Charging my gadgets overnight has never bothered me. At this point, it has become part of my bedtime routine, just like brushing my teeth. I place my phone and watch on the charger and disconnect for the night.
That is, until sleep tracking complicated everything. The Apple Watch can record several important health metrics during sleep and look for indicators of sleep apnea, hypertension and even early signs of illness. It's gotten too good to ignore.
So even though I liked the ritual of mentally "clocking out" from the data collection, and I've never liked sleeping with anything on my wrist, wearing the watch to bed now feels nonnegotiable.
But my biggest challenge with this new sleeping arrangement has been battery life. The Apple Watch needs at least seven consecutive nights of sleep tracking to start analyzing the data. And even though the current Series 11 and last year's Series 10 can last through a full day and a night of sleep tracking, they leave me with a dead watch around lunchtime if I don't recharge.
After too many days of not receiving credit for midday workouts and obsessively watching the battery percentage drop, I began searching for every trick to maximize my Apple Watch's battery life. And I'm guessing I'm not alone. Here's what's helped.
The Apple Watch Series 11 lasted about 6 hours past its 24-hour rating in our real-world testing. Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNET
1. Charge as fast as possible
The first thing you can do without sacrificing any features is make sure you're actually getting full fast charging speeds. The Series 10, Series 11, SE 3 and Ultra 3 all support superfast charging, but I realized I wasn't using the right wattage wall adapter.
Apple doesn't include a charging brick anymore, so if you plugged your cable into whatever spare charger that was lying around your kitchen (like me), you're probably not charging your watch as quickly as you could. Apple recommends a 20-watt or higher USB-C power adapter, which should charge newer models from empty to full in under an hour or provide enough juice for a full night of sleep tracking in 5 minutes -- about as long as it takes to brush your teeth.
2. Gain a few more hours with a small trade-off
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