Apple Watch's new health upgrades are more than just fitness tracking tools — here are 5 features that could change how you monitor your wellbeing

Apple’s latest Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, unveiled alongside the iPhone Duo at the 'Surprise and Shine' event, come with a host of new health features designed to provide more personalized and insightful monitoring. While the design upgrades are more of the same, the new color options add a welcome touch.

The most notable additions include On-camera fitness testing, which leverages the iPhone’s camera and the watch’s camera for full body assessments to measure VO2 max, flexibility, strength, balance, and movement mechanics. To measure VO2 max, the watch requires an Apple Watch, AirPods Pro 3, or a third-party heart rate sensing device.

Health Age, a feature that ranks your health and fitness level against the average for your age and gender, is also a new addition. It takes various aspects of your health profile into account to provide a holistic score.

A technical upgrade to the Apple Watch itself is the Health Sensing System, equipped with new LED sensor arrays for better skin contact. This results in improved heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, and a more accurate Readiness score that helps users avoid overtraining and plan their workouts effectively.

The Insights tab in the Health app is a comprehensive source of timely information about your health metrics, with short summaries about how different fitness categories impact your long-term health. It also offers personalized recommendations and health articles based on your data.