iFixit Tore Down the New Apple Watches. One Got a Little Better, the Other Didn't Budge.

Every fall, iFixit's technicians take a scalpel to new Apple hardware, and every fall the teardowns land somewhere between engineering lecture and reality check. This week it was the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4, and the verdict was a split decision. One watch got a little easier to repair. The other did not move at all.

The teardown, published October 6, mattered less for what it says about glue than for what it says about the law. iFixit argued the Apple Watch is one of the least repairable products Apple sells, and that Apple is out of compliance with electronics right-to-repair laws in ten states, turning a battery pull tab into a legal story.

What changed inside the Series 12

Two things. First, the battery. iFixit found a stretch-release adhesive tab holding it in place. Previously you had to lever the battery out with a spudger, which risks prying into surrounding components. Now you pull the tab and the adhesive releases. Apple uses the same trick in newer iPhones, and it removes the single biggest source of friction in a battery swap.

Second, the display connector. Apple dropped the fiddly ZIF connector and its tape for a press connector under a bracket, making the display cable less likely to die during the procedure. There is a catch: replacing the display now also means removing and replacing the battery, so the wiring got simpler while the job got more interlinked.

The payoff is a 4 out of 10, up one point from last year, and the first time the standard Apple Watch has scored above a 3. The battery grew modestly too: 1.461 watt-hours against 1.403 in the 46 mm Series 11, a gain of roughly 4 percent. Real, if not headline-making.

Apple is "out of compliance" with right-to-repair laws in ten states, iFixit says, because it sells no Watch parts, no service tools, and no repair manuals.

The Ultra 4 changed nothing about repair

The Ultra 4 gets none of that, and it is the smaller hardware update of the two. Its display and back are glued in place for waterproofing, so the only path to the battery is through the heated screen. The fragile display cable runs right along the path you have to cut, so a slow, shallow opening tool matters more than force.

The back does have four screws, which look inviting and are a trap: removing them only gets you to the sensor assembly while compromising your waterproofing. iFixit says the Ultra needs about ten minutes of heating before you can lift one edge of the display and cut the perimeter adhesive. For that job it debuted a thin metal opening pick with etched depth markings, so you can control how far the blade travels. Apple did not make the swap easy. iFixit made a tool that makes the mistake less likely.

The one bright spot is capacity. The Ultra 4 packs a 2.444 watt-hour battery against the Ultra 3's 2.313 watt-hours, a 5.7 percent increase, with a new sensor layout of more LEDs over a wider area, matching the upgraded health sensing hardware. The score, though, is a 4 out of 10, the same as the Ultra, the Ultra 2 and the Ultra 3. Four generations, no change to the repair experience.

Why iFixit says Apple is out of compliance in ten states

This is the part of the story iFixit led with, and it is about more than parts. Ten states have passed electronics right-to-repair laws covering more than a third of Americans: Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Texas, New York, Maryland and Connecticut. Oregon's law, as iFixit describes it, requires that once a manufacturer offers repair services for a product, it must make the same parts, tools and documentation available to independent shops and DIY repairers.

Apple does offer its own Watch repair and battery service, so by iFixit's reading, the parts, tools and manuals exist inside Apple. What does not exist is any route to them from outside: no Watch repair parts or service tools sold to independent fixers, and no Watch repair manuals in the Self-Service Repair program, which already covers iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, displays and some audio products.

Apple's position, per iFixit, is that Self-Service Repair already meets the requirement, and in Minnesota Apple told the Attorney General it is in full compliance. Then there is the medical device argument: someone identifying as an Apple-Authorized Service Provider argued the Watch should be exempt as a medical device, since it runs FDA-cleared features. Apple's own safety documentation says the opposite, it states plainly that the Watch is not a medical device, and the FDA calls it a general purpose computing platform. Those two positions cannot both be true, and iFixit says it is preparing evidence to help attorneys general evaluate compliance.

The money math

The access question gets concrete fast once you look at Apple's own prices. Apple estimates $99 for a battery repair on a Series 12 with GPS and Cellular, and quotes $599 for any other service. That second number is higher than a brand new aluminum Series 12 at $399, and close to the $699 titanium model. The Ultra 4 starts at $799 and carries the same fourth-generation repair score, so the calculus is the same on the high end.

In other words, a cracked screen on a $399 watch can carry a repair quote worth more than a replacement. That is where an independent shop would normally step in, and right now, for the Watch, there is not one. Europe's repair market tells the other side: Fnac Darty's After-Sales Service Barometer, published this month from millions of real repair records, found durability scores up 6 points, with devices repaired at an average age of 6 years and 8 months. People repair what they can repair. The Watch is hard to repair, so people mostly replace it.

Google proves a watch can be repaired

iFixit points to Google as proof that a wearable does not have to work this way. The Pixel Watch 5 earned a repairability score of 9 out of 10: its display and battery are accessible by removing a few screws and a gasket, with no adhesive involved. Nothing about waterproofing or miniaturization forced Apple's design choices, and Google's scored more than twice as high.

The hardest Apple product to fix is the one watching your heart

That lands hardest where the Watch matters most. iFixit's teardown lead, Shahram Mokhtari, wears an Ultra 2 to track his arrhythmia, and its battery no longer holds a charge the way it did. He is not eager to pry up an expensive screen to fix it. The more someone depends on the watch's health features, the worse an ordinary battery failure becomes.

This is the uncomfortable center of the story. A device people wear to monitor a heart condition should have the easiest path to a fresh battery, not the hardest. The Series 12's pull tab is a welcome small step. Until the compliance fight settles, though, the Apple Watch remains the hardest Apple product to keep alive, and its owners are stuck with a single path to repair: Apple's.