While 18 hours is what apple says, their scenario for 18 hour usage is probably very uncommon.
At least for me it is. And thus I get around 2 days battery life with a 4 year old series 2 watch.
Their official test includes "45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth"[0] - so unless you plan on doing that you can easily expect double the battery time.
It does feel really good to go on a jog without bringing my phone. That’s my favorite part of my Apple Watch, upgrading from the series 0 to the Series 6 cellular. I barely wore my series 0 and got bored of it, but the 6 feels indispensable.
18 hours is absurd, IMO. I have a Garmin Instinct Solar that gets up to 24 days of battery life without any solar exposure (there's unlimited battery life with enough exposure unless you use GPS a lot). I get notifications for any phone app I want, plus GPS when I need it and a multitude of fitness tracking, including round the clock heart beat monitoring. I can't use it as a phone or send texts (though I can read them) so I guess that's where it "lags" behind the Apple Watch. I think it's the perfect fitness tracker that's also a rugged watch.
I have the series 6 and also wish the battery life was just a little bit longer. It feels like I have very little wiggle room, and have to charge it once a day around the same time or it’ll die. I’m writing this from an iPhone 12 Pro Max that hasn’t been on a charger since yesterday morning when I got out of bed.
I charge mine while I’m in the shower usually. Or if I’ve hit all my goals for the day I’ll toss it on the charger before bed.
It doesn’t take long to get a reasonable charge on it. I usually keep it around 80% at most anyway. It gets me through the day at 80% and through the night since I use it for sleep tracking and alarm.
The Series 3 has better battery life than the Series 6 (from my experience owning both).
I think the difference is the Series 6 screen never fully turns off. I imagine disabling "always on" mode would likely push battery life much higher, but that's just a guess
Yeah I can easily get 2 days when I turn off always-on. Sometimes I do because the watch distracts me sometimes when its always on. But the screen is also bigger, that doesn't help.
