Apple Watch SE 3 review: the bargain smartwatch for iPhone

A picture


Apple’s entry level Watch SE has been updated with almost everything from its excellent mid-range Series 11 but costs about 40% less, making it the bargain of iPhone smartwatches.The Guardian’s journalism is independent.We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.The new Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399), making it one of the cheapest brand-new fully fledged smartwatches available for the iPhone and undercutting the £369 Series 11 and the top-of-the-line £749 Apple Watch Ultra 3.

The Watch SE line is updated only every few years and has been good value but was missing some crucial things that make Apple’s other watches great.The Watch SE 3’s biggest upgrade is an always-on display, which brings it up to par with the Series line, allowing you to see the time and notifications at a glance without having to twist your wrist to turn the screen on.The SE 3 has the older Apple Watch design from 2020’s Series 6 with smaller screens, larger bezels and a choice of 40mm or 44mm case sizes compared with the current Series watches.The screen is also not quite as bright as the more expensive watches, but that is noticeable only in bright direct sunlight.It is still sharp and good looking.

The SE 3 has the same S10 chip as the Series 11 and Ultra 3, and is just as responsive.It also has the same excellent touch-free gestures, including double tap and wrist flick, which allow you to dismiss notifications, timers and alarms easily.The watch also supports all the rest of the general Apple Watch features in watchOS 26, including Apple Pay contactless payments, rich notifications, music control, third-party apps and a range of watch faces.The battery life of the SE 3 is a little shorter than the Series 11, lasting about a day and a half of general use, including sleep tracking overnight.Most will have to charge it every other day, particularly if they track any workouts.

The SE 3 will last up to seven hours of running tracking with GPS and heart rate, which should be long enough for a marathon,A full charge using the magnetic puck takes about an hour, hitting 70% in 30 minutes,Case size: 40mm or 44mmCase thickness: 10,7mmWeight: about 26g or 33gProcessor: S10Storage: 64GBOperating system: watchOS 26Water resistance: 50 metres (5ATM)Sensors: HR (2nd-gen), skin temp, NFC, GNSS, compass, altimeterConnectivity: Bluetooth 5,3, wifi 4, NFC, optional 5GOne of the biggest cuts for the SE 3 is the removal of the electrical sensor from the back of the watch, which enables electrocardiograms (ECG) of your heart on the Series and Ultra watches.

It also lacks a blood oxygen sensor and hypertension monitoring but it still has an accurate optical heart rate sensor that covers most bases, including high and low heart rate notifications.The SE 3 also has a skin temperature sensor, which is used as part of the Vitals app, the sleep tracking and for retrospective ovulation estimates for the cycles tracking app.The watch also does a good job of tracking general workouts, including walks, runs, cycles and other common sports and activities with its GPS.The watch also supports offline music playback via Bluetooth headphones, including from subscription services such as Spotify.And it has offline Apple Maps, should you get lost without your phone.

Apple says the battery should last more than 1,000 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity and can be replaced for £95,Repairs cost between £195 and £229 depending on the model,It contains more than 40% recycled material, including aluminium, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, lithium, rare-earth elements, steel, tin, titanium and tungsten,Apple offers trade-in and free recycling for devices, and breaks down the watch’s environmental impact in its report,The Apple Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399) for the 40mm version or £249 (€299/$279/A$449) for 44mm.

For comparison, the Apple Watch Series 11 costs £369 and the Apple Watch Ultra 3 costs £749.The Apple Watch SE 3 is the best deal in Apple’s smartwatch line this year, offering almost everything that’s great about the Series 11 but at a significantly cheaper price.The new always-on display, S10 chip and watchOS 26 make the SE 3 just as good day to day.The only meaningful feature you miss out on is the ability to take ECGs, but if you know you don’t need it then that’s no loss.The 1.

5-day battery life of the 40mm isn’t too bad but the larger 44mm should last a little longer.The limited choice of colours is easily remedied with a bright strap, while the older design with smaller screens, larger bezels and a thicker body is easy to live with for the price.Pros: great value Apple Watch, always-on screen, Apple Pay, double-tap and wrist-flick gestures, decent health and fitness tracking, long software support, recycled materials, 50-metre water resistance.Cons: no ECG, no blood oxygen monitoring, no hypertension alerts, old design, only works with an iPhone, no third-party watch faces, screen not super bright in sunlight.
cultureSee all
A picture

Jon Stewart on Trump’s Gatsby party: ‘The theme was apparently gross income inequality’

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party held just hours before millions of Americans lost their food stamp benefits.On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked House speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that Trump is “desperate for Snap benefits to flow to the American people”, even as his administration let the largest food assistance program in the nation, supporting around 42 million Americans, lapse during the government shutdown.Stewart played a clip of Johnson assuring that Trump “is a big-hearted president”.“Is he? Big-hearted? Loves us?” Stewart replied. “Because again, and maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but he did just recently dump diarrhea on all of us

A picture

Three decades later, The Truman Show feels freshly disturbing – and astoundingly prescient

The great Australian director Peter Weir is perhaps underrated as an auteur, simply because his filmography doesn’t follow any thematic or stylistic principle; each of his contributions feels like a complete work of art unto itself. While Picnic at Hanging Rock remains his finest work, his foray into Hollywood culminated in the utterly transfixing, intermittently horrifying Jim Carrey vehicle The Truman Show. Almost 30 years after its theatrical release, the film has only grown in stature and prescience.Ostensibly a dark satire on voyeurism and the inexhaustible manipulations of the media, The Truman Show predated the television juggernaut Big Brother by a single year, and it’s hard not to see something causal in that. Both are about surveillance and the murky line separating reality from entertainment; both involve hidden cameras watching the participants’ every move

A picture

Big trouble in ‘Little Berlin’: the tiny hamlet split in two by the cold war

A new museum in Mödlareuth tells the story of how a settlement of only 50 people straddled Bavaria in West Germany and Thuringia in the eastA creek so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their history

A picture

From Bugonia to All’s Fair: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Yorgos ‘Poor Things’ Lanthimos reunites with Emma Stone for a weird kidnapping thriller, while Kim Kardashian and Sarah Paulson get the right side of the law in Ryan Murphy’s LA storyBugoniaOut now One of the wildest directors of the 21st century, Yorgos Lanthimos returns with something that you might not expect from him: a remake. But this isn’t a standard Hollywood cash-in; it’s a black comedy that sees Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons go to some truly crazy places in a story of two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a CEO.RelayOut now Riz Ahmed plays the guy you call when a dodgy corporation and an individual with the potential to expose their corrupt practices need to talk. Basically he’s a “fixer”, who can broker payoffs for eye-watering amounts, while keeping a piece of the pie for himself – but is he about to bite off more than he can chew? The new thriller from David Mackenzie (Hell Or High Water).Palestine 36Out now The Palestinian entry for the best international film at the Oscars, this historical drama from Annemarie Jacir explores events leading up to the Arab revolt of 1936, when Palestinians tried to gain independence from British colonial rule

A picture

The Guide #215: Why we can’t get enough of Bohemian Rhapsody

Fifty years ago this very day, Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody as a single. By the time it reached record stores it was already familiar to many, having received extensive radio play by the likes of Kenny Everett (“Excuse me while I scrape myself off the ceiling,” was Everett’s reaction after its first spin). So the song climbed the charts quickly. Within a month it had gone to No 1, where it then sat for nine weeks, from the end of November to the end of January. And Bohemian Rhapsody has stayed lodged in pop music’s collective consciousness ever since

A picture

Stephen Colbert on ex-prince Andrew: ‘Pervert formerly known as prince’

Late-night hosts spoke about Donald Trump’s trip to Asia and how he refuses to accept criticism while also reacting to ex-prince Andrew being stripped of his royal title.On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about Trump’s recent trip to parts of Asia, including South Korea where he negotiated tariffs with Xi Jinping, China’s president.Colbert played awkward footage of the two in front of cameras, adding that he was “not confident we’re gonna win this one”.The talks ended up with both sides agreeing to what amounted to a pre-tariff status quo yet Trump has been “telling everyone he won the negotiations big time” saying that he would rank the meeting as a 12 out of 10.Colbert joked that he “must have been insufferable as a teenager” telling friends he went to 14th base with girls which means “over the bra, under the hat”