After years of fairly cautious updates, it looks like Apple has finally decided to shake up its Watch hardware. The new S11 chip for Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 is built on the A20 Pro architecture, which is used in the current iPhone 18 Pro.
The S11 is equipped with two energy-efficient CPU cores, a graphics core, and an independent 4-core neural engine for artificial intelligence tasks. Memory bandwidth has been increased by 50%, and the Neural Engine L3 cache has been increased by half. The amount of RAM now is comparable to the iPhone 13 released in 2021. The use of the A20 Pro’s 2nm process technology in the watch itself has not yet been confirmed.
Apple places special emphasis on local AI capabilities. A more powerful platform should provide longer software support and exclusive AI features for Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4. This may seem especially noticeable to owners of older models: the S10 actually belongs to the A18 Pro generation, and is already two generations behind.
The Apple Watch Series 12 42mm version is priced at $399, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 is priced at $799. By the company’s standards, it seems like it’s time for the watch to stop pretending that small upgrades every year are enough.
