The Apple Watch Series 9, 45mm version, in aluminum with the new Snoopy watch face.
Apple is releasing new Apple Watch models, called Series 9, on Friday.
The new Apple Watches look nearly identical to older models. This year’s version comes in the same two display sizes as last year — 41mm and 45mm — and it can still monitor your heart rate, record workouts, and display notifications from a paired iPhone. There’s also a higher-end version made out of titanium, called the Ultra.
I’ve been testing a 45mm aluminium Apple Watch Series 9 for a few days.
If you’ve ever had an Apple Watch, the new models won’t be a major surprise — Apple’s wearable continues to excel at fitness tracking and boasts tight integration with the iPhone. There aren’t new sensors on this year’s watches, the design remains the same as it’s been since 2018, and the screen is the same size as it’s been since 2021.
But the Series 9 comes with a faster chip that enables new features, including a major improvement to Siri and a gesture that should make it easier to use with your hands full, which offers a preview of how people may interact with Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset. They’re the same price as last year’s models.
Here’s what’s new in this year’s Apple Watches:
Double tap gesture
The biggest new change on the new Apple Watch is a new way to interact with it: a gesture that doesn’t require tapping the screen or pressing a button.
It’s called “double tap,” and it’s simple to use: Raise your arm up, like you’re checking the time, to activate the Apple Watch, then click your thumb and index finger twice. In testing, I found it also worked with my middle finger. Sensors inside the Apple Watch, including the accelerometer and heart rate sensor, detect that you’ve tapped, an icon appears on the top of the Watch home screen, and you feel a little bit of haptic feedback.
What it looks like when you double tap to stop a timer. The icon at the top of the screen appears when the watch recognizes the gesture.
Screenshot/CNBC
This is the first time that the Apple Watch has been able to sense a gesture made with the user’s hands, except for a few niche accessibility features. Apple says the feature is convenient to interact with your watch when your hands are busy, like if you’re walking the dog or holding a coffee.
In most Apple Watch apps, the double tap selects the primary action, or the most obvious button. When you do it on your watch face, by default, it brings up a new scrolling screen of widgets with weather, Apple News headlines, and calendar appointments.
The tap motion also stops alarms, ends phone calls, and can even trigger the iPhone’s shutter button, depending on which Watch app you’re using.
The most useful example is when you start a workout — a run, or a long walk — and forget to start it on the watch. The device often picks up that you’re working out and asks if you want to log the workout. Now, instead of tapping on the device’s screen, you can just raise your watch and double tap to start the workout.
In testing, I didn’t find the double tap to be an indispensable daily gesture for me, although it was fun to play around with, and the haptic feedback when it works is satisfying.
Nor did I find the “smart stack” widget that the double tap brings up to be that useful — I generally don’t like widgets, and the suggestions it made by default were not helpful, like a card with tips for my new Apple Watch. The individual widgets are selected through machine learning, so it could get better with use.
The gesture also requires the Apple Watch interface to be activated, with its backlight on. You can’t just double tap when your arm is at your side. Instead, you have to raise your arm to wake the display first, then tap your fingers twice, which makes it feel like a much more exaggerated motion.
In an interesting twist, the “double tap” is a nearly identical gesture to the main way to select things on the Vision Pro, Apple’s VR headset that’s coming out next year. Apple has framed that device as a “new era for computing” based on its user interface, a concept it calls “spatial computing.” The Vision Pro uses sophisticated sensors detect hand motions and other gestures, allowing the user to interact with it in 3D space, rather than simply by tapping a screen. The new Apple Watch gives a glimpse into that world.
From a pure technology perspective, it shows that as Apple introduces its version of mixed reality through its headset, it will also be bringing parts of that user interface to its other products that already ship in the tens of millions.
Double tap won’t be on by default with the Watches going on sale Friday. Instead, it will be activated through a software update in the coming month, specifically for the latest watches. Apple provided an Apple Watch Series 9 with pre-release software for this review.
What the hand gesture looks like to do a double tap on Apple Watch Series 9.
Kif Leswing/CNBC
Siri on device and faster chip
The other big improvement in this year’s watches is an updated central chip, which Apple calls a System-in-Package, or SiP. It has 60% more transistors, according to Apple, and a 30% faster GPU.
The old Apple Watches always seemed responsive enough to me, and the chip doesn’t make the watch immediately feel snappier, but it’s the first major update to the Watch’s processor in a number of years. Most notably, it enables a much faster Siri which doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.
Now, when you give a voice command to your watch, your command is processed on the device, from translating it from spoken word to text to understanding what it’s asking for. If Siri doesn’t need to connect to the internet, the whole command can happen without a cellular or WiFi connection.
The main thing I noticed is that on-device Siri feels much quicker when responding. In the past, I’ve avoided using my Apple Watch as a Siri interface because I found commands can time out with a weak Wi-Fi connection. I found myself preferring my Apple Watch over a HomePod or my phone for simple tasks like setting a kitchen timer, or quick questions like finding out when a particular game is on TV.
The on-device processing also allows Siri to access your health data, which Apple typically protects by default. Siri on the watch couldn’t do things like log weight through a voice command or tell you whether you took your medications because it had to be sent to the cloud for processing. On-device Siri will be very convenient for people who need to check a vital stat or log data on a daily basis.
Brighter display
The other big hardware improvement to the Apple Watch Series 9 is a brighter display. Apple says the new models can go up to 2000 nits of brightness, versus 1000 for last year’s models.
In indoors environments, like a home or office, the brighter display won’t be particularly noticeable. Where you can notice it is outdoors, in direct sunlight, where the brighter panel on the new devices pops a little bit more, and makes text, especially in white, slightly more solid-looking.
Apple Watches don’t allow the user to choose a specific brightness level, but instead offer one of four different settings that auto-adjusts based on the exterior conditions.
It’s nice-to-have but not a must-have upgrade, especially since many people don’t have their Apple Watches set to the maximum brightness to begin with. But people who spend all day outdoors with their watches will appreciate it, and I’d rather have the brighter screen than not have it.
Should you buy it?
This year isn’t a big year for the Apple Watch — there’s no new design or sensor that would lead people to covet the latest model. The old watches, like the new ones, still can track sleep, alert authorities if you’re in a crash, show notifications, and download apps.
At $399 for the smallest screen and $429 for the larger version, the Apple Watch Series 9 isn’t a cheap upgrade for a faster chip and a brighter display. This year, Apple also released an updated low-end Apple Watch, the SE, which at $249 and up matches what Apple Watches from a few years ago can do, but without this year’s improvements like the double tap gesture or the new chip.
I think that most people getting an Apple Watch for the first time should get a mainstream Apple Watch Series 9 over the SE if they can afford it — it will likely last longer and will be more capable to receive new features in the coming years.
Users may also wonder whether it’s worthwhile paying the additional $400 to get an Apple Watch Ultra, which has a longer battery life and several features for serious athletes. The Ultra got an update with the new chip this year, but CNBC didn’t get to test it.
One group of users who might want to upgrade even if they have last year’s versions are people who are invested in Apple’s ecosystem and want to see how the company may embrace new kinds of user interfaces, like with the double tap gesture. If you’re planning to get a $3499 Vision Pro headset, a $400 watch is not a huge expense if you want a preview of how Apple’s gestures work.
But ultimately, for most people with current Apple Watches that are in working order, I don’t think the Series 9 is a necessary upgrade.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to journalists in Japan aboard Air Force One en route to South Korea on October 29, 2025.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to discuss Nvidia’s advanced AI chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their widely expected meeting on Thursday, he told a media scrum Wednesday.
While taking questions regarding his high-stakes meeting with Xi, Trump signaled that Nvidia’s Blackwell AI processors could be discussed.
“We’ll be speaking about Blackwell, it’s the super duper chip,” he said. Nvidia’s “super duper chip” appeared to refer to the GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip — its most advanced AI chip.
More broadly, Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture represents its latest generation of AI chips, or ‘graphics processing units,’ used to train and run large language models.
Trump went on to laud Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, claiming that they are about a decade ahead of any other chip.
“That’s our country. We’re about 10 years ahead of anybody else in chips — in the highly sophisticated chips. I think we may be talking about that with President Xi.”
The comments come as Nvidia faces an uncertain future in China, once a lucrative market for the AI darling.
While export controls have long prevented Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI products to China, Washington had rolled back restrictions on the chipmaker’s less advanced, made-for-China H20 chips in July.
Trump later indicated that he might also allow a downgraded version of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips into China.
But in a surprise move, Beijing recently stepped in to prevent its companies from importing Nvidia’s chips amid national security concerns regarding the company’s technology. As a result, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said earlier this month that the company is currently “100% out of China” and has no market share there.
However, many analysts view the Chinese ban as likely temporary, saying Beijing could be using Nvidia’s access to its market as leverage in its trade negotiations with the Trump administration.
Despite Trump’s remarks about Nvidia’s “super duper chip,” it seems more likely that a less advanced version would be on the table.
In August, Reuters reported Nvidia was developing a new chip for China — dubbed the B30A — that would be more powerful than the H20 and built on the Blackwell architecture.
Such a chip would hypothetically help Nvidia fend off growing competition from domestic players like Huawei, as Beijing accelerates its efforts to develop a self-sufficient AI environment.
However, semiconductor experts said a resumption of H20 exports, or an additional pathway for the B30A, would also help China’s AI ecosystem more broadly and undermine Washington’s strategy to curb Chinese access to cutting-edge computing, which began ramping up in 2022.
A report released earlier this week from the Institute for Progress, a U.S. think tank, argued that allowing B30A exports to China would dramatically shrink America’s current AI compute advantage over China.
Huang, who has long lobbied against U.S. chip restrictions, will reportedly be in South Korea at the same time as Trump this week. The Nvidia CEO is expected to make announcements with local partners, which Huang said would hopefully be “delightful to the people of Korea and really delightful to President Trump.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (L) speaks with Microsoft Chief Technology Officer and Executive VP of Artificial Intelligence Kevin Scott during the Microsoft Build conference at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on May 21, 2024.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Investors can’t get enough of artificial intelligence, despite worries over the sector’s excessively high valuations.
Both Apple and Microsoft reached a market capitalization of over $4 trillion after their shares rose. It was the first time Apple hit that milestone, though it closed just shy of that level.
Tech companies can’t get enough of each other, either.
Nvidia announced a $1 trillion investment in Nokia, which the Finnish company said will go toward developing its AI plans. For those, like me, who remember Nokia as a company that made the most desirable and bullet-proof phones: It primarily produces cellular equipment now.
Meanwhile, with its 27% stake in OpenAI’s for-profit business, Microsoft is potentially sitting on a goldmine — provided AI finds its footing as a sustainable, revenue-generating business in the long run. OpenAI on Tuesday announced it had completed its restructuring as a nonprofit with a controlling stake in its for-profit arm.
It’s not just Microsoft. Investors who have poured money into tech could potentially gain big — as Cathie Wood of Ark Invest says, “If our expectations for AI … are correct, we are at the very beginning of a technology revolution.”
What you need to know today
And finally…
Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Fall meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.
Markets are assigning a nearly 100% probability that the Federal Open Market Committee will approve a second consecutive quarter percentage point, or 25 basis point, reduction in the federal funds rate. The overnight lending benchmark is currently targeted between 4%-4.25%.
Beyond that, policymakers are likely to debate, among other things, the future path of reductions, the challenges posed by a lack of economic data and the timetable for ending the reduction in the Fed’s asset portfolio of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.
A man walks past a logo of SK Hynix at the lobby of the company’s Bundang office in Seongnam on January 29, 2021.
Jung Yeon-Je | AFP | Getty Images
South Korea’s SK Hynix on Wednesday posted record quarterly revenue and profit, boosted by a strong demand for its high bandwidth memory used in generative AI chipsets.
Here are SK Hynix’s third-quarter results versus LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 24.45 trillion won ($17.13 billion) vs. 24.73 trillion won
Operating profit: 11.38 trillion won vs. 11.39 trillion won
Revenue rose about 39% in the September quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit surged 62%, year on year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue was up 10%, while operating profit grew 24%.
SK Hynix makes memory chips that are used to store data and can be found in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops.
The company has benefited from a boom in artificial intelligence as a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory or HBM chips used to power AI data center servers.
“As demand across the memory segment has soared due to customers’ expanding investments in AI infrastructure, SK Hynix once again surpassed the record-high performance of the previous quarter due to increased sales of high value-added products,” SK Hynix said in its earnings release.
HBM falls into the broader category of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory used to store data and program code that can be found in PCs, workstations and servers.
SK Hynix has set itself apart in the DRAM market by getting an early lead in HBM and establishing itself as the main supplier to the world’s leading AI chip designer, Nvidia.
However, its main competitors, U.S.-based Micron and South Korean-based tech giant Samsung, have been working to catch up in the space.
“With the innovation of AI technology, the memory market has shifted to a new paradigm and demand has begun to spread to all product areas,” SK Hynix Chief Financial Officer Kim Woohyun said in the earnings release.
“We will continue to strengthen our AI memory leadership by responding to customer demand through market-leading products and differentiated technological capabilities,” he added.
The HBM market is expected to continue to boom over the next few years to around $43 billion by 2027, giving strong earnings leverage to memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix, MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
“[F]or SK Hynix to continue generating profits, it’ll be important for the company to maintain and enhance its competitive edge,” he added.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month showed that SK Hynix held a leading 38% share of the DRAM market by revenue in the second quarter of the year, increasing its shares after having overtaken Samsung in the first quarter.
The report added that the global HBM market grew 178% year over year in the second quarter, and SK Hynix dominated the space with a 64% share.
