watchOS 8 dictation slowness on Series 4

Ever since watchOS 8, dictation input has been SO much slower than before on my Series 4. It just takes a few seconds to start actually accepting my input. Once it’s going, it goes fast enough, but they also changed the behavior when you hit “done” not to finish taking down the things you already said that it hadn’t parsed. When I do two or three Drafts back to back, though, the second and third ones seem to go faster, so I’m wondering if it’s more a hardware limitation.

I’ve held off on updating to 8.1 because of the other changes they made that Greg can’t get around.

First off, has anyone else experienced this? Especially anyone else still on a Series 4? Can I solve this problem by giving Apple more money?

Secondly, has 8.1 fixed this problem for anyone? I’d put up with another tap more easily than this. It’s really becoming an issue for me.

If no one else has had an issue, then I’ll probably try and wipe my entire Apple Watch. Drafts is my #1 most important/useful app on the Apple Watch, and it’s not even close.

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I seen some of the same issues on my Series 5. Hopefully, Apple will make improvements in upcoming dot releases. Not uncommon for .0, .1 releases (iOS as well as watch) to feel slow on older hardware, and Apple often addresses those issues in subsequent updates.

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