Apple Watch SE hands-on: a mixed bag of the best parts and features from the last few years of Watches but lacks ECG support that debuted with Series 4
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's new budget watch was unveiled a day earlier at $279 with a Series 4-type design and an S5 chip promising up to 2x faster performance than Series 3 (the SE announcement). Engadget's hands-on now fills in the trade-offs: it inherits the best hardware of recent years but drops the ECG that debuted with Series 4 back in 2018, when taking a reading was easy even if traces were iPhone-only (that first ECG hands-on).
The omission matters because it defines where the SE sits in the lineup: alongside the same-day Series 6 hands-on, which added blood oxygen and a brighter always-on screen, Apple is now selling two watches whose gap is defined less by speed than by health sensors.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing the $279 SE get near-flagship performance but lose the ECG and always-on display, making the sensor cut — not the chip — the real price of entry.
- Apple's lineup splits cleanly: the SE competes on value while the Series 6 owns the health-feature story, protecting the premium tier's pricing.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in the mid-price smartwatch market get a clear opening to advertise health features Apple reserves for its expensive models, since the SE's value pitch concedes that ground.
- Reviewers' framing of the SE as 'excellent at an attractive price' pressures Apple to keep upgrading the cheap model's internals each cycle without closing the sensor gap.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's watch business stratifies permanently by health sensing rather than performance — a structure still visible years later when the SE 3 ships with an always-on display and 5G yet still no ECG or hypertension alerts (the SE 3 review).
The trend: Apple is segmenting its watch line by withholding health sensors like ECG from cheaper models, turning medical features into the premium tier's moat.