The Sapphire crystal face of the Apple Watch Ultra just got put through its paces by the cool cats at the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel, which compared it with other smartwatches that also use a sapphire cover.
Sapphire, which is one of the hardest minerals in existence, is extremely difficult to scratch, making it a popular choice for premium watches.
The YouTuber, who’s known for doing durability tests with electronic devices, has posted a new video in which he measures the hardness of the sapphire cover of the Apple Watch Ultra as well as Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 and Garmin Fenix 7. The main purpose of the test was to find out if these three watches in fact have sapphire crystal as promoted by the companies.
Per Zack, who runs the YouTube channel, sapphire is a material with a hardness level close to that of diamond. Using the Mohs scale, which measures the hardness of minerals from 1 to 10, he shows how scratch resistant the screens of devices such as phones and smartwatches are. While glass scratches at level 6, sapphire scratches at level 8 or even 9 depending on how pure it is.
Apple claims to have used sapphire as a material in its devices since the iPhone 5, which was the first unit to have a sapphire cover on its camera lens. However, Apple actually uses a sapphire composite material, which is not as hard as pure sapphire.
JerryRigEverything offered the following tests to compare the Apple Watch Ultra’s face to that of its competitors:
In the tests, the sapphire crystal on the Apple Watch Ultra had minor abrasions at levels 6 and 7, while the real damage starts at level 8. The results were similar with Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5, which began to show abrasions at levels 6 and 7 that were less visible than on the Apple Watch. The YouTuber explains that this is probably due to impurities in the material or polishing issues. As for the Garmin Fenix 7, tests show that it has the purest sapphire crystal of the three watches, as it barely had abrasions at levels 6 and 7.
In conclusion, the YouTuber concluded that neither Apple, Samsung, nor Garmin are lying when they say that their watches have sapphire crystal – although the screen of the Apple Watch Ultra seems to be a bit more susceptible to scratches than the screen of other watches.
The Apple Watch Ultra retails for $799.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac and JerryRigEverything