The Apple Watch Ultra is a great upgrade, even in the absence of an extreme sports athlete. Additionally, Apple’s chief of procurement has announced that he will be departing the company following a series of snarky comments in an online TikTok video. Additionally, the company announces new vice presidents and Amazon releases its latest products.
The Starters
The latest Apple Watch Ultra is marketed as a gadget designed for extreme athletes, explorers, avid hikers, scuba divers, or marathon marathoners. At the moment I’m not any of those. However, I am absolutely in love with this latest version of Apple’s smartwatch and it’s the best latest Apple Inc. product in the last few years.
Although it is true that the Apple Watch Ultra certainly has capabilities targeted at the extreme-sports crowd, including the new GPS and compass feature, as well as the new features for compass and a water-depth sensor for divers, it also has options that everyone can appreciate. This includes the massively upgraded battery, significantly better screens, Action Button, a new speaker and microphone, and a more robust design. This is a great upgrade for anyone who is looking for the most reliable Apple watch, even if they seldom make a dent.
For me, the battery’s life is a game changer. I’ve used it for 2 days without no having to charge it. Now, it’s much easier to make use of sleep monitoring. I’ve been wearing the Apple Watch nearly every day since the Series 5 launched in 2019 However, I’ve not utilized the feature up to now.
The battery has been greatly improved in the lifespan–which is now 36 hours instead 18 hours–I can now use sleep tracking every night without having to charge it quickly prior to bed or going out for the day. I’ve slept with it in the night since it was for sale about a week or about a week ago.
Its new LCD is a huge improvement. Not just because of its bigger size–the watch provides just 77% more screen space and the bezels appear to be thicker than the Series 7 from last year–but due to the brightness. In the past, with Apple Watches, I’d often find myself trying at the brightness settings and then realizing I was already at the maximum setting. It’s not a problem for the Ultra.
The Action Button is an excellent feature. I set mine to start an app called the Workout app, not an exercise program, as I switch between outdoor and indoor walks as well as on the treadmill. I occasionally also utilize the treadmill. This is why I didn’t want to bind myself to one specific exercise routine.
Apart from tying it to exercises, users can also use an Action Button to the stopwatch or a waypoint in the compass, the backtrack feature for the compass as well as the Dive app as well as the flashlight action that is part of the Shortcuts application.
I believe Apple should broaden its Action Button to more Apple Watch features. Ideally, it should be able to open any application, music playlist, or health-monitoring features (like the blood-oxygen or heart rate functions).
For a variety of tasks pressing a button is much more efficient than searching to find an app on the home screen or dialing it up using Siri. I’m sure the button will eventually make its way into the other Apple Watch versions.
The second major improvement is in the audio. The quality of calls both through the microphone and speakers–is greatly enhanced. When I’m talking to those who also own the Apple Watch Ultra, I often cannot tell the difference between the two. For older models of watches, it can feel as if the person calling you was in an air tunnel or skydiving.
Although it could be draining on batteries, I believe Apple should expand the speaker to go beyond phone calls and alerts, and also allow music playback. The Ultra could be a fascinating option for watching short videos, too. I would suggest that YouTube and Instagram could consider bringing their applications in different versions to the watch. Apple should also develop an appropriate Safari application for the device.
Finally, I consider the latest Apple Watch design to be an improvement even though it’s definitely heavier than other versions. The titanium design is a great improvement over its stainless-steel Apple Watch Series 7. A rugged watch can be a huge benefit even when you’re not in the Swiss Alps or hiking through the Sahara.
And then there’s the price. If Apple had decided to price it more than $1000 for its Ultra I would say that it could have been an exclusive product designed for serious athletes.
At $799, it’s almost the same as a 45-millimeter Apple Watch Series 8 with a braided Solo Loop, Leather Link strap, or Milanese Loop. It’s difficult to imagine paying this much for a lesser Apple Watch when you could buy the Ultra for less.
Sure, there are many users who would feel that it is difficult to use the Ultra to be excessively large. However, for me, the device was heavy, and unsure about it for the first couple of days. However, as I continued to use the device, I became pleased I changed my settings.
The next version will be a bit more refined I’d like to be able to see Apple include a more powerful processor (the processor in the latest Apple smartwatches is similar to that found in the S6 in 2020) as well as an option for black titanium and twice the internal capacity (64 gigabytes, compared to 32). I’d also like to see sensors for temperature that be able to show the temperature you’re actually at instead of just showing the distance you’ve gone overnight from the baseline.
There are a few enhancements that adventurers will also want, such as making the siren onboard louder, incorporating an emergency SOS satellite function of the iPhone 14, a weather app that has more information offline map-making (this is crucial), and a longer battery time.
However, for the extreme sports market as well as for non-athletes, Ultra is a good starting point.