Apple’s $349 Gold Link Bracelet for Apple Watch Now Available for Pre-Order
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If you’re looking to put a little extra bling under the tree for the Apple Watch fan in your life, Apple now has its most expensive watch bands up for sale in a much more fashionable gold finish.
The Gold Link Bracelet sells for $349 on its own, but you can add it to a new Apple Watch for only $300 since you’re effectively swapping out the standard sport band that’s included in the base price.
The $349 price tag is the same as the standard Link Bracelet, which has been around since the original Apple Watch was released in 2015. That was a $400–449 add-on back then, so it’s nice to see that this is one area where prices have actually dropped slightly even in the face of rising inflation.
The big change with the Link Bracelet this year came from Apple’s switch from stainless steel to titanium for its upscale Apple Watch models. With that change came new colors of natural, gold, and slate, and Apple announced that it would be releasing the Milanese Loop and Link Bracelet bands in new matching colors.
However, only the natural and slate Link Bracelets were available when the Apple Watch Series 10 launched, with the gold version nowhere to be found. That quietly changed today, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on X:
The Gold Link Bracelet is sold in 42 mm and 46 mm sizes. While those are primarily aimed at the new Apple Watch Series 10 Titanium models, they can be ordered with any Apple Watch model Apple currently sells—even the Apple Watch SE if you feel like doubling the price—and will fit every corresponding smaller and larger Apple Watch back to the original 2015 model.
To be clear, the Gold Link Bracelet contains no actual gold. Like the rest of the Link Bracelet Apple Watch bands, it’s made from 316L stainless steel alloy.
In other words, it may look fancy, but it’s no indication that Apple plans to return to the era of the ultra-premium Apple Watch Edition. In 2015, Apple amused pundits with an 18-karat gold Apple Watch dubbed the “Apple Watch Edition” that sold for upwards of $10,000 — a ridiculous price for a piece of technology with a limited lifetime of usefulness before it would need to be upgraded.
However, it also quickly became apparent that the absurdly expensive Apple Watch Edition was more about impressing the fashion industry than anything else. After all, even a $1,000 stainless steel Apple Watch would have never graced the cover of Vogue.
Once the gold Apple Watch Edition had served its purpose, Apple moved on to other materials, creating a ceramic Apple Watch Edition for the Series 2 and Series 3. It skipped the Edition model with the 2018 Series 4, and then returned to it in 2019 with a Series 5 Edition that was uniquely available in a new titanium finish along with the traditional ceramic. The Series 6 and Series 7 Edition models continued with titanium and dropped the ceramic finish until Apple seemingly gave up on that highest-end model for good two years ago.
From the original Apple Watch to the Series 9, aluminum and stainless steel remained the standard materials for Apple Watch casings. If anything, the switch to titanium this year — on the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the Apple Watch, no less — represents a merging of the now-defunct Edition tier into the core Apple Watch family. This makes the gold titanium Apple Watch with its Gold Link Bracelet feel like a much more affordable nod to the original gold-plated Apple Watch Edition.
