Get a free Apple Watch 3 with the iPhone Xs on contract

Pricey, but some people prefer to pay in installments
Written By
Published on 19 November 2019

This isn’t a deal for everyone: iPhones are expensive, and Apple Watches don’t come cheap either. But if you’ve got your eye on both and have been put off by the high cost of entry, then this may still be worth a look.

Virgin Media is selling the 64GB iPhone Xs and Apple Watch 3 as a contract bundle, with 24-month contracts starting at £57/mth. Given that only comes with 1GB data, you’ll likely want to up that to £59 for 4GB – or even £65/mth if you want a frankly loopy 50GB of data.

To save you the maths, that comes to either £1,368, £1,416 or £1,560 over 24 months which is a lot of cash however you paint it. But given the iPhone Xs still costs £949 SIM-free at the Carphone Warehouse, and an Apple Watch Series 3 costs £199 from Apple, it’s not too bad a deal – especially as you don’t have to pay all in one go.

When you click through to the Virgin site, you’ll see prices actually start at £40/mth, but this is for a 36-month contract. I strongly advise you don’t sign up for this – not only does it costs longer in total (£40 x 36 = £1,440), but 36 months is a long time to be paying off a smartphone – especially when the iPhone Xs is already a year old.

Is that a problem for the 24-month contracts? I wouldn’t say so, personally. The iPhone Xs is still extremely powerful, going toe-to-toe with most flagship Android handsets released this year. Here are the Geekbench 4 scores for you to compare:

So if you want that and the Apple Watch Series 3 – itself, good enough when compared to the latest model – then this Virgin Media deal is worth considering.

Written by

Alan Martin is a freelance writer with more than a decade’s worth of experience, mainly in the technology space, with bylines at The Evening Standard, Tom's Guide, The i and many others. His main focus at Expert Reviews is ensuring that your next pick of phone or wearable is the right choice for you and represents the best possible value for money. In the past he’s covered a broad range of games, dental apparel and pet accessories and, on one memorable occasion, had to strip off to retrieve a rogue drone from a lake – such is his dedication to reviews.

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