The Apple Watch was once again shown off at Apple’s “Spring Forward” event on Monday, and many have been left wondering how the device compares to the Android Wear devices currently on the market. Technology has surely evolved a bit since the G Watch was announced, but how much have things changed?
There are several differences between the two platforms, but one that has now been brought to light is the device’s physical dimensions. Looking at Apple’s renders and images makes the device look big, but comparing its actual dimensions to Android Wear devices does the opposite. It’s tiny compared to most of what’s available today.
Norm Chan on Twitter put together a couple 3D-printed Apple Watches and placed them next to his ZenWatch, and it’s a bit shocking to see how small the 38mm Apple Watch is in comparison. But let’s not stop with the ZenWatch; let’s see how all of the top Android Wear devices compare to the Apple Watch in physical size…
Here are the Apple Watch dimensions:
38 mm model: 38.6 x 33.3 x 10.5 mm
42 mm model: 42 x 35.9 x 10.5 mm
And here are some of the dimensions of popular Android Wear devices:
Asus ZenWatch: 51 x 39.9 x 7.9 ~ 9.4 mm
LG G Watch R: 53.6 x 46.4 x 9.7 mm
Moto 360: 46 x 46 x 11.5 mm
LG G Watch: 46.5 x 37.9 x 9.95 mm
Sony SmartWatch 3: 51 x 36 x 10 mm
Samsung Gear Live: 56.4 x 37.9 x 8.9 mm
Huawei Watch: 42 x 42 x 11.3 mm
As you can see, it looks like Apple managed to cram the innards of the Apple Watch into a much smaller case than its competitors—and this is especially the case with the 38mm model. The Apple Watch is thicker than all of the Android Wear devices we’ve listed here except the Moto 360, but not by all that much. The thinnest Andoid Wear device listed here, the Asus ZenWatch, is 2.6 mm thinner than Apple’s offering at its thinnest point—and only .9 mm thinner at its thickest. Other devices, like the LG G Watch R, are only .8 mm thinner than the Apple Watch.
As for the width and height comparison, the Apple Watch is definitely smaller. The “large” version of the Apple Watch, for example, is still 4mm shorter than the LG G Watch. Also, notably, the closest comparison in size seems to be the recently announced Huawei Watch, which is 42 mm in diameter and 11.3 mm thick.
For some perspective, here’s a comparison of the ZenWatch to a few of these other devices:
via <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2860463/4-top-android-wear-watches-a-hands-on-guide.html">ComputerWorld</a>
Interestingly, even the largest of these smartwatches definitely fall into the category of being pretty standard size. Large Breitling watches, for example—a big name maker of high-end swiss watches—average around 46mm to 50mm. It’s not just Android Wear devices that the Apple Watch would look small next to, as many luxury watches (a part of the market Apple is aiming for with the Edition) would make Apple’s entry look tiny as well.
So the question that remains—and it will probably remain a mystery until we have our hands on real-life benchmarks—is how the Apple Watch will compare to Android Wear devices in battery life knowing that it’s so much smaller (specifically the 38mm model). Apple claims the device will get 18 hours on a single charge, and the smaller model will typically stay alive for a shorter amount of time. We’ll see how they fare in real-life use.
3d printed 38mm and 42mm apple watch sizes, compared to Asus zenwatch. pic.twitter.com/PKjMbJRDio
— Norman Chan (@nchan) March 11, 2015
Updated with some GIFs via Reddit
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How about the Pebble Specs?
Pebble (Kickstarter 1st Edition): width is 36mm, length is 40mm, thick 11.4 mm
Original Pebble: 50.8mm L × 33mm W × 11mm T
Pebble Steel: 43mm L × 34.1mm W × 10.3mm T
Pebble Time: 47 L × 40 W × 9.5mm T
Pebble Time Steel: 47 L × 40 W × 10.5mm T
40.5mm × 37.5mm W × 9.5mm T Pebble Time
40.5mm × 37.5mm W × 10.5mm T Pebble Time Steel
DON’T GET THE PEBBLE WATCH!!! I bought one on, this past, Black Friday. It looks a lot better online than it really is. After having it for a month, the bluetooth stopped working completely, which basically means the watch is completely useless. Besides the Pebble Watch looking cool and stuff, the best part about it is that you can get texts and change the music on your iPhone from it. Without bluetooth you can’t do either of those things, which in my eyes means it useless. That doesn’t mean it won’t work at all without the bluetooth working, but it does mean you will lose most of the best features of the Pebble Watch. The good news is that you can still tell the time, without bluetooth, but the last time I checked most watches are supposed to do that anyways. I would highly suggest not getting the Pebble Watch. You can find a much better watch that dose the same, if not more, than the Pebble Watch does. I would definitely suggest the Apple Watch though, since it is made by Apple, I can guarantee you that it will work with all kinds of Apple products seamlessly.
Umm, get it replaced under warranty? I’ve had my Pebble since the original Kickstarter, I wear it daily in the shower too and it still works fine.
It’s different to Apple watch:
Pebble advantages:
7 days battery life
Always on display
100% water proof
Cheap/disposable
Physical buttons for media control (nice because I can play/pause or skip backwards in a podcast without looking at it)
Apple watch advantages:
Actionable notifications
Premium materials
Ecosystem, Siri, basically everything else. It’s a far superior device.
“Interestingly, even the largest of these smartwatches definitely fall into the category of being pretty standard size.”
Watches above 40mm are actually a fairly recent trend in the history of watches. Most men’s high-end watches going back earlier than the ’70s were around 36-38mm with the exception of use-specific watches like dive watches or pilot watches that were larger by necessity (for waterproofing of the case and/or visibility). It’s no accident that Apple sized their offerings in line with what affluent watch buyers would or would not wear on their wrist as a replacement for their Pateks, Audemars, JLCs, etc.
Listen, I think the Apple Watch is good and I’m going to order the sports version, because in my mind that is actually pretty good value, but please don’t compare the Apple Watch with a Patek, Audemars, JLC, Rolex, Omega, Breitling or any other high end watch manufacturer. It’s embarrassing.
Embarrassing to you, maybe. Future versions of the Apple Watch, especially with the benefit of advanced health sensor functions, will be stiff competition for what is essentially luxury jewelry/sculpture on the wrist space of a lot of mechanical watch lovers. Vanity and luxury will only go so far when you’re talking about choosing a high end mechanical timepiece over a device that could possibly extend your lifespan, offer early warnings of major (or even minor) health issues, etc.
I could be wrong, I could be right, but the fact is that this is just the very first version of what is going to be an increasingly refined and improved product from Apple. My comment was simply observing that they know what their competition is in the luxury space, and will certainly go after those profits as much as they can. The sizing indicates they likely know what they are doing in this regard.
The biggest issue is that when you compare it to Omega and Rolex, those are made in Switzerland with extreme care and the Apple Watch is made in China on an assembly line. There’s no comparison, with that said the Sport version is perfect for me.
A few of the recent android watches have had fairly attractive, classy watch designs, but the Apple watch is by comparison very bland. It’s about as lacking in flair and jewellery like appeal as it’s possible to get, so to compare it to a proper high end watch is absurd. Plus let’s not forget that real watches are aerlooms which last generations. Smart watches will last 12 months at most before ending up in recycling.
Totally agree
Apple watch looks far superior to the current Android offerings in the flesh. Go and try it on at the Apple Store. My wife was amazed at the design and how much better it is in real life than how it looks from the photos. The Android watches feel like cheap toys in comparison. She went with the 38mm stainless with Milanese loop I went with the 43mm stainless with link bracelet. The link bracelet it made from over 100 parts and takes over 9 hours to cut the links for each band, and is hand polished. Some watch experts are amazed that Apple has done things with the bands that traditional watch makers haven’t done in 100 years, eg easily swappable bands, add and remove links without tools, magnets and so on.
You should add the Huawei watch which is probably one of the closest comparisons in size.
42mm diameter by 11.3mm thickness
Added – thanks.
Given how cell phone screens have grown and grown and grown into phablets. How many years until the Smart Watch turns into a full sleeve.
Hopefully people will not go stupid and want that – defeats the purpose of what a Smartwatch is supposed to be – something that tells time (since in owning one you’re a person who likely wears a watch anyway) but also gives you information from your phone so you don’t have to dig it out each time you get a notification. That should never require a huge screen.
Nintendo is way ahead of you on that one, dude. http://cdn1.sbnation.com/assets/3861165/image04.jpg
The full sleeve is the inevitable direction of the Watch. It’ll be a curved iPad on the forearm and it’ll be totally freaking awesome. Except for the sweat. Yeah–that’ll be kinda gross.
While people laugh at the idea as silly (and it pretty much is) giving the trends in the tech industry I would not be surprised to see this evolution….eventually.
“As you can see, it looks like Apple managed to cram the innards of the Apple Watch into a much smaller case than its competitors”
I’m not surprised seeing the lag the Apple Watch has. I would prefer a slightly larger smartwatch with a snapdragon 400 than the Apple Watch…
And you would use all that processing power to…. display time. I prefer smaller watches, not all men have yeti size wrists
APPLE WATCH
;-) 2Gb for Music via Bluetooth
No Gps
18 Hours battery
No wifi
Screen Size ????
Weight ?????
Sony SmartWatch 3
+36 Hours Battery,
GPS,
WaterProof,
4Gb via USB 2,
screen 1.6″ ,
Wifi,
45gr
The Apple Watch has 48 hours of battery life, up to 72. Sony doesn’t provide how they achieved the 36 hours
The Apple Watch has no GPS, but the Sony doesn’t have heart rate monitor
The Apple Watch can be configured with other than 2GB of music, and it has 8GB
The Apple Watch has an OLED screen with more PPI, versus an LCD
The Sony is water protected just for 1.5m and just for 30m, or just half a meter more than the Apple Watch
The Sony lacks wireless charging, much less than with magnetic
The Sony doesn’t make calls, because it lacks an speakerphone
The Sony doens’t have a scroll wheel
Finally, the Sony is ugly
“not all men have yeti size wrists”
And women want to wear these things, too…
Which Lag?
You don’t even touched it yet!
Well in every demo I’ve seen of the watch, serious lag can be seen. We should assume that it’s just early software and that things will be better on release, but we don’t actually know if that will be the case.
Yes, it’s early software. And every Android Wear watch STILL LAGS and it’s not “early software”.
Errrm, Stephen, ewwww!!! The article’s title must be winning a yet-unannounced prize for bias, bordering on immaturity. It made my stomach turn and I’m an fan, not an Android troll.
Ya, it’s beautiful but it’s also outrageously expensive for something that we expect to have 0 value in 2-3 years (and probably 0 battery life by then). Its value for money is way far from “bargain”, even taking into account build quality and software.
There’s some rather interesting competition coming its way
– Huawei Watch
– LG Watch Urbane LTE (my personal favourite)
– LG Watch Urbane
And… most importantly, these are all expected to ship under $500, more in the $350 range. Some of these already tout 2 days on a charge in early reviews.
I won’t mention the Pebble Steel. It may have what I call the minimum acceptable battery life for a smartwatch, but it lacks in aesthetics + finish by a wide margin.
That’s what the Apple watch is going to retail for? And saying its smaller than the others isn’t biased, it’s objectively a true fact.
Whether or not you like the design is subjective and something the reporter is also allowed to have.
It is smaller in dimensions, but that comes at a cost. The larger Apple watch has about 1.5″ screen diagonally. For a marginally smaller device you get a lot less display area. You get a lot more screen area on the 360 even though it is not that much bigger than the larger apple watch. The screen on Apple’s watch is almost 40% smaller.
screen size: http://www.wareable.com/news/apple-watch-display-resolution-outed-491
comparison to 360: http://www.gizmag.com/apple-iwatch-vs-moto-360/33767/
I don’t know of any watch selling for 349.00 which has any value – what’s the point. It’s a personal choice.. Diamonds are impossible to sell for what you pay for them – you’ll receive about half.
It’s a strange new world we live in – everyone expects something. I don’t – we live and die. Enjoy the toys while you are alive because nobody gets out of this world alive and they definitely can’t take anything with them.
That is of course if you don’t believe in life after the bodies death.
Apple Watch is in the $350 range.
Thats not true. Look up the definition of “range.”
True. There’s an Apple Watch for $350, so it’s in the >=$350 range
Oh, Gazoo…you know what he’s saying.
Twitter user @nchan? That’s Norman Chan, editor at Tested.com.
These tech companies don’t know anything about design and fashion, traditional watch manufactures do, but they can’t produce powerful chips and software. Only Apple can combine fashion and technologie.
In the very, very, very long lead-up to apple announcing the Watch, while others were releasing their second or third generations of smartwatch already, only one thought was on my mind.
What about the ladies?
iPhones are consistently dominated by women. Women love MacBooks too. There are several reasons for this, which I assure you aren’t sexit, if you’ll just bear with me. Women appreciate functional simplicity, not because they can’t deal with complex things, but because women have culturally-emphasised exposure to what elegance means. Many men understand and appreciate this too, but on the whole, it’s mostly the ladies. Oafish blokes lack this sense.
iOS does everything all the other OSs do, but it does it so in a way that offers clarity without clutter. The devices themselves are also elegantly simple. Designed for usability over coolness. They’re stylishly gender–neutral, without rough-edged masculine embellishments. It’s no wonder Samsung have again made the Galaxy S6 look so much like an iPhone.
The cell phone most seen in mirror selfies is the iPhone. This is grass-roots viral marketing at its best. It appeals to men because it appeals to women. Men want iMessage not to send 3 words to their male friends, but because they text their girlfriends for 2 hours a night.
These are real use-cases for young people. Maybe these are stereotypes we’d like to shed, but we haven’t shed them quite yet.
So too, the smartwatch which was going to succeed was always going to be the one which appeals to women as much as men. There’s very little out there in the market at the moment — and nothing that runs Android Wear which fits that bill.
Apple’s inclusion of a heartbeat lovers’ message is far from accidental. It underscores that they understand the same thing I’ve been talking about. Women will buy the Apple Watch, and men will buy one for a hundred reasons, one of which is because they want to receive a heartbeat message.
Even single men will have that latent desire aspirationally. Everyone who’s even remotely interested in the watch, wants to get that little ‘lub-dup, lub-dup’ from someone who fancies them.
The headline features are wonderful, but this gender interplay… this basic fact of life… is the reason Apple devices are so popular. Men will follow women wherever they go.
There really is no comparison, but those who hate Apple never pay attention to these things and cherry pick points which fit into their psychosis. Getting everything inside that case the size of a nice normal watch is a feat of engineering which you pay more for, pure and simple. Miniaturization is difficult and expensive and in the case of the Watch makes a huge (no pun intended) difference people are going to love.
What people forget is that these smart watches generally read much larger on the wrist than a mechanical watch, because of the big, black screen. Even though I’m a pretty tall guy, I’m buying a 38mm Apple Watch, because it’ll read about the same on my wrist as my 39mm Omega Aqua Terra. The dimensions are a little smaller than my Omega, but the big black screen of the Apple Watch makes it look larger than it is. That’s why the Moto 360 looks like a ridiculous hockey puck. Well, that and the slab sided design that makes it and the Hanwei look cheap and bulkier than they need to be.
Another thing to consider is that many people buy big, expensive watches to say, “hey, look at the money I spent on this thing.” Do people really want the same reaction from a smart watch? I want the thing to be as small as possible, while still being usable.
Damn that Zenwatch has as much bezel as it does screen!
Yeah, AppleWatch is smaller and that’s why everyone is bitching about the short battery life. Obviously, the Android Wear devices have larger batteries and get longer battery life. There’s always going to be some sort of tradeoff. There’s no point in comparing AppleWatch to any other smartwatch on the market. Either you want an AppleWatch or you don’t. It’s not going to please everyone but as long as it pleases 20 million or so consumers, that’s a pretty fair number.
“Apple claims the device will get 18 hours on a single charge, and the smaller model will typically stay alive for a shorter amount of time.”
No, you have that back to front, creating a serious error that you need to correct. All the stated times are based on the 38mm Watch. The 42mm Watch has LONGER times than these. Please correct this ASAP.
Source: http://www.apple.com/watch/battery.html “Apple Watch battery performance claims are based on test results from the 38mm Apple Watch. A 42mm Apple Watch typically experiences longer battery life.”
They are better than Android wear watches, but that doesn’t mean they are “sleek.” :-)
In that picture above for instance, with the four watches on two arms … NONE of those watches could be said to “fit” the user. They are all seriously oversized and the Apple Watch is not much different.
For a user with thin wrists like in that picture, (most females and about 30% of all males), a watch of about 34mm is a watch that “fits” that arm size. Apple (as well as most smart watch manufacturers) is actually using a different definition of “fits” than is used in the world of watches and watch fashion.
Be very careful buying the link bracelet if you have thin wrists, because Apple’s fitting information in this regard is quite misleading IMO.
Why are there no pictures of the 38mm version on normal wrists? The 42mm just looks “clunky” in most of the pictures I’ve seen. Will the 38mm display that much less information that it will be hard to use?
To the chagrin of many mechanical watch lovers, big watches (i.e., above 42mm) are very much in fashion right now relative to historical sizing trends, Panerai and Hublot being two prime examples/offenders depending on your viewpoint.
To allay your concerns, no, they will both display identical information. You will just have slightly smaller text, and smaller icons. You will also have the indicated battery life, whereas 42mm owners will get a little more than that.
That’s all.
Reblogged this on Yun Kut3's Blog.
It is very funny to see on so many blogs how so many MEN discuss about the different watches, especially the pebble, and the Samsung, and the moto and blablabla.
I’m a man, and I must admit, most of men only think on their own dick. Cardick, motodick, watchdick.
Bigger is better, more dark, more carbon, more military, everything which can dicky make think that the owner is a real male, strong powerful and with a big dick.
Apple of course loves dickheads who cpend all their money in big techno watches to feel they have a big dick. But they even loves more…. women. Oh, what? My god… maybe I will be censored writing this word…
But yes, Apple wants to sell to dickheads who like big watches, but these will buy the apple watch later. They also want to sell to men who also think with their dick, but act as they would not, and they also want to sell to WOMEN, because women are MANY, they love to buy a watch, and…. men love to buyx them a watch, even some dickheads, but women don’t like Pebble, Microsoft, and even Moto SpecialopsStarWarsIhaveabigwatchsoIhaveabigdick. Women want different watches. And Apple perfectly understood this, and as usually, understood that dick is nor rulling the world, women are rulling the world, that’s why dickmen dont give them the same salary for same work or kick them when they feel unsecure.
And how funny to see how so many dickmen were shocked by the edition price, but this is the same problem, Apple will send the applewatch to all people who say now that this watch is stupid, because they first will sell to women and rich, and as usually, all other follow up.
Yes my comment could seem very agressive, it is not in fact, just continue to compare male nerd’s watch, while this Apple prepare to sell millions to the others.
Oh… in english there is one funny sentence… “Size matters”… Apple understood this, but in another way…
:P
https://collectantic.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/01-android-wear-watches-100536439-primary-idge.jpg?w=620
Same picture with Applewatch on it.
Pebble is the only smart watch that is going to give Apple a big competition in the roll out of Apple Watch. Android Watches are typically failing from last couple of years. We have Samsung who rolled out handful of watches last year, and now siting without any smart-watch for the users.
Nice size comparison. Check the size of the actual watch displayed, for example compared to the Moto360. When using circular watch faces, the Moto’s advantage is huge. The bezel on the Apple Watch is also way too large.
This article needs a bit of updating now that the official Apple Watch schematics have been released for third party band makers. It reveals what many suspected, that the Watch is actually almost 12.5mm thick, not the svelte 10.5mm that Apple cleverly advertises as the “case size”… meaning, they left off the display and sensor pods, which everyone else includes because that’s how you measure watches.