Review: The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is big, bulky, and no longer special

For many years, Apple and Samsung offered a single class of wearables, but the advent of Ultra-branded phones led to Ultra-branded wearables. Two years ago, Apple kicked off this trend with the Apple Watch Ultra and last year, the Apple Watch Ultra 2. This year, Samsung joined the trend with the Galaxy Watch Ultra and offered many of the same features, but it also became the first Ultra watch to offer sleep apnea monitoring in the US.

Ultra often means the best that a company has to offer, but a few weeks ago, Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 10, which offers similar specs in a smaller and lighter body at half the price. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 still has a few exclusive features, but one year in — and with more alternatives available — is the Apple Watch Ultra 2 still competitive? Let’s find out!

Apple Watch Ultra 2

8.5 / 10

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 takes a fantastic smartwatch experience and improves it in every way. The display can reach 3,000 nits in bright conditions, and the S9 SoC means it offers the best battery life of any Apple Watch. However, the Apple Watch Series 10 is thinner, lighter, costs half the price, and has a larger display, while Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra offers similar features for Android owners.

Pros

• Outstanding battery life
• Built for extreme conditions
• Great for activity tracking
• Most durable Apple Watch

Cons

• Big and bulky
• No longer the largest Apple Watch display
• Expensive

$799 at Amazon $799 at Apple

Price, availability, and specs

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is 49mm in size, has cellular connectivity, and costs $799. This gets you an Apple Watch with a standard fabric band, but a titanium Milanese loop costs an additional $100. There are two color choices: natural titanium or a new black color that matches the black version of the Apple Watch Series 10.

By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra starts at $650 with a titanium build and a range of colors, including a striking white colorway. There’s no new Apple Watch Ultra 3 this year, but is a new colorway enough to make the Apple Watch Ultra 2 a worthy purchase, especially given the competition?

Specifications

Case size
49mm
Case Material
Titanium
Display
502x410 1.92-inch OLED with LTPO and 3,000 nits
CPU
S9 SiP
Storage
64GB
Battery
542 mAh
Connectivity
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, NFC, cellular data
Health sensors
Heart rate, blood oxygen, ECG, skin temperature
Dimensions
49mm x 44m x 14.1mm
Weight
61.4g
Price
$800
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What’s good about the Apple Watch Ultra 2?

Built for workouts and long battery life

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 has four main features that help it stand out against the competition, including the Apple Watch Series 10. First, the display, which is one of the brightest on a smartwatch at 3,000 nits peak brightness — though this is matched by Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra.

The sapphire crystal front has proven to be particularly durable, and despite knocking the Apple Watch Ultra 2 against all manner of surfaces, it’s yet to break or scratch. The titanium casing around the display has attracted a few blemishes, but the screen is incredibly durable. It has lived up to its MIL-STD 810H certification, and it’s one of the few wearables I’ve used that feels like it can withstand anything life throws at it.

The 564mAh battery is still the best reason to buy an Apple Watch Ultra 2. Many of the best smartwatches last a full day, but can’t be relied upon to last a full second day. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 bucks this trend, delivering between two and three days. It has the best battery life of any smartwatch offered by Apple, Samsung, or Google, but doesn’t compare to the OnePlus Watch 2 (which lasts several days longer).

Read our review

OnePlus Watch 2 review: Worth it for the battery alone

With two chipsets and two operating systems, the OnePlus Watch 2 offers revelatory battery life — but not much more

If you work out frequently, you know the difficulty of relying on automatic workout detection or manually navigating to a workout app. The Apple Watch Ultra range adds the Action Button on the side, which offers quick access to start a workout, a new lap, or a new circuit. It’s similar to the same button on a traditional stopwatch and is ideal if you value detailed data about your workouts.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is designed for more extreme workouts. Dual-band GPS (L1 and L5) offers more precise GPS tracking than other Apple Watch models and is ideal for tracking runs precisely. I’m not a runner, but this is also useful when cycling outdoors. There’s even a WR100 certification, which means it can withstand pressure when diving up to 100 meters (or 10 bars). If you’re into deep-sea diving, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 will continue to work at double the depth of most watches, even outpacing the Galaxy Watch Ultra.

What’s bad about the Apple Watch Ultra 2?

Big and bulky with fewer benefits than before

When Apple launched the Watch Ultra range, it was heralded as a momentous occasion. The model had the biggest display on an Apple Watch, the best battery life, and a new action button that made it quick to access workouts. If the display on previous Apple Watches was too small for you, the Apple Watch Ultra range made sense. However, with the launch of the Apple Watch Series 10, Apple’s most expensive wearable has lost some of this luster.

I love the Apple Watch Ultra 2, but having used the Apple Watch Series 10 for the past two weeks, I’ve decided to sell my Ultra 2. There’s a simple reason for this: it’s no longer the biggest display. And while it still has the best battery life, it takes much longer to charge and is much more bulky than the latest Apple Watch.

For many users, the Apple Watch Ultra 2's larger screen made the extra size worthwhile, but the Apple Watch Series 10 has a bigger display on a thinner body. The Ultra 2 weighs 61g and measures 14.4mm thick, while the Series 10 weighs just under 42g and measures 9.7mm thick. This makes a noticeable difference in day-to-day usage, and if you’re interested in the Apple Watch Ultra 2 just for a bigger display, the Series 10 is a much better purchase.

One of my chief complaints about the Apple Watch Ultra 2 size is how often I inadvertently press the Action Button when flexing my wrist. The added heft also leaves more marks and indentations on my wrist than most watches do. The thicker build is even incompatible with some of my favorite Apple Watch chargers, like the Anker Cube, designed for slimmer watches.

How the Apple Watch Ultra 2 compares

It came first but the competition caught up

The closest competitor to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra. Launched two years after Apple, it blends the best of the Apple Watch range with the best of Samsung's extensive watch history, while matching Apple's Ultra on most of its durability and outdoors-y features. The result is one of the best Android smartwatches you can buy.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra runs on the latest Wear OS 5 platform and offers excellent battery life. It allows you to track multiple workouts—ideal for marathon or triathlon competitors—while adding several health features to Samsung Health. The new Energy Score uses AI to quantify your readiness for the day, while Insights uses AI to give you a deeper understanding of your health.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra is the first smartwatch to be FDA-approved to detect sleep apnea, although Apple launched this on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Apple Watch Series 10 as part of its latest WatchOS 11 update. Samsung offers better sleep tracking, while the Pixel Watch 3 offers better heart tracking, but the Apple Watch Ultra 2 remains the most complete smartwatch experience.

Should you buy it?

My biggest concern with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is, that unless you need the specific features that help it stand out, there’s little reason to buy it. Even for iPhone users, there are far more reasons not to buy it than there are to, especially given the vast improvements to the Apple Watch Series 10.

The latter is thinner, lighter, and bigger. It charges faster, offers nearly all the same features — aside from a few specific watch faces, the Action Button, and better durability — and is half the price. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 offers much better battery life, but it takes less than an hour to charge the Apple Watch Series 10, and you can buy two of them for the same price as the Apple Watch Ultra 2.

This is the biggest problem with the Apple Watch Ultra 2: it’s no longer the best watch for most iPhone users, and even a new beautiful black colorway can’t help increase its allure. Meanwhile Android users need not feel so jealous, with the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra offering a similar feature set, and the OnePlus Watch 2 smashing both on battery life.

Apple Watch Ultra 2

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the most feature-rich Apple Watch you can buy today. It has the best battery life, the thickest build, and is built for every condition. It was the most special Apple Watch ever made, but now faces competition from both Wear OS rivals and even the Apple Watch 10. For most users, the Watch Ultra 2 will be overkill.

$799 at Amazon $799 at Apple

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Nirave is a creator, evangelist, and founder of House of Tech. A heart attack at 33 inspired him to publish the Impact of Tech newsletter, which covers the impact of technology on mental, physical, and emotional health. For more, follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.