The 2023 Apple Watch is reportedly getting a bigger display

Industry insider says Apple is thinking big about the Apple Watch Series 9

apple watch designs
(Image credit: Apple)

If you've been looking at the Apple Watch and thinking "I wish it were bigger", we may have good news for you: a new report says that the next version, currently labelled as the Apple Watch Series X but almost certainly going to be called the Apple Watch Series 9, will have bigger displays – including in the Apple Watch SE.

The report comes from David Hsieh, who is an analyst at technology research firm Omdia, and it says that the displays for the 2023 Apple Watch range – with the likely exception of the Apple Watch Ultra, which is already massive – are going to be 5% to 10% larger.

Your wrists aren't getting bigger but your Apple Watch might be

According to MacRumors, which spotted the research note, "the Series X will have 1.89-inch and 2.04-inch display size options". That's the size of the actual panel, but the visible area will be slightly less as the Apple Watch has rounded bevels.

The report hasn't been greeted with universal joy; as one MacRumors poster put it, "Yeah...  if Apple could stop size-creeping the wristwatch like they did their phones that'd be great. My wrist isn't growing."

Beyond the displays, we're not expecting to see massive changes to the Apple Watch this year. In recent years the annual updates have been incremental rather than dramatic, but while a big change is coming in the form of microLED displays those aren't expected until 2025 – and even then they're unlikely to appear in the most affordable models. 

Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series. When she’s not scribbling, she’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR (havrmusic.com).