The New Apple Watch Box You Probably Haven't Seen

Yesterday, the postman knocked on my door and handed me his company’s cheapest flat-rate box — a box much too small to house any Apple Watch tier’s familiar retail packaging. Yet my brand new 42mm Space Gray Apple Watch Sport was inside of that. Because my brand new 42mm Space Gray Apple Watch Sport was inside of this:

As you can see, this box is straight from Apple. The catch is that it’s not technically a retail box, but the box they use to ship out Apple Watch replacements. It’s big enough to fit the new body but little more, as Apple asks that you hold onto your original Band(s) when swapping out a broken unit.

The included leaflet is a simple multi-language explanation that all the repair work on your device was “performed in an Apple-approved facility to ensure the highest level of quality and reliability.” However, that isn’t actually true, because Apple isn’t actually fixing anything. For now, if your device is broken, you’ll be getting a brand new Apple Watch fresh off the assembly line.

But I never had an Apple Watch to replace, so how did I get mine delivered in this tiny thing? It’s simple: I’m cheap (or, at least, I’m broke). See, bossman had the presence of mind to reserve several of these bad boys when preorders first went live, and since I missed that boat, he let me buy one of his, brand new in box. Except I didn’t want to pay for shipping that enormous box all the way across the country. So he obliged, unpacking its contents and slapping the key bits into an Apple Care box acquired from an earlier unfortunate (but promptly-dealt-with, overnighted-both-ways, three-day-turnaround-time) exchange. Everything that wouldn’t fit was packed in the USPS box, and here I am, a happy Apple Watch owner with none of the extra packaging and closet clutter to show for it. Seriously, check out how much space I saved:

As a side note, this replacement box is sturdy and fancy enough to be the official retail packaging of most companies’ wares, Apple included. If it was a tiny bit bigger, it could fit the Apple Watch charger and an elastomer Band, no problem. So even if it seems like the Sport packaging is bland and cheap compared to the standard tier (I actually think Edition’s packaging is the blandest and cheapest of all, considering its expense), Apple could have easily justified spending a lot less to box and ship the baseline models, and folks would’ve have likely been just as happy.

With Apple Watch, Apple clearly paid attention to the little things.

But maybe some of those things could have been even littler.