Vitality’s Apple Watch deal – is it worth it?

Vitality insurance has been offering up technology products for a number of years now and, one of its most popular, is the offer of a reduced cost Apple Watch. At the moment they have deals on both the Apple Watch SE and the latest Apple Watch 7. But what is Vitality’s Apple Watch deal, and is it worth it?

What’s the actual deal?

There are 2 things you need first of all to qualify for the deal…

1. A Vitality life or health insurance policy, costing at least £45 a month
2. To be part of their Vitality Rewards programme, which costs £4.75 per month

Next up, you need to sign up to a 36 month 0% credit agreement for the Watch. You connect the Vitality app to your health data and they convert your exercise into something they call “Vitality activity points”. The more points you earn each month, the more you get off your costs.

You could pay nothing each month or (for the Apple Watch 7), you could pay the full amount of £9.50.

How many points do you need for a discount?

The following represents the monthly points you’d need to accrue to get different discount amounts…

Apple Watch 7

• 160+ activity points: they’ll pay £9.50, you’ll pay £0
• 120 to 159 activity points: they’ll pay £7.50, you’ll pay £2
• 80 to 119 activity points: they’ll pay £5, you’ll pay £4.50
• 40-79 activity points: they’ll pay £2.50, you’ll pay £7
• 0-39 activity points: they’ll pay £0, you’ll pay £9.50.

Apple Watch SE

• 160+ activity points: they’ll pay £6.50, you’ll pay £0
• 120 to 159 activity points: they’ll pay £5.00, you’ll pay £1.50
• 80 to 119 activity points: they’ll pay £3.50, you’ll pay £3.00
• 40-79 activity points: they’ll pay £2.00, you’ll pay £4.50
• 0-39 activity points: they’ll pay £0, you’ll pay £6.50.

What do you have to do to earn activity points?

Vitality reward you for any healthy activities that you do during a day. For example, walking up to 7000 steps in a day will earn you 3 points. However, this comes with 2 caveats…

1. You can only earn points from one activity, which will whichever earns you the most in the day
2. You can only earn up to 8 points a day and 40 across a week

Based on this my own exercise, which my own GP is more than happy with, would put me in the middle tier of points, giving me a £5 discount per month.

Vitality provide a full breakdown of their site.

What’s Vitality Rewards?

This is an additional cost, but something that’s required to make use of this offer. It rewards you for making healthy choices by tracking your exercise – essentially this is what’s required to earn the activity points.

As well as discounts of Apple Watches, they also offer other discounts, for example on activity trackers and gym memberships. It’s not clear whether you get these on top of the Watch discount, but I suspect not.

Read more about it on the Vitality site.

Is it worth it?

That’s the $64,000 question.

With enough exercise you could get yourself a free Watch. But you need a £45 p/m minimum insurance policy AND to pay £4.75 p/m to get the benefit (which is half the cost in the first place). If you already needed/had the insurance at the very least you’re only getting the Watch half price based on the cost of the Rewards.

And it’s the insurance policy that I’d look very carefully at. I’m not going to attempt to compare their policies with others as comparing something with so many potential differences is fraught with confusion. But, before looking at Vitality simple because of this deal, I’d look elsewhere to see if you can get an equivalent policy for a better price. If we take off the cost of the Rewards, it’s going to cost you up to £4.75 for the Apple Watch 7 and £1.75 for the Apple Watch SE. If you can save this money with a policy elsewhere, you’re probably best going there instead and just getting the watch by other means (hopefully one that doesn’t tie you into a 36 month payment plan).

If you’re after the Apple Watch SE then I’d definitely avoid this, as you’re saving so little here if you can earn enough rewards. Indeed, you can pick up a refurbished Apple Watch SE from Apple for a discounted price.

One thing I can’t avoid is that this is offering payment with 0% APR, spread across 36 months. To those who otherwise couldn’t afford the watch, this may be enough to tip the scales.

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