My 45mm Watch has arrived, in a nice midnight blue.
Midnight Apple Watch 7 with black armband
The color is much darker than I was originally afraid of. It is very close to black, even closer than dark navy suits, and so can be easily combined with any color. I like it better than the space gray of my old watch.
It is quite large. If you wear long sleeves, it is most noticeable, as now a part of the watch will remain covered when casually raising it. Unlike the 38mm/42mm of the original, which registered as normal/small, 45mm/41mm should now be seen as large/normal. If you are in doubt about the size, get the 41mm.
First thing I was looking at was replacing my trusty old Modular face with the new Infograph Modular. I was in for a shock of ugliness.
Modular Face
Infograph Modular Face
The purple face now has a dominant color of white. I understand that on a small display you will want white for the best constrast when the text is small, and this is done correctly in the temperature range, but what is the point of changing the color when it only changes a small accent? You can also see that the 60% text is not properly aligned.
Interestingly, other faces use an inverted color scheme for the complications, as the new Contour face.
Contour Face
And both are not appropriate. For readability we want all tiny text in white, no point of adding information if you cannot read it. You also want enough contrast in the dial, not one color where you have trouble seeing the important detail.
Instead, I would use the colors differently to ensure both pretty good readability, and to keep our color the dominant element in the interface:
Modular Redesign