Apple Watch Series 8! Unboxing and Initial Impressions!
# Apple Watch Series 8 Review: What’s Inside the Box and Why It Stands Out
## Unboxing Experience
The journey of reviewing the Apple Watch Series 8 began with unboxing. The excitement was palpable as I tore open the packaging, reminiscent of the thrill from opening iPhones or previous Apple Watches. Inside, I found a sleek midnight aluminum case paired with a midnight sport band. The attention to detail in the packaging design was evident, and it felt like a seamless extension of Apple’s product line.
One notable difference this year was the absence of a traditional charging brick, aligning with Apple’s move towards more sustainable packaging. The included charger was minimalist yet functional, much like the rest of the lineup. The unboxing experience was undoubtedly a highlight, with everything feeling cohesive and thoughtfully designed.
## Design and Features
The Series 8 boasts a stunning midnight aluminum case that lived up to its name. While I initially expected it to have a bluish tint like the MacBook’s midnight color, it turned out to be a sleek dark gray, which looked even more impressive in person. The watch band, though standard, complemented the overall design beautifully.
A key feature this year was the enhanced screen real estate, which provided a noticeable upgrade from previous models. The 41mm case felt just right—small enough for everyday wear yet large enough to utilize all the new features effectively. I couldn’t help but compare it to the upcoming Apple Watch Ultra, which would arrive soon. While I appreciated the balanced size of the Series 8, I was nervous about how I’d feel about the larger ultra model.
## Setup Process
Setting up the Apple Watch Series 8 was straightforward. Opening the watch and syncing it with my iPhone through the dedicated app took only a few moments. However, one frustration that remains is the reliance on an iPhone for setup. While I understand the integration with Apple’s ecosystem, it still feels limiting for those without access to an iPhone.
The Series 8 paired seamlessly with my phone, and I was impressed by how quickly everything synced up. The emergency SOS feature and crash detection were particularly impressive, even though the latter wasn’t functional on my iPhone due to not having the latest model. These features added a layer of safety that felt invaluable.
## Health Features
The health-focused features on the Series 8 were a standout. Crash detection, enabled by new sensors in the watch, could automatically call emergency services if it detected a crash. While I couldn’t test this feature extensively, the potential impact was clear. Other health metrics and monitoring tools continued to evolve, catering to a broader demographic of users.
## Final Thoughts
The Apple Watch Series 8 exceeded my expectations aesthetically. The midnight aluminum case and band combination were stunning, far surpassing my initial anticipation. The watch felt comfortable on my wrist, with an upgraded rubber feel that added to the overall premium experience.
One concern was the cellular functionality, which I had relied on heavily in previous models. Since I opted for the GPS version this time around, I knew I’d need to consider upgrading to the Apple Watch Ultra if I wanted to retain cellular capabilities. This decision hung over my head as I prepared to review the upcoming ultra model.
In conclusion, the Series 8 was a joy to wear and use. It felt like the best-looking Apple Watch yet, blending form and function seamlessly. The experience of setting it up and using it daily was smooth and intuitive, leaving me eager to explore its capabilities further.
## What’s Next?
As I wrap up this review, I’m curious about your thoughts. What features would you like to see in future iterations of the Apple Watch? Drop your comments below, and let me know if there are any specific aspects of the Series 8 you’d like me to dive deeper into.
If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out my review of the brand new iPhone 14 Pro Max by clicking [here](#). Thanks for watching!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe apple watch series 8 what comes in the box and is it any good let's find out and before we get started i'd like to thank nobody nobody gave me this watch i purchased this totally myself nobody's letting me borrow this i bought it disclaimer over i'm a huge fan of the apple watch you can see i've got my patent-pending sweet dad apple watch tan from my series seven so let's crack this thing open and see what we get this year so i did get the series eight with the midnight aluminum case and the midnight sport band we're probably going to swap it out and see if my series 7 solo loop will work instead because i do like the soul loops ready three two one boom oh it tore this year i think last year did not tear it all smoothly opened up okay we move out the packaging i do really like this i mean look at all of the cool bands that you get for your apple watch i love it i really really like the apple watch some there's a lot of cool features this year that i think are really important um like milestones for the apple watch it's already the most useful like i consider the apple watch to be like the only useful smart watch i will probably catch some flack for that but it's my video so it's really nice to see them continue to increase and add a bunch of features to it so here's the band that comes with it oh it's kind of new this year i made i really like that looks good when they said midnight i was thinking it was going to be more bluish like the midnight color of the macbooks but that's more like a gray you're definitely you're not gonna be able to see that um in the video but this looks really good that looks so much better than the blue i've got on my solo loop i we might be using the uh the regular band with this because that looks gorgeous okay let's pop this thing open boom boom so much everything about opening up iphones and opening up the apple watch is so much better than opening up the macbooks apple teams between the product team that develops the packaging for the iphones and the watches gotta go get with your macbook friends and make sure their packaging is as fun to open here we go boom designed by apple in california okay so in the box we get the apple watch instructions tells you how to set it up that is very nice of them some warranty information and disclaimers and then nothing else no sticker they should have done like a long like distorted sticker in there you get the charger but no charging brick much like the rest of the apple lineup anymore and then we get the watch itself 41 millimeter midnight that looks incredible they definitely you know when they called this midnight because it is called midnight right yeah it's midnight aluminum case that looks fantastic that looks so good it looks so much better than midnight on the max like a totally different color like midnight's on the mac are a little bit here check it out this is the midnight macbook air so you can see it's the m2 macbook air at midnight color you can tell because it's got fingerprints all over it but this is like a bluer you can see right here with the lights hitting it it's a little bit more of a blue this is midnight this is just dark this looks so good i'm kind of shocked i bought midnight because i just like yeah whatever it's it's gonna look like midnight's gonna be fine but it's nothing to write home about but even the watch band you can see kind of here when you contrast it to this this is like a dark gray this is more blue so the the midnight color for the apple watch is much much better than the midnight color for the macbook so let's pop the bands on here oh i put it on upside down whoops got two i got too excited it's turning on so that works kind of worked out for that yeah i don't think i would want to pop this band on here just here let's see yeah that just doesn't look right it doesn't look right i can't if i'm gonna keep using the solo loop i'm gonna have to get a midnight solo loop if they sell it but man that looks all right let's set this sucker up okay united states open up the apple watch app on your phone and then let's start pairing hold the watch to the camera your apple watch is paired that's how easy it is the only thing though that really frustrates me about the whole apple watch experience is that you need an iphone to uh to set all this stuff up i really really wish they would release the apple watch app on a macbook ipad stuff like that i feel like a big chunk of the sales of iphone is because it's the only way to use the apple watch like the apple watch like i said it's the only useful smart watch so if you want to use one you have to have an iphone which really kind of sucks i there's not a lot that apple does that really irritates me that's one of the key things that they do that does irritate me so let's set this up real quick and we'll see how it works but you did notice uh that the 41 millimeter watch bands for my series 7 did fit on the 41 millimeter watch face for the series 8. i like the smaller watch face i don't like big watches i spent a long time wearing big watches i like having the freedom of maneuver of my wrist one of the things that i'm nervous about the apple watch ultra that we'll get in next week is that it looks like a big honking watch and i probably might not like that so we'll see okay we will accept the terms and conditions apple just has the setup signup experience of their devices as the best like it's just the best we will not share let's create our passcode sorry team you don't get to see my passcode okay really important stuff so we now have emergency sos i believe we had that before but now we have crash detection on the watch and on the new iphones this is the iphone 13 pro max so this does not have crash detection but if you are in a crash there's new sensors built into the watch that should be able to tell if you're in a crash situation and it will dial out and call emergency services for you which i think is incredible i believe for this version i did only get the gps series i didn't get the cellular because i was getting the cellular apple watch ultra which might suck because if i don't like that i will have to then get another apple watch because i am a big fan of having these cellular versions we will set that up later we will keep that view okay it is syncing with the phone and we should be ready to go here in just a second but i think that looks so good and the band feels just a little bit like better rubber this year too i'm sorry team like i that is a beautiful color that's just that is good good color yeah i just got the gps version okay pass gary put current gary into a bind where if i don't love the apple watch ultra i'm hosed because that's the one with cellular so i will we'll have to see hopefully i love that watch it's gonna have to be something real special to beat this this is the best looking app i've had every apple watch since the series three this is the best looking apple watch i've ever had okay we got it all set up and ready to go let's do some exploring it's already set up to look exactly like my watch from last year which i like it has all of my watch faces which look that's my me being very tired from running there we go we've got me being tired on a run as a watch face that's uh not crazy at all okay so i don't think there's any big apps that i want to look at from here because a lot of what's really new this year comes from the crash detection all of some of the new features there are some new health features that i can't really test because they are you know more aimed for a different uh demographic of people but i think this is a very comfortable watch the screen last year was the big point where they increased the screen real estate which is a very very noticeable update especially when you have the 41 millimeter watches but everything should be really smooth really easy to operate i just cannot get over how good this watch and the watch band looks i think it looks so much better than the blue that i got last year with the serie seven i don't think the series seven looks bad but this looks fantastic we'll have to play around with this some more and see how this works when we're running when we're out using it daily for watch stuff like that we'll give this a shot but it was very easy to set up and it looks amazing but what about you what would you like to see out of the apple watch series eight let me know in the comments below because i want to make sure that i'm making videos that you want to see and if you like this video click here to watch my videos about the brand new iphone 14 pro max click click click click click click click thanks for watchingthe apple watch series 8 what comes in the box and is it any good let's find out and before we get started i'd like to thank nobody nobody gave me this watch i purchased this totally myself nobody's letting me borrow this i bought it disclaimer over i'm a huge fan of the apple watch you can see i've got my patent-pending sweet dad apple watch tan from my series seven so let's crack this thing open and see what we get this year so i did get the series eight with the midnight aluminum case and the midnight sport band we're probably going to swap it out and see if my series 7 solo loop will work instead because i do like the soul loops ready three two one boom oh it tore this year i think last year did not tear it all smoothly opened up okay we move out the packaging i do really like this i mean look at all of the cool bands that you get for your apple watch i love it i really really like the apple watch some there's a lot of cool features this year that i think are really important um like milestones for the apple watch it's already the most useful like i consider the apple watch to be like the only useful smart watch i will probably catch some flack for that but it's my video so it's really nice to see them continue to increase and add a bunch of features to it so here's the band that comes with it oh it's kind of new this year i made i really like that looks good when they said midnight i was thinking it was going to be more bluish like the midnight color of the macbooks but that's more like a gray you're definitely you're not gonna be able to see that um in the video but this looks really good that looks so much better than the blue i've got on my solo loop i we might be using the uh the regular band with this because that looks gorgeous okay let's pop this thing open boom boom so much everything about opening up iphones and opening up the apple watch is so much better than opening up the macbooks apple teams between the product team that develops the packaging for the iphones and the watches gotta go get with your macbook friends and make sure their packaging is as fun to open here we go boom designed by apple in california okay so in the box we get the apple watch instructions tells you how to set it up that is very nice of them some warranty information and disclaimers and then nothing else no sticker they should have done like a long like distorted sticker in there you get the charger but no charging brick much like the rest of the apple lineup anymore and then we get the watch itself 41 millimeter midnight that looks incredible they definitely you know when they called this midnight because it is called midnight right yeah it's midnight aluminum case that looks fantastic that looks so good it looks so much better than midnight on the max like a totally different color like midnight's on the mac are a little bit here check it out this is the midnight macbook air so you can see it's the m2 macbook air at midnight color you can tell because it's got fingerprints all over it but this is like a bluer you can see right here with the lights hitting it it's a little bit more of a blue this is midnight this is just dark this looks so good i'm kind of shocked i bought midnight because i just like yeah whatever it's it's gonna look like midnight's gonna be fine but it's nothing to write home about but even the watch band you can see kind of here when you contrast it to this this is like a dark gray this is more blue so the the midnight color for the apple watch is much much better than the midnight color for the macbook so let's pop the bands on here oh i put it on upside down whoops got two i got too excited it's turning on so that works kind of worked out for that yeah i don't think i would want to pop this band on here just here let's see yeah that just doesn't look right it doesn't look right i can't if i'm gonna keep using the solo loop i'm gonna have to get a midnight solo loop if they sell it but man that looks all right let's set this sucker up okay united states open up the apple watch app on your phone and then let's start pairing hold the watch to the camera your apple watch is paired that's how easy it is the only thing though that really frustrates me about the whole apple watch experience is that you need an iphone to uh to set all this stuff up i really really wish they would release the apple watch app on a macbook ipad stuff like that i feel like a big chunk of the sales of iphone is because it's the only way to use the apple watch like the apple watch like i said it's the only useful smart watch so if you want to use one you have to have an iphone which really kind of sucks i there's not a lot that apple does that really irritates me that's one of the key things that they do that does irritate me so let's set this up real quick and we'll see how it works but you did notice uh that the 41 millimeter watch bands for my series 7 did fit on the 41 millimeter watch face for the series 8. i like the smaller watch face i don't like big watches i spent a long time wearing big watches i like having the freedom of maneuver of my wrist one of the things that i'm nervous about the apple watch ultra that we'll get in next week is that it looks like a big honking watch and i probably might not like that so we'll see okay we will accept the terms and conditions apple just has the setup signup experience of their devices as the best like it's just the best we will not share let's create our passcode sorry team you don't get to see my passcode okay really important stuff so we now have emergency sos i believe we had that before but now we have crash detection on the watch and on the new iphones this is the iphone 13 pro max so this does not have crash detection but if you are in a crash there's new sensors built into the watch that should be able to tell if you're in a crash situation and it will dial out and call emergency services for you which i think is incredible i believe for this version i did only get the gps series i didn't get the cellular because i was getting the cellular apple watch ultra which might suck because if i don't like that i will have to then get another apple watch because i am a big fan of having these cellular versions we will set that up later we will keep that view okay it is syncing with the phone and we should be ready to go here in just a second but i think that looks so good and the band feels just a little bit like better rubber this year too i'm sorry team like i that is a beautiful color that's just that is good good color yeah i just got the gps version okay pass gary put current gary into a bind where if i don't love the apple watch ultra i'm hosed because that's the one with cellular so i will we'll have to see hopefully i love that watch it's gonna have to be something real special to beat this this is the best looking app i've had every apple watch since the series three this is the best looking apple watch i've ever had okay we got it all set up and ready to go let's do some exploring it's already set up to look exactly like my watch from last year which i like it has all of my watch faces which look that's my me being very tired from running there we go we've got me being tired on a run as a watch face that's uh not crazy at all okay so i don't think there's any big apps that i want to look at from here because a lot of what's really new this year comes from the crash detection all of some of the new features there are some new health features that i can't really test because they are you know more aimed for a different uh demographic of people but i think this is a very comfortable watch the screen last year was the big point where they increased the screen real estate which is a very very noticeable update especially when you have the 41 millimeter watches but everything should be really smooth really easy to operate i just cannot get over how good this watch and the watch band looks i think it looks so much better than the blue that i got last year with the serie seven i don't think the series seven looks bad but this looks fantastic we'll have to play around with this some more and see how this works when we're running when we're out using it daily for watch stuff like that we'll give this a shot but it was very easy to set up and it looks amazing but what about you what would you like to see out of the apple watch series eight let me know in the comments below because i want to make sure that i'm making videos that you want to see and if you like this video click here to watch my videos about the brand new iphone 14 pro max click click click click click click click thanks for watching\n"