Apple Watch Ultra 2 In-Depth Review: Worth the Upgrade?

this is the new Apple watch Ultra 2. the second generation Apple's newest series targeted primarily an outdoor Enthusiast are those that just simply want a bigger battery I've been putting this watch that through its Paces over lasted a while from swims to runs to bike rides you name it trying to figure out whether or not this watch is worth the upgrade and if so from which walking should be upgrading with that let's just dive straight into it the first thing to know here is this watch is 799 bucks the same as it was last year all Apple watch Ultra editions have cellular built in from there goes straight into the new hardware and the biggest new difference is the increased brightness of the display the ultra 2 now has a 3000 nit display compared to 2000 hit on the ultra one now nits is simply a way to measure brightness and so we have these two watches side by side here for example if I turn on the flashlight and go to full brightness you can barely see it but even that's challenging because these cameras will automatically decrease the brightness of everything around it to try to normalize and becomes a bit of a mess you can see it best in this picture outside that I took today and kind of like broken Cloud conditions where you can see this that little tiny bit more brightness on the ultra 2 screen keep in mind though 3000 nits is insanely bright for an AMOLED display even in super bright sunny conditions where I've tested this watch as well I had no problem seeing a 1000 display a 2000 display or a 3000 new display so for most people the main advantage of this 3000 display is honestly in the flashlight just Illuminating a room a bit better also note with the new display they will reduce the minimum brightness from two knits down to one knit Yes actually one knit so you have three thousand it's all the way down to one knit and apple says they're primarily using that a night in a sleep mode so that you can barely see the display but it reduces the battery consumption by basically half or so from the display anyways they're able to take that battery and reinvest into other things like the new S9 chipset that was also introduced on the Apple Watch series 9 as well as the Apple watch Ultra 2. that chipset includes a bunch of technical spec stuff it's honestly mostly gobbly good and I promise you as an end user you will not notice any of those three things so here on the watch face tapping and again to open up the apps opening up the workout app for example scrolling through this is all identical there's there's no difference between these two watches side by side that you as a user can see instead Apple says those S9 chipset enhancements are designed for other things the first being double tap that allows you to raise up your wrist like this double tap your fingers and iterate through the menu you can see that right here that will iterate through your widgets menu on your dashboard but you can also use it to answer an incoming call or to hang up on someone or to take a photo if you have a camera app open up on your watch and so on now that feature won't be released since October so I've been playing with it on a preview build but again it's not in production quite yet now I would say despite being preview it's been working really really well I'm actually really surprised at how well it works and that's something I think Apple didn't do a great job of explaining in their keynote uh or in a lot of their messaging is how that differs from what's been already there in the past with some of the accessibility features like you see here around quick actions and Assistive Touch those same features allow you to double tap and do things but it's actually quite a different experience to begin the existing accessibility features frankly sucked I mean you can there's a few people that it works really well for but most people found it frustrating I've been trying to use them for the past week and have found them insanely frustrating compared to the double tap just works every freaking time the other thing is that quick actions and Assistive Touch are meant to be more reactive to the menus versus double tap is meant to be pretty much anytime 24x7 Apple says that either using the S9 chipset to be able to run these processes in the background continuously versus with the Assistive Touch it's more an on action sort of thing versus being just 24x7 always there ready for that double tap anyways I'm looking forward to that being rolled out across the board in October but for now in the preview so far so good next Apple's out of their second generation Ultra wide band chipset to the Apple watch Ultra as well as a series 9 and this allows you to find things notably your phone but most importantly that you can do it based on proximity to that device so once it's within Bluetooth range it'll go ahead and basically give you the exact directions to find that particular either a thing that you're missing and then finally on the new software features coming from the S9 chipset are two different Siri things the first one is that Siri can do offline requests so if there's no cellular connectivity nearby I can do very very basic tasks like setting a timer and things like that uh I put that to the test a little bit to find out how basic a task could do today I was just starting this one with my wife and she wanted to know how far 3800 meters was to yards like exactly how far and I asked Siri without any seller connectivity because we didn't bring our phone out there and Siri was like nah I can't play that game uh you have to find the internet for that so I thought like something as simple as a like a basic math question it could do but it's again very limited to like timers and timers and timers the second thing though is that Siri by the end of the year will be able to go ahead and process requests destined and pulling from Apple health so you can ask it how much you slept last night or you can tell it to update your weight based on the weight scale in the bathroom and so on down the road that'll be available in English and management Again by the end of the year so it's not yet here today now from here I want to kind of Step In into the Sport fitness features I'm gonna start off with the very basics for a couple seconds then we'll quickly ramp up into all the newness on this watch I can tap this on the bottom left hand side there to access my rings and I can see my rings by scrolling up the top these Rings basically account for three different categories move being that reddish pink color green bean exercise and then blue being the Stan goal at the bottom there in the case of Stan you're checking this off by the hour you stand for a minute each hour and you get credit for it all of that's the same as in the past you can access the bolts on the watch as well as on the app another area that hasn't changed much is sleep tracking it'll automatically track your sleep each night I'll show you what time you fell asleep and you woke up in your your total duration of sleep I find the time it says I went to bed and woke up correct as well as a total duration but the in bed portion that has been like super wonky off and it's been the case for most of my sleeps with the Apple watch Ultra 2 and frankly also the series nine as well but it got the duration correct that I was actually asleep so that's honestly all I care about it's worthwhile noting the Apple watch Ultra 2 does also track your wrist temperature that's primarily you used in historical data looking back for female ovulation Cycles it's not really used in kind of forward-looking predictive stuff nor is it used in any sort of male health things at this point in time but it does track that it will take five days though before those numbers show up and it's a difference to your Baseline so it takes that first five days establishes a Baseline and then you go from there not a big deal but just something to be aware of now diving into the workout side of things to start a workout you're going to tap this little Runner icon there and you have all of your support workout profiles you can then tap that little dot dot dot there in the corner and set a goal if you want to or create a structured workout you can also go into preferences here and add and configure different data Pages up at the top there for my workout views and you can tweak these as you fit you can add them remove them you can see for example the new cycling power that I'll talk about in just a second once you've started a workout everything is basically the same as it's been in the past you'll see your data Pages as configured and you can go ahead and look through those and swipe through them and then when you're done you'll see the summary of those workouts in the Apple Health app and they can use third-party apps to upload that to other sites instead let's talk about someone who's sporting type features that come from watch OS 10 that are landing on the ultra 2 as well the very first one is topographic maps this is something that allows you to download offline maps to your phone and then see them on the watch with topographic details on it including the contour lines now a couple catches here to be aware of number one is that I said your phone has to be with you these maps are not downloaded to the watch they're downloaded to your phone and the watch accesses them from your phone the only challenge is as of launched right now these are basically only still available in California and like things with about an hour the California border via driving and even within California they're almost exclusively available in just a handful of parks so like National Park type areas now talking to Apple they originally said this is supposed to be launched all across the US by basically September time frame but now that's shifted to be the end of the year so Apple's saying now let's be launched across the US by the end of the year and should be available in most areas and so I asked like what does most mean does that mean most national parks are most everywhere and they said most everywhere within the US so that's good there is unfortunately no timeline zone for the rest of the world I suspect a lot of people that are interested in maps are probably disappointed with a lot of aspects of this if we look at how Apple has done things last year this year next year last year was all about like running stuff uh this year is all about cycling stuff in next year's well the Apple won't say officially but I have a funny feeling it's going to be about mapping stuff speaking of this year though is the new cycling features uh the first one that's notable that's probably more broadly applicable is the screen mirroring or companion app if you will from the watch to your phone this allows you to go out for a ride or even indoor ride as well and see all of your metrics on your phone your phone basically turns into a bike computer and it mirrors whatever is on your watch from a bike kind of data field standpoint it does expand some of those fields so it makes them a little bigger because it is going to use some of that real estate up I've used this both on bike commutes as well as indoor rides and of course Outdoors on my road bike even yesterday out in the rain I had this on my road bike and it worked just fine I suspect for most cyclists though they probably already have a bike computer this I think is probably more valuable for that bike commuting type scenario where you've got your watch under a code or whatever the case is you just have your phone out on a bike mount on your handlebars and be able to kind of see it up there instead for hardcore cyclists though it's probably more the addition of power meter support another cycling sensor support that's more interesting here Apple's added support for Bluetooth power meters as well Bluetooth Speed and Cadence sensors you can pair them up here you can change the crank link you can calibrate them records all the data it works just fine I've had no problems with the power data matching my other power data exactly as it should in addition to that Apple's also added cycling power zones which you can customize using the phone app and then from there they've also added FTP detection or functional threshold power basically the highest power that you can hold for an hour in my testing of that feature though that isn't been so great uh one it doesn't seem to detect half the rides or even like a fraction of the rides I do and then two even when it does it's well below my tested thresholds as well as the automatically calculated thresholds from other devices I used but I don't think huge deal because most cyclists probably know how to do an FTP test and can kind of just work around that so that then segues nicely the next thing which is battery life this watch has kind of a bunch of different claims I'm gonna put them on the screen right now because they're they're sort of complicated the first one is like the everyday Smartwatch battery claim and that's 36 hours then you go into low power mode and that's double that it's 72 hours the base low power mode essentially just turns off the always on display and makes it gesture base so you have to raise your wrist to see the display not a big deal there's some other minor background things there but if you're looking from a sports standpoint it doesn't impact that at all last year with the Apple watch Ultra one I went ahead and did a 14 hour hike basically through the Alps 70 kilometers it was like 15 or 20 000 feet of elevation game insane stuff I ended that hike with 15 battery remaining and I was on track for about 17 hours of battery life in the low power mode but not the really low power mode so I had full Fidelity GPS and heart rate it just simply the screen was off when I put my Wrist down which was fine when I'm hiking I just lift my arrest and I can see it now unfortunately the weather in the mountains was not at all cooperating the last few days to pull off that same Adventure at least not in any way I wanted to enjoy uh so I'm going to save that here for the next couple weeks so stay tuned for that but looking at battery burn extrapolating it out I'd say the battery Burns been pretty much identical to the ultra one and then for just general Smart Watch usage I've been charging it every other day and I've been having roughly 60 to 90 minute workouts on average some days more some days less but in that ballpark with GPS and non-gps and so I think their claims seem to stand up now switching topics entire early but sort of not really if you're off in the mountains one of the big features of the Ultra Series is the siren so I can go ahead and hold left hand side right there keep on holding and you see the siren listed I can swipe here to the right and we'll start this siren and you're going to hear it in a second it gets louder and louder up to 86 decibels and it makes this generally kind of horrific but not so horrific sound that part's horrific there and that sound is recognizable really far away hundreds and hundreds of meters from my testing in the past my guess is at night that would probably travel upwards of a kilometer even a mile in the right conditions and a quiet kind of night Forest setting the point by the way of this horrific sound is that it's unusual Apple says the reason for going with that is something that people will recognize is not part of the environment and probably start to investigate it now speaking of getting to the bottom of things it's time for GPS and heart rate accuracy and for that we're going to jump over the computer okay we're going to start off easy then step it up each successive set so here along the beach in Santa Monica and L.A no problems at all like this was easy peasy stuff in both the ultra as well as a series 9 I nail this up into the mountains we go in this case a forested area some of it above it but mostly in the forests and canyons here in this particular section was pretty deep in the trees in the kind of mountains on both sides and it nailed it as it did later on in the same area here again no problems with any of these watches all of it was really good from an elevation standpoint I saw a little bit drift between the Garmin epics Pro and the Apple watch Ultra 2 but only a few meters overall not a big deal I went out for a ride then next in this case you can see at high level relatively straightforward as we dig in a little bit closer the tracks were identical between all the units I had with me I only spot like one spot on the trees for just a few meters so they're slightly different but really nothing at all so instead it's into the city we go and this is the toughest test that I do basically mimicking not mimicking that's a straight up a Downtown City environment you can see here I'm running between buildings that are 20 30 stories tall on both sides I do switch to which side of the street I'm on so it's equal on both sides of the wrist and the Apple watch Ultra 2 as well as the series 9 did frankly horrifically here I'm not sure what happened and uh but it was really really really bad for both the units so I went out again the next day and did things again to see what happens and here it gets a little bit better uh the ultra two has definitely approved the series 9 is improved Ultra shoes still struggles a little bit not quite clear as to why uh meanwhile out in an Open Water Swim though no problems like this is again a pretty tough scenario for most watches and it absolutely Nails us one now heart rate is an area that Apple usually excels in uh starting off here with this relatively steady state run a couple searches tossed in no problems then going into the mountain series I climbed up uh to the top of that Ridge then back down again really good alignment on both back and part of the chest strap here is the outside ride one of the toughest scenarios actually for most Optical heart rate sensors on the residue no problems there and then here is one of the city tests I did the sprinting and stuff like that no problems another interval workout right here as well no problems across the board solid heart rate performance the GPS side uh mostly good but a couple outliers that need a bit more investigation okay so wrapping things up here is this worthwhile upgrade writing too or is it worthwhile in general and I think those are like obviously two different questions depending on where you're upgrading from uh if you're upgrading from for example or if you already have the ultra one no I don't think there's really any reason to upgrade from the ultra one of the ultra two I don't think even Apple would try to make that argument those changes are very very minor at this point in time so I would I would hold on for that one another year and see what happens now if you're upgrading from an Apple Watch series something Edition into the ultra it really depends on if you want those additional Hardware features or the battery life I think most people fall into kind of two camps here number one is they don't care about any of the outdoor other extra Hardware stuff the die the siren any of that stuff they just want the battery life a bigger battery in the Apple watch for that go forth it's great it's always good there if you're on the outdoor side of it yes there are some aspects that make this a little bit easier from a Outdoors perspective with gloves and things like that primarily the larger digital Crown there also the action button for starting certain actions and so on in most ways though it's really the software upgrades of Watch 10 that are probably the bigger story here I think the hardware upgrade on this is relatively small in the grand schema thing and I suspect depending on which Realm of the outdoor Fitness World you're in you might have a different perspective on one that this year's updates were worthwhile if you're a cyclist you're probably looking at this like boom this is a ton of major features here uh the same is even true if you're a runner is getting structured workouts being now pushed from training Peaks and other platforms like that but if you're coming from like the hiking and trekking realm this is probably a bit of a disappointment for you uh not having like true offline maps on the device or true routing on the device you know downloading a pre-programmed course those sort of things those are all lacking today but I think in many ways I see the Apple watch Ultra as a three-part act at least initially anyways last year was all about solidifying that initial Hardware launch and then this whole boatload of features focused primarily on running so track mode support instructional workouts and all that kind of stuff there uh running power Etc this year is clearly focused on the cycling realm of things like there's no question there at all as well as internal enhancements with the new chipset Etc across the board on Apple watches and then next year I suspect next year is going to be that third act where they focused heavily on the navigation side of things and making this a true like hiking outdoors and trails kind of focused watch and hopefully with that they'll also kind of refocus on how to leverage some of these buttons in those type of environments that make a little bit easier to use this watch with gloves and rain and snow and and all that kind of stuff so as always depending on what you want to use the watch for will depend on whether or not the watch is a good fit for you either way stay tuned on the channel for plenty more Sports technology goodness and again if you found this video interesting useful just simply whack the like button there or subscribe for lots more technology goodness on the way with that have a good one

Channel: DC Rainmaker

Views: 563,751

Keywords: Apple watch Ultra 2 review, Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Watch Ultra 2, Ultra 2 review, Apple Watch Ultra vs Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2 Test, Apple Watch Ultra 2 hands on, Apple Watch Ultra 2 Complete Guide

Id: VegN1B4S4Lg

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2023