I want to send you my money, but your expensive watch I want to buy is f**ing massive and my wrist is normally sized. I don't really understand why this is still an issue since it's been 4 years.
Thanks,
- Guy with slightly below average wrist circumference (40th %ile)
I just want the extra (vs non-Ultras) button THAT'S ALREADY THERE to allow mapping to "lap". Blew my mind that wasn't possible when I went to try one at the apple store.
I desperately wish apple would release a viable competitor to the garmin fenix line but they can't with that battery life. Garmin UX and software overall is such dogshit, and to have Apple UX with garmin raw performance (battery life, GPS tracking accuracy, activity modes) would be perfect. Apple could never though because the fenix was designed from the ground up as an embedded device microcontroller, whereas apple watch is a general purpose computer with a GPU.
I suspect the screen is also a big battery drain. I dont find color useful in a watch so perhaps a greyscale version with no GPU. Apple could definitely do 7+ day batter life if they wanted.
Yup. This tells me the AWU is not the adventure watch for me. I love my Apple Watch (8? I think?) and I love my Garmin Instinct Solar with 40d battery life. One of these is for daily wear as a communicator; the other is for weeks in the mountains or offshore.
Hyperbole is Apple’s favorite communication style, but at this point it’s so overused that it’s just a meaningless meme. Apple’s wearable competitors blow the Apple Watch’s battery life out of the water and it’s not even close. Hyperbole is all Apple has in this race.
Blows them away? I haven't seen anything that is not just one or two features that other watches don't have. But all the.features require the watch to be on.
Data accuracy most certainly is not in relation to GPS which often cuts distances on the Apple Watch.
People like to complain about the GPS but I use it when running and it'll easily show me what side of the path I was on at any given point. And the path distance matches precisely with other sources of truth. Maybe there was a time when Garmin had an advantage on some of their watches but I am far from convinced that this has been true anytime in the past few years.
To be pedantic it's not just GPS anymore. Newer smartwatches from Apple and competitors generally support multiple GNSS constellations including GPS (USA), Galileo (EU), GLONASS (Russia), Beidou (China), and QZSS (Japan). Some devices also support multi-band GPS which further increases accuracy in areas with degraded satellite signals, although at the cost of higher power usage.
Tracking performance on the previous Apple Watch Ultra 3 was "solid" in an independent test. A little worse than competitors in some activities, a little better in others.
I’ve had a previous Apple Watch Ultra, it was nice but after playing with it for a while I used it for notifications and working out. I have a Garmin Epix Pro Gen 2 51mm that will do 31 days of being just a smartwatch and can track my multi day cycling trips. The real killer feature I didn’t know I needed until I had it is a proper led torch on my watch, the light up screen on the Apple Watch doesn’t compare.
I need to see receipts on this claim. 31 days as just a smartwatch would be a stretch. Tracking activities also during that time, based on my experience with many, many Garmin watches, would be a bridge too far. My EpixG2 will last 7-10 days, with 1.5-2 hours of daily workouts during that span. I have most power hungry features turned off, like always on display, pulseox monitor etc.
In any case, it’s longer than the AWU by a long way.
I bought an Apple Watch recently so I can enter my workplace without much hassle (first world problems). Highly disappointing watch coming from a no-name Amazfit brand. I like my step counter, I don't care whether it's slightly off, I want to see it on my watch face - you'd safely assume it was possible, but no! So now I have to go through multiple menus and swipes to see it and it doesn't even show right away (takes several seconds at times). Don't get me started with the joke that is the battery life.
Apple Watch is probably Apple's shittiest product today.
The battery life during workout tracking did at least see a 3x improvement. 14 hours sounds plenty at first until you start riding your bike over long distances! 45 hours should cover most except the craziest ultra athletes, and those are probably sponsored by Garmin anyway
If biking around 5000 km yearly is serious enough then I'm one - using only my phone to track. Since I will be taking my phone with me anyway, I don't need another device.
My Casio F91W has 7+ years. AW are much more capable devices than Garmins, both when it comes to compute and screen - it's understandable they use more power.
The 4th generation heart rate sensor is quite interesting -- Apple Watch used to sample every ~5 minutes, and now it's every 5 seconds (basically continuous). I think that'll enable a lot of interesting health & wellness use cases.
Too bad Apple reserved the [training] Readiness feature only for the Ultra 4 - I'm pretty sure Ultra 3 and probably below are just as well equipped to provide such insight...
You've always been allowed to transcribe (ie, write) out a conversation. Recording is a different thing. A person can always claim, easily and believably, that the transcription is made up. It's just text.
There was an app that hit it’s peak during covid: Clubhouse.
Many powerful and interesting people were having powerful and presumably private conversations in rooms because they say people walk in and out and legally CH could not record without consent. But what they could do was “collect metadata”. Emotional and tonal analysis is metadata. So is time, date, location, username (each user had their own mic stream), email, etc. Transcription is also metadata.
Essentially the tech has left the laws in the dust as you could now reasonably and legally record enough metadata to accurately resynthesize a recording.
Others are not able to eat, die because of insulin prices, struggle every day and we sit here on HN and people are thinking about buying the next gadget.
How much of your networth have you donated to the starving people? Nature is pretty metal and doesn't care about justice. I thought we all learned this in school.
I understand the sentiment, but you can spend a lot more than that on a watch if you want to, and for a watch that does a lot less. Few people do though, and a lot of people will probably buy the Apple.
How deep are you going? What gas mixtures are you using? Which Garmin are you using? If you're using a Mk3i or a G2 (or related) you are using a diving computer in a smart watch form factor. It is custom built for this... unlike the Apple Watch Ultra.
I'm still using the older Garmin Descent Mk2 model, which is basically equivalent to the Mk3 for diving features. (I might upgrade to the Mk4 when it launches later this year.) It sure is handy to have a single smartwatch that can do everything.
You go significantly deeper? You're aware that shortly past 50mt the partial pressure of oxygen causes neurotoxicity, leading to convulsions and death? Anything happening past those depths involves extremely expensive hardware, custom trimix breathing gases and most importantly a hell of a good reason to even bother doing it - that is NOT the environment for an Apple Watch.
Yes, I go significantly deeper. You seem to be a little confused about how oxygen toxicity works but rest assured that we're aware of it and use appropriate breathing gasses for the depth.
I understand that an Apple Watch Ultra can't be used for those dives, and that's fine — they don't need to support every possible niche use case. But competing smartwatches from Garmin and Suunto handle deeper dives and the associated gas mixes just fine. There's nothing stopping Apple from doing the same if they want to.
> You seem to be a little confused about how oxygen toxicity works
Thanks for the condescending tone. Am I?
At 1.4 bar of O2 partial pressure (therefore, with a 21% breathing gas mixture, at around 66m depth), oxygen toxicity causes convulsions and unconsciousness. If someone doesn't grab you and take you up, this likely results in death.
Btw I had to google the precise values and depths to be accurate, but I'm not talking out my ass. I'm a certified CMAS and AOW diver with 80ish logged dives. Hardly a veteran but this was in my certification course and it's a very real thing - enlighten my confused state with your better knowledge please.
You're talking out your ass and unclear on the basics. Obviously we're using standard gas mixes based on the depth profile, not compressed air. For the working portion of the dive we generally limit PPO2 to 1.2 atm but will go as high as 1.6 for portions of the deco. If you'd like to understand diving physiology instead of just repeating what you Googled then Bennett and Elliott is a good place to start.
The Ultra 2 was sold to me as the watch that can do Siri without network connectivity. That was very useful to me to leave reminders for stuff I think about while on a run without the phone.
3 years later, Apple releases the OS 27 versions and Siri got improved to the point where it can’t work on-device any more on said Ultra 2
So to get the feature back which I paid for and which was specifically used to sell me the device and which now has been taken away from me, I just have to… buy the next hardware generation?
And how long will that last before they decide to remove the feature again?
Thankfully, the Ultra 4 provides some other compelling features making this less painful, but I would have expected at least a toggle to keep old Siri on the old watch. New Siri over the network is impossibly slow and buggy
I seriously am surprised there are no class action suits around the crippling of older devices that is happening these days. Google Home speakers are prime example of that.
Yeah I took a 2012 iMac , loaded Ubuntu and it runs latest Firefox and chrome like lightening. Take same 2012 iMac and run latest macOS it is allowed to run and it runs super super slow.
This is clearly by design. They like to advertise long support windows but they cripple older devices through software and OS features causing older devices to run much much slower.
I have seen this for years from Apple and it would be hard to convince me that this isn’t done by design.
Sure, but what I am talking about here is even worse: they're taking away features that originally sold the device, so imagine they removed keyboard backlight after 5 years because they no longer want to maintain the cloud backend (hypothetically).
Apple's marketing department is amazing, however, they just don't line up with the engineering department. I quit Apple long ago because they overhyped so many things, it feels misleading intentionally sometimes.
That works for a while until you have to do a restore from backup and the apps that used to be on the phone will not reinstall because they dropped support.
Also make sure to have optimize storage off, so apps don’t just disappear randomly.
Absolutely par for the course for Apple. They wrecked both my iPhone 4S and iPad 2 with the version 7 of the OS to the almost unusable state. I remember reading about several such "upgrades" in more recent years too.
> I would have expected at least a toggle to keep old Siri on the old watch.
Nasty destructive surprises in upgrades.
Years ago I had lots of archival material organized on my Mac under the root "/". Why not, right? It's a Unix-y system and Linux lets you put stuff anywhere. I had directory trees copied from old hard drives. Personal history.
So along comes a macOS upgrade and BLAM! all my stuff there gets deleted without warning or so much as a Hi how do you do.
You can still turn it off. In Content Restrictions there is a drop down to limit to the old Siri. There is also a prompt, if you try to turn off Siri completely, to revert to the old Siri. Then that setting applies to the Watch too.
As someone who often backpacks off grid, the features listed are pretty interesting. Anyone have any alternative products this competes with? The "adventure" watch is a new thing for me
I have heard of Garmin, but neither of the others so they must have a more narrow marketing reach. I will review their product catalog and see how the value compares. I could have an agent go scour the web for product recommendations and substitute products, but I enjoy the discourse and perspective on HN so I like to ask here.
As a user of both Garmin (and Suunto, Coros, Polar would be in the same category) and Apple Watch Ultra, you'll find one main difference again and again: battery life. The not-Apple-watches will last a week or more before charging, AW will make it a day or two.
OTOH, as far as a smart watch goes, AW will be head and shoulders better. For me, it's a lot of little cuts with Garmin. For instance, setting a timer for my tea is like six button presses on the Garmin, and that's with a shortcut keypress to get to the timer. AW: there's a complication on the watch face, one press. Or, "Siri, five minutes". Three presses otherwise. I haven't owned anything from the other brands in a long time, so can't comment on the likes of Suunto or what have you.
Some will tell you that AW is "okay", but "serious athletes" use a Garmin. Meh, whatever. I've got a running resume as long as my arm, and I just preordered the AW Ultra 4 to replace my Garmin (and my AWU 1). AW gives me the data I need, and it will last long enough for me to get through a 100 mile race, so I won't miss much from Garmin. And good $DEITY, Garmin's prices are getting ridiculous. $1200 for a titanium Fenix? I don't care how long the battery lasts, that thing better wax my fucking car.
If you want to save a little money, I've heard nothing but good things about Coros.
Make it work with Android and I'll buy it. That's true innovation. Yet again, all we have here is incremental progress. The battery lasts longer, the sensors sample faster, and "more AI". $800 and I just don't care. See you next year when these are old and "AI+ with Netflix recommendations" is their big selling point.
So no new sensors. No blood pressure or glucose (very long shot) monitoring. I was holding out for the blood pressure monitor but I will have to wait longer now.
97 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 11.4 ms ] threadI want to send you my money, but your expensive watch I want to buy is f**ing massive and my wrist is normally sized. I don't really understand why this is still an issue since it's been 4 years.
Thanks,
- Guy with slightly below average wrist circumference (40th %ile)
Data accuracy most certainly is not in relation to GPS which often cuts distances on the Apple Watch.
Tracking performance on the previous Apple Watch Ultra 3 was "solid" in an independent test. A little worse than competitors in some activities, a little better in others.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/11/apple-review-ultra-3-in-...
In any case, it’s longer than the AWU by a long way.
Apple Watch is probably Apple's shittiest product today.
(Cue joke about triathletes not being serious about cycling.)
Many powerful and interesting people were having powerful and presumably private conversations in rooms because they say people walk in and out and legally CH could not record without consent. But what they could do was “collect metadata”. Emotional and tonal analysis is metadata. So is time, date, location, username (each user had their own mic stream), email, etc. Transcription is also metadata.
Essentially the tech has left the laws in the dust as you could now reasonably and legally record enough metadata to accurately resynthesize a recording.
Man we lost it as a society.
Others are not able to eat, die because of insulin prices, struggle every day and we sit here on HN and people are thinking about buying the next gadget.
A watch for $800...
Just don't deflect.
Btw. i'm from a country with a social system soooo
$800 is not particularly egregious.
Is this an apple fanboy club and critisism is not allowed or you don't think this critisim is valid because of your strawman argument?
watches that go for 100k or more are not uncommon
And these companies are old, they were leading in chainging the world.
Apple let them build in china from students and others for very little money with very high margin.
Rolex for example is a foundation.
This is not true. rolex is a for-profit organization. The owner is a foundation, but they did not make rolex a non-profit.
https://www.watches-of-switzerland.co.uk/Patek-Philippe-24-H...
Apple is a mass produced product under shitty work conditions.
How can you possibly make that comparison
Where does that happen? Even without insurance in America insulin is like 25 bucks a month.
What are you talking about?
Past that depth, you will be using diving computers and not a smartwatch. And the training you receive will help you to understand why.
I understand that an Apple Watch Ultra can't be used for those dives, and that's fine — they don't need to support every possible niche use case. But competing smartwatches from Garmin and Suunto handle deeper dives and the associated gas mixes just fine. There's nothing stopping Apple from doing the same if they want to.
Thanks for the condescending tone. Am I?
At 1.4 bar of O2 partial pressure (therefore, with a 21% breathing gas mixture, at around 66m depth), oxygen toxicity causes convulsions and unconsciousness. If someone doesn't grab you and take you up, this likely results in death.
Btw I had to google the precise values and depths to be accurate, but I'm not talking out my ass. I'm a certified CMAS and AOW diver with 80ish logged dives. Hardly a veteran but this was in my certification course and it's a very real thing - enlighten my confused state with your better knowledge please.
https://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/bennett-and-elliotts-physi...
3 years later, Apple releases the OS 27 versions and Siri got improved to the point where it can’t work on-device any more on said Ultra 2
So to get the feature back which I paid for and which was specifically used to sell me the device and which now has been taken away from me, I just have to… buy the next hardware generation?
And how long will that last before they decide to remove the feature again?
Thankfully, the Ultra 4 provides some other compelling features making this less painful, but I would have expected at least a toggle to keep old Siri on the old watch. New Siri over the network is impossibly slow and buggy
This is clearly by design. They like to advertise long support windows but they cripple older devices through software and OS features causing older devices to run much much slower.
I have seen this for years from Apple and it would be hard to convince me that this isn’t done by design.
Very good marketers though, I'll give them that.
Also make sure to have optimize storage off, so apps don’t just disappear randomly.
Nasty destructive surprises in upgrades.
Years ago I had lots of archival material organized on my Mac under the root "/". Why not, right? It's a Unix-y system and Linux lets you put stuff anywhere. I had directory trees copied from old hard drives. Personal history.
So along comes a macOS upgrade and BLAM! all my stuff there gets deleted without warning or so much as a Hi how do you do.
OTOH, as far as a smart watch goes, AW will be head and shoulders better. For me, it's a lot of little cuts with Garmin. For instance, setting a timer for my tea is like six button presses on the Garmin, and that's with a shortcut keypress to get to the timer. AW: there's a complication on the watch face, one press. Or, "Siri, five minutes". Three presses otherwise. I haven't owned anything from the other brands in a long time, so can't comment on the likes of Suunto or what have you.
Some will tell you that AW is "okay", but "serious athletes" use a Garmin. Meh, whatever. I've got a running resume as long as my arm, and I just preordered the AW Ultra 4 to replace my Garmin (and my AWU 1). AW gives me the data I need, and it will last long enough for me to get through a 100 mile race, so I won't miss much from Garmin. And good $DEITY, Garmin's prices are getting ridiculous. $1200 for a titanium Fenix? I don't care how long the battery lasts, that thing better wax my fucking car.
If you want to save a little money, I've heard nothing but good things about Coros.