Just a couple of months after its debut, you can already score a great deal on the Apple Watch Series 9 thanks to an Amazon Black Friday discount. The smartwatch has dropped to $329, which is $80 or 18 percent off the regular price of $399. The previous low we saw for the Apple Watch Series 9 was $349 earlier this month.
This price applies to the 41mm model and you can take your pick from a variety of case colors and sport bands. Several 45mm variants are on sale too. That size of the Apple Watch Series 9 is down to $360, which is $69 off the standard price of $429.
At these prices, the Apple Watch Series 9 becomes a more enticing option as a gift for a special someone in your life, or even just yourself. We think this is the best smartwatch you can buy overall (though obviously you’ll need to look at different options if you’re an Android user).
In our review, we gave the Apple Watch Series 9 a score of 92. There are some major upgrades this year, thanks to the introduction of a more powerful S9 system-in-package (SiP) processor.
One of the key new features is called Double Tap, which builds on Apple’s Assistive Touch accessibility tool. When Double Tap is enabled, you carry out a pinching action using the hand that’s wearing the watch to carry out the main function in an app. It’s a useful way to control certain aspects of your smartwatch without having to touch the screen. You can use Double Tap to, for instance, snooze an alarm, pause a song that’s playing or reply to a message.
Using the gesture to reply to a message will bring up the Siri-powered voice typing option. So it’s worth mentioning here that, thanks to the S9 SiP, the Apple Watch Series 9 can handle on-device Siri processing. That makes the voice assistant’s performance a bit snappier, as Apple doesn’t have to send your request to its servers for processing and back again. It also means that Siri can work offline.
Elsewhere, a second-gen ultra wideband chip powers a more precise Find My iPhone experience, as long as the phone you’re looking for also has that chip. For instance, when you’re looking for a misplaced iPhone 15 Pro, the Apple Watch Series 9 will show you how many feet away the device is, along with a directional indicator to guide you to it. Other upgrades in the latest Apple Watch include a brighter display. You’ll also be able to check out the revised UI that Apple brought in with watchOS 10.
Meanwhile, the second-gen Apple Watch SE (which scored 89 in our review last year) has fallen to an all-time-best price too. If you’re looking for a more budget-friendly way into the Apple Watch ecosystem, this could be the right option for you. Both sizes of the Apple Watch SE are $70 off, with 40mm versions coming in at $179 and 44mm variants starting at $209.
Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-watch-series-9-falls-to-a-new-low-of-329-in-an-amazon-black-friday-deal-164517938.html?src=rss