34-66 percent for moderate recovery and 67-100 percent for high recovery that’s calculated overnight using HRV, resting heart rate, sleep performance, respiratory rate, skin temperature, blood oxygen (SpO₂) and menstrual-cycle information (if applicable) to determine how should the user push during the day.
Oura’s approach is based on how balanced the body is based on physiological trends, sleep and activity, with a range that includes 0–59 as a reminder to pay attention, 60–69 as a fair assessment for the day, 70–84 being a good indicator, while 85–100 is optimal to press for solid performance.
The Fitbit Air is now immersed in the Google Health ecosystem but the readiness score feature dates back to 2021 and is built on the idea that activity creates fatigue, sleep and recovery reduces fatigue and the resulting metric reflects the balance.
Garmin differs from the others and places a substantial emphasis on training load and recovery time, rather than zeroing in on how much sleep the user is getting. But the company still considers its own sleep score metric, recovery, HRV, acute training load, three nights of sleep history along with three days of stress history and assigns the finding into a range of 1–24 that’s a sign to let your body recover, 25–49 which means to slow down, 50–74 as a sign to get moving, 75–94 to take on most challenges and 95–100 is the best possible chance to excel.
Apple has taken a decidedly slower road to readiness even though the underlying tech and data has been on its wearables for years. And while the individual metrics have existed on Apple Watches in their own kingdoms, Wednesday’s introduction is a declaration that the company did not just want to devise a mashup of longitudinal data that simply is not easy to understand, even with a large number on screen seemingly guiding what the user’s day will look like.
But Apple has also shown that it’s being cautious about how it approaches health as deeper data dives yield more information and presents its case that the extra trove of insights is better.
Still, the company’s arrival in the readiness arena means that the line it drew in the wearable sand ten years ago gets an even more defined mark that shows it can innovate and adapt.
