Review: Apple Watch Ultra 4
On Halloween of 2022 I posted a review of the Apple Watch Ultra which was at the time a brand new product category for Apple. Which to be clear was to play in the watch space that was occupied by Garmin, Coros, and the like. Now the Apple Watch Ultra is in its fourth generation and I have decided to upgrade.
Now if you’re looking for major or minor differences in the watch, you won’t find any. Mostly. It looks the same. The watch, the packaging, everything. So what you will find is this:
This is the new “Health Sensing System” which is Apple’s term for new sensors that allow for sampling heart rate every 5 seconds instead of every 5 minutes, as well as sampling heart rate variability every 5 minutes throughout the day. And Apple has a study that they funded to back up that this is the most accurate sensor of its type. I will link the study here. And I would suggest that you take it with a grain of salt as this is an Apple funded study. Which means that it may not be taken seriously. Having said that, it facilitated a new score called the “Readiness Score” which shows how ready you are to take on the day.
Your readiness score ranges from 0-10:
- Go for it: 8–10
- Ready: 5–7
- Pace Yourself: 2–4
- Recover: 0–1
And your Activity data, daytime and overnight vitals, and sleep data factor into your overall readiness score.
- Activity: Activity from both today and your recent history can impact your readiness score. Active calories, workout effort ratings, and Training Load data are all used to calculate the score. Increased activity in general can reduce your score, while steady or reduced activity raises it. Additionally, you might see your score go down during the day after a workout or activity.
- Vitals: Readiness considers the status of your daytime and overnight metrics from the Vitals app. When your vitals indicate you’re Notably or Slightly off, your score is reduced. When all of your metrics are Typical or Favorable, your score is raised. Higher-than-usual heart rate variability (HRV) can lead to Favorable vitals and a high readiness score.
- Sleep: Your sleep score from the previous night and your recent history can impact your readiness score. A low sleep score from poor-quality or inconsistent sleep can reduce your readiness score, while a high sleep score, or an improved sleep score, can raise your readiness score.
So ideally you want to be within 5 or up to do any strenuous activity. In my case, I not only used indoor and outdoor cycling as a baseline, but I measured this score against Athlytic which gives me Whoop like functionality from the Apple Watch Ultra. For the most part, they agreed with each other as I felt the way both apps said I would feel. Though I will note an exception or two. They based around Athlytic saying that based on my heart rate variability, I should take a rest. But I got a readiness score of 8. So I pushed myself indoors on the bike that day and I felt fine. So maybe there is something to this score. Apparently Athlytic is still collecting heart rate variability and resting heart rate data. Thus I may revisit this later.
Since the majority of this watch is basically an evolution rather than a revolution. I will cover off the rest of this pretty quickly.
Screen: This watch now does 3000 nits of peak brightness to make it easier to read in bright sunlight. Now I never had any issue reading this watch before. But the extra nits do help. It also has a screen that allow the reading of the watch that from more oblique angles. That on the bike I really appreciated.
Battery: Apple claims 50 hours of normal use from the watch which is just over 2 days. While not Garmin territory as their watches can last for days, I did find this to be better than expected. I charged my watch to 100% on a Sunday at 3 PM and got 28% on a Tuesday at 9:30 PM when the watch told me that I had to charge above 30% to get sleep tracking. That’s 54 hours with lots of room remaining. And I used cellular about 4 or 5 times during that period, and I recorded at least one workout a day. Thus Apple’s claim of 50 hours seems reasonable.
Charging: There is a new 10W charger in the box that allows the Apple Watch Ultra to allow it to add 18 hours of life with a 15 minute charge. So what Apple have clearly done is focus on the charging part of the equation by allowing you to charge faster rather than have the watch last longer.
Cellular: Like previous Apple Watches, these support cellular independence. But what is different is that this supports 5G cellular if the carrier supports 5G reduced capacity or RedCap for short. I am on Freedom Mobile so this isn’t supported, but if it were supported, I can expect better battery life and maybe faster speeds.
S11 Chip: Apple has a brand new S11 chip that is a 2 nm chip which promises efficient usage and better battery life. When I moved through the watch, it didn’t seem faster. But I am missing the new Siri functionality which will likely make any differences more noticeable. There is one feature that I will get to that this watch does offer. I come back to the when I upgrade my iPhone to the 18 Pro. Another note is that the Ultra 4 has 64 GB of storage on board. That’s a win. But there’s no easy way that doesn’t involve shoving all your music onto the Apple Watch via adding every playlist that you have on the iPhone unless you have an Apple Music subscription. That is not a win.
Materials: It’s the same titanium case that you got in the original Ultra. So no change there. But this time around I got the Trail Loop. And frankly, this is the most comfortable band that I have ever gotten from Apple. Though if you do any sweaty activities, it will stay wet for a wile.
Now comes the tough conversation. There’s two features that the S11 chip facilitates:
- Live Rewind lets you recall what was just said in the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet by double-pressing the Digital Crown.
- Siri Recap, meanwhile, creates high-level summaries of conversations that you can review later.
They’re part of what Apple calls “Audio Intelligence.” And they are currently not here yet but are coming later this year. Apple has outlined these features via a thorough privacy strategy. The tough conversation starts with this. If you turn these features on, they are always listening. And even though nobody is attributed to anything that it records, I find this problematic. If these features are always listening, then anyone within earshot is being recorded. And they may not have consented to this. And if you add the fact that Apple Watches all look the same as the new Series 12 has these features as well, then that is really problematic as there is no way for you to tell if one Apple Watch has this feature and another doesn’t. To me, it seems one step away from Meta’s glasses which have be caught “up skirting” people and people who own Meta glasses seem to invest a lot of time to turn off any indication that the built in camera might be recording. You have to believe that Apple expects to be questioned if not sued over these features, and I for one will be interested to see how Apple handles this and keeps these features intact.
Another feature is the new Health App which is not out there either. That I am waiting for as the main failing that Apple Watches have is that the current Heath App is more of a dumping ground for data that has no context. What the new Health App will do is wrap some context around that data. I will circle back on that when it officially ships. But it will make a huge difference for non-developers as you will be able to action that data and make it useful for you.
Finally, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 has a price to $1099 CAD as you see it here. That’s a price that probably is hard to justify for 95% of the people out there as a Series 12 has all of these features and 24 hours of battery life at a lower price point. Plus this is also total overkill for 95% of the population from a functionality standpoint. But if you need the battery life (I do) or features like the “Action Button” (I do for about 4 months of the year), this is the Apple Watch to get.
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