Early Prime Day deal discounts the Apple Watch Series 9 to $300

An early Prime Day deal has the Apple Watch Series 9 for $100 off. Several color options are available for Apple’s latest model, Engadget’s pick for the best overall smartwatch. The sale brings the Apple Watch down to a record low of $300.

The Apple Watch Series 9 adds Double Tap, a gesture for hands-free controls. With the feature activated, tapping your index finger and thumb together twice can unleash shortcuts for scrolling through widgets, controlling music tracks and more. Great for when you’re holding something like a dog leash or bag of groceries, Double Tap will get more valuable in watchOS 11, as Apple is giving third-party developers an API to customize what the gesture does in individual apps.

Apple

Not much has changed on the watch’s outside from its predecessor, but there are other improvements on the inside. That starts with a new S9 SiP that enables Double Tap, on-device Siri processing (great for privacy and when you’re offline) and zippier navigation of watchOS. It also speeds up Siri’s Raise to Speak feature by capturing a rolling two-second audio buffer to understand your requests faster.

The chip also includes a new second-generation ultra-wideband (UWB) chip, also found in the iPhone 15 series. It unlocks a new precision interface for pinging your paired phone if you aren’t sure where it is: The watch will show how many feet away it is as it guides you to the buried (in a couch cushion) treasure.

The Apple Watch Series 9 has a broader range of brightness, reaching a maximum of 2,000 nits (double its predecessor) and a minimum of 1 nit. This can help the watch emit just the right amount for a wider variety of lighting conditions.

The $300 price for Amazon Prime Day is for the 41mm case, the smaller of the two. But the 45mm model is only $330 (usually $429). Not every color is on sale, and some require you to click a “clip coupon” box, so look closely at prices on the product page before checking out.

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