Watch Ultra
This is the Apple Watch you’ve been waiting for… if you can afford it
From £849 FROM apple.com/uk FEATURES 49mm case size, Apple S8 processor, Always-On Retina display, dustresistant to IP6X, water-resistant to 100m, up to 36 hours’ battery life, dual-frequency GPS, mobile connectivity options
The Apple Watch Ultra is the best Apple Watch ever. It’s an easy thing to say, as nearly every part has been an upgrade, and all for the better – in fact it’s easily one of the best smartwatches out there.
As a response to the growing power of the ‘premium fitness watch’ segment, this was the Watch Apple had to make. With a new, more rugged design, better screen and better GPS tracking, it’s the first design change in eight years, but it’s also incredibly expensive at £849.
Design
Let’s get on to the good bit: talking about this hulking great upgrade to the Watch design that’s been the same since 2014. The titanium frame was something that worried us when we started seeing renders appear online, but in reality it’s quite attractive and we prefer the rugged, metallic stylings to the sleeker lines of the Apple Watch Series 8.
The first thing is that this is a 49mm Watch, with a much-larger display sitting larger and prouder on the wrist. If you’re used to a smaller Watch, the Ultra will feel huge and a little heavy to start with. However, you quickly get used to its extra heft, and the trade-offs are worth it.
The Digital Crown and Side button on one side of the Watch Ultra have been beefed up, with both being encased in metal to make them more rugged and resistant to damage. The Digital Crown is also larger with bigger ridges, designed to be used with a glove. While it is easier to interact with, the Digital Crown’s oversized nature does rub into one’s skin when spinning it on occasion, which is annoying.
The Ultra’s display is raised a little from the main body, with plastic strips under the screen at the top and bottom. This adds to the rugged look, and allows for improved GPS performance.
On the other side of the Watch Ultra is the new Action button. This is designed
to be a place to start runs, activate workouts, turn on the torch... it’s customisable and allows for more precise starting and stopping of a workout too.
One of the things we really like is the Action button makes pausing a workout so much easier. Before you either swiped the screen (hard with sweaty or wet hands) or pressed the Side button and Digital Crown together... which could be a bit of a contortion.
Now you can code it so the Action button starts a workout, then pressing it with the Side button on the opposite edge of the Watch Ultra will pause. It’s simple, effective and natural.
We would prefer it if the Action button was more customisable though: you can only set it to open workouts, start a dive, open the torch, start a stopwatch or use the compass features – you can use it to start a Shortcut (a set of pre-defined actions using apps on your iPhone or Watch) but they’re limited too, when they could be so much richer.
The same side as the Action button houses the all-new speaker and microphone holes – the sound that emanates from the Watch Ultra is 40% louder than on the Watch Series 8, and there are now three beam-forming microphones, which means they’ll adjust to remove noise and take the sound from the best-performing microphone when making phone calls.
We tested this by making a call by a busy road, with the person on the other end being by a noisy air conditioner. Even though the Watch Ultra was in such trying conditions, our voice could be heard clearly and cleanly on the other end, and the speaker gave a good enough performance that we could hear
their responses.
As for the display, Apple’s boosted the peak brightness of the Watch Ultra’s screen to 2,000 nits. That’s twice as bright as a Watch Series 8 and it shows.
The screen, a flat, large and clear surface on the wrist, is always easy to see no matter the conditions we tried it in.
Apple has taken this opportunity to increase the amount of information it can show during workouts, and while it’s nice to have more metrics, it does make things congested. It’s nicer when you just have a few stats to look at, so editing it down to have the things that matter to you will make it even easier to see things on the Watch Ultra when working out.
The Always-On display doesn’t seem to have been altered despite the rise in maximum brightness, but it’s still legible from any angle you glance at, thanks to the OLED display providing the colourful and contrast-rich images.
One of the features Apple showed off during launch was the ability to spin the Digital Crown on the Home Screen and go into a cool black-and-red version of the watch face. Sadly, this is only in the Wayfinder face that’s exclusive to the Watch Ultra – it’s nice, but it’s a shame that it’s not across all faces.
Fitness and health
While Apple’s timepiece has always had fitness tracking as a big reason to buy it, the Watch Ultra kicks it up a few notches.
There’s now better satellite tracking for more accurate run distances, a larger battery, better monitoring of transitions between triathlon sections and a depth sensor to give you info while diving.
The goal is to make the Watch Ultra attractive to those that want their watch to keep up with their active lifestyle – whether you’re a runner, diver, surfer, hiker or triathlete, Apple wants you to feel like this Watch will be enough.
With this in mind, we strapped the Watch Ultra on for a week and took it for a variety of runs to see how it performed compared to dedicated running watches. We pitted the Watch Ultra against the Garmin Fenix 7X Solar. After a four-mile run around London, the Apple Watch Ultra and Fenix started to spread apart.
Examining the route afterwards, it was clear the Watch Ultra was more accurate. While there were moments where we apparently plunged through buildings, most of the time it tracked us even under heavy tree cover, or spotted us changing sides of the road.
One feature of GPS running watches that most brands make a big deal of is backtracking, where you’ll be able to follow the route you travelled on a map so you don’t feel lost. Weirdly, despite Apple having its own Maps app, it doesn’t do the same thing, relying on a compass radar to keep you in the right direction.
If you’re lost in a city, this is OK as you’ll generally be able to walk around buildings or find an alternative path if you come to a dead end, but when running it can be annoying to try to remember if that field has an exit or not.
One feature we particularly like is the Siren. This is designed so people in a 600-feet radius can hear you when you’re lost or need help, and works well. It doesn’t just blare out, but gives a series of more-urgent squawks at increasing volume, as well as moving to SOS Morse code, so people will know you’re in trouble. It’s not a feature you’ll use a lot, but it shows that Apple is thinking about how to make this Watch Ultra a useful tool when out in the far reaches, not just paying lip service to being ‘active’. Finally, let’s get onto the big issue that Apple is still dealing with: battery life.
Apple Watches have always been OK, but mostly need a daily charge. They’ll last between one to two days without needing to be juiced up, but that’s still pretty regular. The Watch Ultra can last a lot longer than it’s siblings, with battery life moving from 18 hours on the Watch Series 8 to 36 hours. That means you’ll easily get a couple of harder or longer workouts in before needing to reach for the charger – and that’s going to feel like aeons for any regular Watch user. Gareth Beavis