We offer guidance on which Apple Watch model is right for you.
Apple has unveiled the Apple Watch Series 9 and immediately released it for pre-order. As expected, the changes are largely hidden on the inside: the Apple Watch has been given a “new heart,” so to speak, while the exterior remains mostly the same.
Those changes are still important, however. In this article, we outline the differences between the Series 9 and last year’s Apple Watch Series 8, covering tech specs, speed, screen quality, features, design, and price, and help you decide which model to buy, or whether to upgrade from one to the other.Apple Watch Series 9 vs Series 8: Processor
The main technical upgrade in the Series 9 is the S9 system-in-package (SiP). That’s the processor chip running the show and should bring a noticeable boost in speed.
The S8 in the Series 8, like the virtually identical S7 and S6 chips in the Series 7 and 6 respectively, was based on the relatively old A13 processor from the iPhone 11. And not even all of the A13: Apple Watches since 2020 have only used the A13’s ‘Thunder’ efficiency cores, leaving out its ‘Lightning’ performance cores. Even if the S9 only used the efficiency cores from the A14, this would still be a significant step forward, as the A14 was Apple’s first chip to be manufactured using the 5nm process.
In the new SiP, Apple has also introduced a faster Neural Engine, which now works with four cores. (Incidentally, this is the first time Apple has presented its machine learning co-processor so prominently on the keynote stage.
