A watch guy's thoughts on the Apple Watch Ultra

Apple watch keeps getting better, it’s definitely the best smart watch (if you like smartwatches). But Apple must not employ any athletes for all the misses they make. 

This one still can’t replace a Garmin or Coros, etc… but it’s closer.  

Some absolute essentials the Ultra misses :

Can't connect to a power meter through Tri / race mode (an app connection is NOT helpful)

Can't design workout on phone and send to device (a very basic feature!)

Open water swim accuracy is poor and buggy

Track back doesn’t work for ultra / mountain events/ and hiking

Accidental taps of the touch screen can END workouts - so mid race or mid event or mid hike, you can glance down and see you stopped recording an hour ago.  This is a nightmare scenario for high level athletes tracking their data.  If you ran your fastest ever race and then realize it didn't record, you'd be bummed out.  

It's an amazing smart watch with more features than previous models.  But IMHO the AppleWatch Ultra is not great for even moderately serious athletes.     So I'll always wear mechanical watches, except during racing/training/hiking, a Garmin 945.  

BTW - if you want basic activity tracking and not waste wrist real estate, try Oura ring.  It does excellent sleep and basic activity tracking and wrist stays free for a real watch 😜

the 945:

I had an early Apple Watch. I purchased it with my first minimum wage job paycheck because I thought the functionality was extremely cool. Fast forward, my apple watch triggered my Watch Hobby. I think the Apple Watch was the "Gateway" that lead me into watches. I am still very new to watches and early on in my journey and I only have more budget end watches, however the enjoyment and interest is all thanks to my original purchase of an apple watch. Would I wear an apple watch now? Maybe to the Gym but otherwise no. Does it serve a purpose and is it a cool piece of tech? Yes. 

I especially enjoyed your thoughts on the Alpine strap. As soon as I saw the orange release photos, I knew I wanted the same look for my traditional watches. ETSY has since scratched my itch, not exactly the same, but the theme is there. Just got mine in the mail and I'm really liking the comfort and ease of use. 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/796009545/multicolor-nylon-fabric-smart-watch-band?click_key=fc328a240a3efe7e35430bc27e0831d01b225938%3A796009545&click_sum=0947f6dc&ref=hp_opfy-1&frs=1

I appreciate your insights here! While I enjoy being active I'm never really training for events as you describe so it's great to hear from someone that the Ultra was likely designed for. Seems the likes of Garmin are safe for the time being. I have a Forerunner that I reviewed alongside a G-SHOCK Move and Apple Watch S6 last year, and I found that to be the most palatable of the bunch for a guy like me (semi-casual runner ~25miles a week). 

The AW was a bit sexier but I have other watches to wear day to day, so I look at these things for experience companions of sort. 

Does some stretches 

So I was a long term user of the series 0 from launch till about 2019 took a 3 year break and picked up the series 7 in jan but found it had not improved in the areas I care about enough to keep it, just picked up the ultra yesterday:

so the things I missed from my apple watch:

• vibration alarms and timers (i'm a hard core timer user, pomodoros ect... and the software now allows for multiple timers) I don't like disturbing others around me with constant timers though, tried the gshock gd-350 when i first stopped using my apple watch but it just didn't have the same utility, a touch screen and creating timers works pretty well if you aren't gloved up. 
• Tracking metrics, now i sit on the opposite end of the scale to mose people here, i track calories so that i eat enough, i'm a storyboard artist by trade so I sit all day but when i'm not sat down, running, walking (don't use a car) usually loaded with 17kg of toddler on my shoulders, skateboarding, long boarding, cycling, 20 mile hikes, mountains, swimming, gym... so i end up losing a lot of weight and knowing how much I need to eat. A quick tip for me on metrics, it's a baseline, so i dont look at the figures, i look at the changes in the figures. 
• Wrist navigation, yea long distance skateboarding, long boarding, running, nice to have directions on wrist, fumbled phone = broken phone. I'm a planner I usually memorise routes but nice to check without constantly pulling out phone/maps, also really hard to memorise routes through an entire country, even when I go low tech it's nicer to have notes on my watch than taping a piece of paper to my gas tank or somewhere in the car. 
• Robust stopwatch: when i used to go to the movies a lot and to study films i would often run a stopwatch to get a rough idea of where i was in the script, the apple watch with it's splits NAILED this job and you aren't blinding people with your phone or squinting at your mechanical. 
• Travel, it was nice to use the watch as you would a phone to check in get your tickets ect... I'm a phone in bag more so than phone in pocket kind of guy, so i like apple watches, (it's nothing against phones i just don't like carrying anything in my pockets at all. when you fall down on a skateboard/motorcycle anything in your pocket becomes a serious threat. )
• Multiple time zones/faces everything you could want on a getaway and a nice mechanical for going out, you truly have your bases covered. 
• Unlocking my mac... this is awesome. if you haven't tried it try it. 
• controlling shortcuts/quick tasks from watch. When I work I keep my phone in the other room but I also have to be semi aware because if there's an emergency about my kid in daycare they usually call. 
• Notification: this used to be a huge issue in the past but with the way you can dial down your notifications by context now, you can see just what you want to see. Calendar notifications by haptic is awesome since i run my day schedule through my calendar. 
• solar and side notes: Side note, took my gshock square solar to ghana last year, wore it more or less every day, but ironically because it's so hot/sunny outside you spend most of your time inside in really dark houses where you actually use the light a lot, my g shock was out of battery more in ghana than it was in the UK. 
• I work on stories a lot on the go and I sleep with my phone in the other room, nice to be able to wake again record my dream as a quick memo and go back to sleep without need to turn on the light and wake up my kid (yes she likes to cuddle at night, i'm her teddy) to write in my bedside notepad. making notes on the go a lot easier on the watch, currently i have a notebook and pen in nearly every room since at home i kind of treat my phone as a home phone. 

Data Tracking: 

It's very good i wont go into it, everyone knows where apple is on the list, basically one of the best before you get into pro grade stuff with labs and wires. Helps people who need prompts to exercise, in actually need prompts to rest so 3rd party app for that whoop straps and gamins have that feature built in to give you a wholistic health approach apples solution app store. 

App store: 

I have more hobbies that I have time, apps are awesome. Even if it's to get an alert about a meteor shower or something i can setup my telescope, yes it's in my calendar but dammit i am busy i forget. 

What I like about the ultra:

• durability: i broke my previous apple watch once when it landed on a tiled floor on a beach vacation, i was putting it on after a shower smash! Automatics have made me understand how awesome sapphire glass is. I have footage of my child using my watches as a hammer... i let her use the g shocks, I've scratched many a watch doing my daddy duties. I'd really rather not have to baby a watch. 
• Battery life: i can deal with charging once every couple days, i just dont like being stuck having to charge every day with sleep tracking. Once I was staying at a friends in london forgot to charge my watch (series 0) got on the tube and used my watch to pay, the watch died by the time i got to my destination and well since payment is capped to the device you use, paying by a different method starts a whole new tally for the day. London Underground
• That red mode going to work a treat for things like cinemas,theatres,concerts where you just dont need to be a beacon. 
• IF and I hope I never do but IF i come off a motorcycle, or fall down a hole snowboarding. it's nice to know something on my wrist could get me help. no matter where I was when I came off reception wise. same for longboarding to be honest. I've done some stupid things going 60mph without any safety gear on a ironing board with wheels. 
• size: for my use case this is compact, my current camping watch is a ggb100 mudmaster so. this fits much nicer under a sleeve. 
• Design: I always felt the standard apple watch looked nice in terms of industrial design but i never much liked it as a watch, Ultra is not shy to be a wrist computer, it's what i love about the g shock design, it's not playing pretend. It means business and it looks it. 
• crown guard, nuff said. 
• 100m water resistance, i just never felt comfortable with 50m for surfing, never had an issue but i like the headroom for water sports... I haven't done my diving course yet. Next year hopefully. 
• Buttons: my friends used to tease me that my power was to generate water from my hands, and i may be the saviour of our planet should we need to rehydrate the sahara... touch screen + sweaty hands = bad time. buttons good specially if you have gloves on too, this would have been so awesome on my motorcycle back in the day with those hefty gloves. 

There's problems with the ultra, some people have already pointed out how easy it is to hit the action button by mistake or the limitation in what you can use that action button for, but it will likely get updated with software. 

The price is steep yes but not much different from gamins high end stuff nor the sumo i bought to replace my previous apple watch... yea i dropped the sumo once had to pay to have it recased and serviced so it actually cost more than an apple watch and if i service it every 2-3 years as they recommend well now were looking at as balancing in the field i'm not going to compare a computer to a mechanical device but i'm thinking about the utility of my £ and for my use case I probably get more from the apple watch there, for what you're getting if you use it, it's a bargain. Still stings though because i know this is a 3 - 5 year purchase max. 

Sorry post was so long. @Fieldwalker covered the other things I would have mentioned. 

Does some stretches 

So I was a long term user of the series 0 from launch till about 2019 took a 3 year break and picked up the series 7 in jan but found it had not improved in the areas I care about enough to keep it, just picked up the ultra yesterday:

so the things I missed from my apple watch:

• vibration alarms and timers (i'm a hard core timer user, pomodoros ect... and the software now allows for multiple timers) I don't like disturbing others around me with constant timers though, tried the gshock gd-350 when i first stopped using my apple watch but it just didn't have the same utility, a touch screen and creating timers works pretty well if you aren't gloved up. 
• Tracking metrics, now i sit on the opposite end of the scale to mose people here, i track calories so that i eat enough, i'm a storyboard artist by trade so I sit all day but when i'm not sat down, running, walking (don't use a car) usually loaded with 17kg of toddler on my shoulders, skateboarding, long boarding, cycling, 20 mile hikes, mountains, swimming, gym... so i end up losing a lot of weight and knowing how much I need to eat. A quick tip for me on metrics, it's a baseline, so i dont look at the figures, i look at the changes in the figures. 
• Wrist navigation, yea long distance skateboarding, long boarding, running, nice to have directions on wrist, fumbled phone = broken phone. I'm a planner I usually memorise routes but nice to check without constantly pulling out phone/maps, also really hard to memorise routes through an entire country, even when I go low tech it's nicer to have notes on my watch than taping a piece of paper to my gas tank or somewhere in the car. 
• Robust stopwatch: when i used to go to the movies a lot and to study films i would often run a stopwatch to get a rough idea of where i was in the script, the apple watch with it's splits NAILED this job and you aren't blinding people with your phone or squinting at your mechanical. 
• Travel, it was nice to use the watch as you would a phone to check in get your tickets ect... I'm a phone in bag more so than phone in pocket kind of guy, so i like apple watches, (it's nothing against phones i just don't like carrying anything in my pockets at all. when you fall down on a skateboard/motorcycle anything in your pocket becomes a serious threat. )
• Multiple time zones/faces everything you could want on a getaway and a nice mechanical for going out, you truly have your bases covered. 
• Unlocking my mac... this is awesome. if you haven't tried it try it. 
• controlling shortcuts/quick tasks from watch. When I work I keep my phone in the other room but I also have to be semi aware because if there's an emergency about my kid in daycare they usually call. 
• Notification: this used to be a huge issue in the past but with the way you can dial down your notifications by context now, you can see just what you want to see. Calendar notifications by haptic is awesome since i run my day schedule through my calendar. 
• solar and side notes: Side note, took my gshock square solar to ghana last year, wore it more or less every day, but ironically because it's so hot/sunny outside you spend most of your time inside in really dark houses where you actually use the light a lot, my g shock was out of battery more in ghana than it was in the UK. 
• I work on stories a lot on the go and I sleep with my phone in the other room, nice to be able to wake again record my dream as a quick memo and go back to sleep without need to turn on the light and wake up my kid (yes she likes to cuddle at night, i'm her teddy) to write in my bedside notepad. making notes on the go a lot easier on the watch, currently i have a notebook and pen in nearly every room since at home i kind of treat my phone as a home phone. 

Data Tracking: 

It's very good i wont go into it, everyone knows where apple is on the list, basically one of the best before you get into pro grade stuff with labs and wires. Helps people who need prompts to exercise, in actually need prompts to rest so 3rd party app for that whoop straps and gamins have that feature built in to give you a wholistic health approach apples solution app store. 

App store: 

I have more hobbies that I have time, apps are awesome. Even if it's to get an alert about a meteor shower or something i can setup my telescope, yes it's in my calendar but dammit i am busy i forget. 

What I like about the ultra:

• durability: i broke my previous apple watch once when it landed on a tiled floor on a beach vacation, i was putting it on after a shower smash! Automatics have made me understand how awesome sapphire glass is. I have footage of my child using my watches as a hammer... i let her use the g shocks, I've scratched many a watch doing my daddy duties. I'd really rather not have to baby a watch. 
• Battery life: i can deal with charging once every couple days, i just dont like being stuck having to charge every day with sleep tracking. Once I was staying at a friends in london forgot to charge my watch (series 0) got on the tube and used my watch to pay, the watch died by the time i got to my destination and well since payment is capped to the device you use, paying by a different method starts a whole new tally for the day. London Underground
• That red mode going to work a treat for things like cinemas,theatres,concerts where you just dont need to be a beacon. 
• IF and I hope I never do but IF i come off a motorcycle, or fall down a hole snowboarding. it's nice to know something on my wrist could get me help. no matter where I was when I came off reception wise. same for longboarding to be honest. I've done some stupid things going 60mph without any safety gear on a ironing board with wheels. 
• size: for my use case this is compact, my current camping watch is a ggb100 mudmaster so. this fits much nicer under a sleeve. 
• Design: I always felt the standard apple watch looked nice in terms of industrial design but i never much liked it as a watch, Ultra is not shy to be a wrist computer, it's what i love about the g shock design, it's not playing pretend. It means business and it looks it. 
• crown guard, nuff said. 
• 100m water resistance, i just never felt comfortable with 50m for surfing, never had an issue but i like the headroom for water sports... I haven't done my diving course yet. Next year hopefully. 
• Buttons: my friends used to tease me that my power was to generate water from my hands, and i may be the saviour of our planet should we need to rehydrate the sahara... touch screen + sweaty hands = bad time. buttons good specially if you have gloves on too, this would have been so awesome on my motorcycle back in the day with those hefty gloves. 

There's problems with the ultra, some people have already pointed out how easy it is to hit the action button by mistake or the limitation in what you can use that action button for, but it will likely get updated with software. 

The price is steep yes but not much different from gamins high end stuff nor the sumo i bought to replace my previous apple watch... yea i dropped the sumo once had to pay to have it recased and serviced so it actually cost more than an apple watch and if i service it every 2-3 years as they recommend well now were looking at as balancing in the field i'm not going to compare a computer to a mechanical device but i'm thinking about the utility of my £ and for my use case I probably get more from the apple watch there, for what you're getting if you use it, it's a bargain. Still stings though because i know this is a 3 - 5 year purchase max. 

Sorry post was so long. @Fieldwalker covered the other things I would have mentioned.