I think it’s fair to say I’m not shy about buying Apple Watch bands — I own about 30 of them, and I use them all. I’ve also reviewed many of them on the NosillaCast over the years. In terms of my fashion sense, my tastes are very simple when it comes to the more traditional stuff like clothes and shoes, but the one way I do push the boat out is my watchbands! I love having the perfect band for every situation and for every colour combination. And, for the holidays, I love having something totally silly and childish, because they bring a smile to every kid’s eye 😀
You might imagine that if I have about 30 straps I must have spent thousands of euros on them, but no, I generally buy from a small subset of brands that mix quality with value for money, so many of my very favourite bands cost just €20 or €25. Some of the nicer ones about €50, and only very occasionally do I push the boat out and spend up to €129 on a really nice official Apple band.
So, I rather surprised myself by falling in love with Apple’s recent rethink of the classical Milanese loop for the Apple Watch Ultra. Ordinarily, the €219 price tag would scare me right off, but because this is the first year in as long as I can remember that neither myself nor the better half needed to replace our iPhone or Apple Watch, I convinced myself that only spending €219 was actually being very frugal 😉
Apple have offered a Milanese loop since the very dawn of the Apple Watch age — they didn’t have many watch straps to choose between on day one, but one of them was the original Milanese loop. To be blunt, this strap never interested me at all. It was expensive (compared to the sports bands anyway), it looked extremely delicate and fragile, and its fine and delicate links just didn’t fit my fashion sense at all. The infinitely adjustable magnetic closure did pique my interest, but I got over that rather quickly when I started to hear feedback from friends and family who did buy one — they found that if you were in any way active, the magnet was just not strong enough, so it would slip! In fact, one of those unhappy friends was Allison, who was quite cranky with the experience of wearing one.
This new Milanese loop is a completely different beast — it’s designed and built from the ground up for the Apple Watch Ultra, so there’s nothing delicate about it. It looks robust, it feels robust, and as best as I can tell, it is robust!
It looked good in the keynote, but it looks even better in reality. It exudes finesse and fine-detailed quality. Each individual link is perfectly shaped to fit together so precisely that the metal almost seems to flow like a single ribbon rather than a very elaborate chain. In the keynote, they only showed the black version to match the new black variant of the Apple Watch Ultra they were releasing, but the band is also available in natural titanium to match the original Apple Watch Ultra, and that’s the version I bought.
Adding this band instantly transforms what is ordinarily a very utilitarian-looking watch into an elegant timepiece that would look perfect while wearing even the fanciest tuxedo. It looks like the kind of watch James Bond would wear to impress!
Getting practical, the first thing to note is that like with the other Apple Watch Ultra native bands, the Titanium Milanese Loop is only available in one size, the bigger of the two standard sizes that have existed since day one. This means the band is only compatible with the Apple Watch Ultras, and the larger of the two sizes of each other generation of regular watch. It has titanium lugs, so while it will fit the big regular Apple watches perfectly (I tested), the lug colour will not match any of them. I think it would possibly even clash with the traditional brushed aluminium grey watches, but when you pair it with a more opinionated regular watch like my old blue series 7 it looks quite good.
I’ve been saving the most important practical point for last though, because I think it’s the new design’s best innovation. The entirely new parachute clasp (as Apple calls it) is fantastic!
In the past, I preferred straps that are infinitely adjustable like the velcro sports loops, but I’ve since discovered that there is an even better type of strap — those that are infinitely adjustable with a mechanism for locking in the adjustment, and that’s what Apple have provided here. The mechanism Apple settled on is a little hard to describe, so bear with me as I try.
Let’s start with the original design. One lug on the strap was an end-piece where the strap ends in the lug, but the other lug is a big wide eye, so the strap slides through and loops back over itself, allowing you to loosen and tighten the band. To hold the band in place the end of the band was magnetic, and, in theory, would stick anywhere on the band giving infinite adjustability. This is the magnet that was not strong enough!
The new design uses the same basic idea, but there are no magnets. Instead, there is a movable docking port that the end of the band clips into, and that docking port can be locked into place. What you do is unlock the slidable part of the dock, put it in the right place for your wrist, and then lock it in place.
Then you simply clip the end into the docking piece to close the band and release it by pressing on a pair of levers that stick out on the side. The levers don’t push in perpendicular, they go back at an angle, so you release by pressing and pulling along the direction of the band. Simply pressing is not enough. This is a very natural gesture when you genuinely want to remove the band, so you’ll do it instinctively, but it makes the release almost impossible to trigger by accident, no matter how outdoorsy you’re being!
The bottom line is that despite this being the most expensive band I have ever even considered buying, I don’t regret doing so at all. It is simply the most elegantly engineered and elegant-looking piece of jewelry I have ever owned. It’s as at home around my arm at a gala dinner, in a meeting, while I do the housework, or while I mountain bike down a dirt track! I think this is the most ultra of Apple Watch Ultra bands – it feels like the band this watch was made for.