The Apple Watch Series 12 Hits Its Lowest Price, and the Ultra Does Not Move

The Apple Watch Series 12 dropped to its lowest price yet for Prime Day. The Ultra 4 did not move at all.

Read those two facts together and they say something the press release does not. A company discounts the model that needs help selling. The Ultra holds its price because the people who want one are not shopping on price, and a discount there would just hand money back to buyers who were going to pay anyway. The regular model getting cut this hard reads like it was moving slower than planned.

I am the buyer this kind of sale is aimed at, and not for the reason you would guess. I do not own a smartwatch, but I am not against them. I wear old analog and mechanical watches that I already have and like, so a smartwatch has never had to beat a problem, only a habit. Nobody upgrades from a watch that is already working.

That is what a steep discount is for. It is not persuasion, it is lowering the cost of finding out. At full price, buying one to see whether I would use it is an expensive experiment. At a historic low, it is a cheap one, and that is the honest reason to take a deal like this: not because you need it, but because the price finally makes curiosity affordable.

The thing to be clear-eyed about is the daily charge. A mechanical watch asks nothing of you. This one asks for a cable every night, and that is the habit that decides whether it stays on your wrist after month two.

So, do I buy it? If you have never owned one, this is the right moment to find out. If you already have a working smartwatch, the Series 12 is not the reason to replace it.