If you’re walking around with a big ‘ol Apple Watch Ultra 3 strapped to your wrist, you’re likely using the smartwatch for its sports and health features.
Or perhaps if you’re like me, your aging eyes love the big display (49. Or perhaps your reasons are all of the above.
Whatever your reasons, you’re not wearing the Apple Watch Ultra 3 to make a fashion statement. It’s a lot bulkier than the also-new Apple Watch Series 11. And that’s okay. The new gen Ultra — available in natural or black titanium — may not be the most svelte smartwatch around, but it’s a fantastic device for those who want a tough smartwatch with a great display and excellent battery life.
The Display
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 display incorporates what Apple says its most advanced display technology with LTPO3 and wide-angle OLEDs. The wide-angle OLED display optimizes each pixel to emit more light at wider angles, making it easier to read at a glance, the tech giant adds.
LTPO3 is a high-performance, low-power display technology that enables the display borders to be 24% thinner than the Apple Watch Ultra 2. The result is an increase in the active screen area without any changes to the case size. Whatever the tech reasons, the display is crisp and sharp when viewed from any angle.
The 3,000 nits peak brightness of the 49mm screen makes the Apple Watch Ultra 3 the brightest Apple Watch. This comes in handy in sunny environments.”
So does its screen compare to that of the Apple Watch Ultra 2? The Apple Watch Ultra 3 boats a 422×514-pixel resolution that’s up from the Ultra 2’s 410×502 pixels.
The power efficient LTPO3 also allows for a faster refresh rate when Apple Watch Ultra 3 is in always-on mode, going from once a minute to once a second. Stopwatch, Timer, and over 20 watch faces are updated with support for this refresh rate.
Battery life
For daily use, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 features up to 42 hours to support users while they are training, racing, or going about their day. In Low Power Mode, it continues to offer up to 72 hours of battery life. For continuous outdoor workout tracking, Apple Watch Ultra 3 now gets 20 hours of battery life in Low Power Mode with full GPS and heart rate readings. With fast charging, 15 minutes provides up to 12 hours of battery life.
5G and Satellite Communications
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 gets 5G connectivity for everyday texts and notifications. It also adds satellite communication features, which won’t affect most folks, but will come in handy for those waaaaay off the beaten path.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 features built-in, two-way satellite communications. When users don’t have cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, they can now text emergency services, message friends and family, and share their location.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers Emergency SOS via satellite to text emergency services and notify emergency contacts with a few taps. If, for example, Apple Watch Ultra 3 detects a severe car crash or a hard fall, and the user is unresponsive while off the grid, it can automatically send situation and location information to emergency services and emergency contacts, when in line of sight of a satellite.
Health features
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers the ability to measure your blood pressure for signs of hypertension, which can be a lifesaver for some. Hypertension notifications on an Apple Watch use data from the optical heart sensor to analyze how a user’s blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart. But be patient. It takes 30 days to measure to set up a baseline of. Your blood pressure.
The watch’s new sleep score helps users understand the quality of their sleep. It can measure important health metrics during sleep like heart rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and respiratory rate, and even discover possible sleep apnea.
This will be great for a lot of folks. However, I’m blessed to have a lack of sleep issues. Plus, I don’t like wearing a watch to bed — much less one as big as the Ultra 3.
These features are in addition to existing heart rate and ECG measuring, as well as the ability to detect blood-oxygen levels, a feature that’s been temporarily blocked in the US due to litigation.
Fitness features
With watchOS 26, Apple Watch Ultra 3 features Workout Buddy, a fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence that, in Apple’s words, “analyzes a user’s workout data and fitness history to deliver personalized, spoken motivation throughout their session, based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness milestones, and more.”
Workout Buddy is easy to use and provides personalized, human-like voice feedback during workouts, drawing on AI and Apple Fitness+ to deliver motivational prompts and real-time statistics. I play a lot of sports and exercise a lot. I mainly use Workout Buddy to measure the stats of my daily six-mile run.
Note that Workout Buddy requires a compatible iPhone 15 Pro or later and is reliant on an Internet connection. And the personalized coaching aspect is still in development
Other health and workout features carry over from the Ultra 2, such as water resistance to 100m and scuba diving to 40m, IP6X dust resistance and durability in extreme temperature and altitude environments. It includes dual GPS (L1 and L5) radios for more precise location tracking and wayfinding.
Conclusion
If you liked the Apple Watch Ultra 2, you’ll love the Ultra 3. It makes a good product even better. If you found the Ultra 2 to be overkill, then the Ultra 3 won’t change your mind.
Apple World Today rating (out of 5 stars): ★★★★★
