Apple Watch Series 12 review: Catching up and catching heat

The new wearable's controversial audio features aren't available yet, but there are plenty of upgrades here.

Controversial new features dominated the conversation around the Apple Watch Series 12 launch last week. While the company's latest smartwatch had worthwhile updates like a redesigned health sensing array, new gesture support, a revived Ceramic case and improved battery performance, it felt like they were quickly forgotten. In the aftermath of the keynote presentation, people seemed lost in the controversy around two new Apple Watch features: Siri Recaps and Live Rewind .

They're part of a new suite of Audio Intelligence tools that use the Series 12's microphone to listen to sounds and speech around the wearer and deliver notifications, transcripts or summaries. In its typical privacy-minded way, Apple took pains to explain how the Series 12's S11 chip and dedicated Secure Exclave made those features more private than the alternative methods currently available. And as has become somewhat usual for Apple lately, Live Rewind and Siri Recaps won't actually be available until some vague "later this year" timeframe.

Since I wasn't able to test them yet, my mission in this review is much simpler. I spent about seven days with the Apple Watch Series 12 and focused on what I could actually try. And so far, it's the little things like gesture support that stood out.

I feel it's important to reiterate and discuss this up top. Only two of the four Audio Intelligence features are available at the moment: faster Shazam and Sound Recognition. I am eager to test Live Rewind and Siri Recap when they become available, but for now, I can only test the other two.

But before I talk about my experience with them, we should talk about the Series 12's S11 chip and how its Secure Exclave plays a part in many, if not all the watch's audio-related applications.

The Secure Exclave is positioned as a hardware-isolated component on the processor where raw audio is buffered and interpreted. Its addition is what enabled Apple to roll out new features that produce transcripts or summaries from environmental sound while keeping privacy in mind. But now that there is a Secure Exclave on the Watch, Apple has also been able to use it for tasks that previously didn't have a special private space for processing.

That includes things like the Noise app that detects the volume of sounds in your environment to tell you if your hearing is at risk due to exposure to loud noises. In a feature that's existed since watchOS 26, the Series 12 (and older watches) can automatically adjust your notification volumes based on your surrounding noise levels. This will also go through the Secure Exclave on the new Apple Watch. While none of these features ever related to speech and were only parsing data related to the loudness of environmental audio, it feels like a bonus that their processing now goes through the Secure Exclave as well.