Best Apple accessories 2026: what fits your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and what Apple does not put in the box

Read the box contents before you read a single review. Apple's UK tech specs for the iPhone 17 list three things in the box: the iPhone, a USB-C Charge Cable (1m) and the documentation. Everything that makes the charging figures on the same page happen is marked, by Apple, as sold separately.

Those figures are worth quoting in full, because they are the ones people assume the box covers. MagSafe wireless charging up to 25W and Qi2 wireless charging up to 25W, both stated as requiring a 30W power adapter or higher. And up to 50% charge in 20 minutes with a 40W adapter or higher. Neither adapter is included, and neither is the MagSafe charger itself.

So the real first purchase after an iPhone is not a case. It is a mains adapter, and the wattage of that adapter is what decides whether any charger you buy afterwards delivers what it advertises. That is why the adapter sits under the charger's card on this page rather than in a list at the end: you choose it once you have chosen the charger.

Here is the part of this purchase that is specifically a British problem. Because the adapter is not in the box, almost everybody buys one separately, and a mains adapter is the accessory where a marketplace listing carries a risk that a cable or a case does not.

Electrical Safety First, the UK charity that publishes consumer guidance on electrical products, is direct about it: counterfeit chargers "have serious safety concerns and may present a higher risk of exploding or catching fire", and "may also damage your device which could void your guarantee". Its advice to a buyer is a sentence long: "buy your USB charger from a reputable retailer rather than a third-party seller online, as it may not have passed all the necessary safety checks".

Put that next to what the listings actually say and the instruction writes itself. Out of 7,852 charger listings our register read on 16 September 2026, fewer than one in thirty states its wattage and fewer than one in a hundred mentions the adapter. We would spend on the adapter and save on the charger, not the other way round: the charger is a puck of magnets, and the thing plugged into the wall is the one carrying mains voltage in your bedroom.

Apple sells two pencils today, the Pro and the USB-C one, and each has its own published list of compatible iPads. The Pro list has five entries: iPad Pro 13in and 11in (M4 and M5), iPad Air 13in and 11in (M2, M3 and M4), and iPad mini (A17 Pro). The USB-C list is much longer and, crucially, it includes the plain iPad.

That is where the repeated buying mistake lives: the cheapest iPad in the range does not accept the dearest pencil. And the pencil it does accept is missing seven things on Apple's own comparison table: pressure sensitivity, double-tap to change tools, barrel roll, squeeze, haptic feedback, Find My and free engraving, plus wireless pairing and charging. It writes and annotates just as well; drawing with a variable stroke is a different job.

The practical consequence fits in one sentence. If you are going to draw and you do not own an iPad yet, the decision is not which pencil to buy, it is which iPad. If the iPad is already in the house, Apple's list decides for you and there is nothing left to weigh up.

In this category almost nothing is bought on its own. The magnetic charger needs a mains adapter that the phone box does not contain. The Apple Pencil wears through tips, which are the only part that gets replaced. The AirTag is a smooth disc with not a single hole in it, so hanging it off a set of keys needs a case. That is why each of those pieces sits under its own product card on this page rather than in a list at the end: you choose it once you have chosen the device.

The Apple Watch strap is the opposite case to the Apple Pencil, and it is worth saying plainly: here the generation does not decide, the case size does. Apple's UK store sorts its straps by case size and the sizes it lists are 40, 42, 46 and 49 millimetres, with the Ultra range sitting on its own at 49. Read yours off the back of the watch before you order anything.

Outside Apple's own store that figure becomes hard to find, and we counted it. Of the 3,408 Apple Watch strap listings with a price read on 16 September 2026 across the retailers our register tracks, 2,261 put a size from the small group and a size from the large group in the same title: 38, 40 and 41 millimetres alongside 44, 45, 46 and 49. That is two in three. The practical conclusion is simple: the size is found inside the product page, never in the headline.

The newest AirPods of 2026 are AirPods 5, which Apple lists on its UK page with the label "Available from 18 September" and in two versions, the standard one and the one with the wireless charging case. It is the first time the entry model of the range has had active noise cancellation, and Apple states it as "up to 1.5x more Active Noise Cancellation than AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation".

What that new model does not bring is on the same Apple page, and it is worth knowing before you pre-order: AirPods 5 do not do heart rate sensing and do not include the Hearing Test, the Hearing Aid feature or Hearing Protection. Those remain exclusive to AirPods Pro 3. Battery life with noise cancellation on is up to 4 hours on the standard version and up to 5 on the wireless charging one, against up to 8 on the Pro.

In other words: if what you want is the entry price with noise cancellation, the replacement lands in two days. If what you want is a pair that last a working day or that are any use for training, the gap with the Pro model is not generational, it is a difference in features, and no update is going to close it.