Apple Watch Ultra 3 In-Depth Review: Worth the Upgrade?

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the first Apple Watch to get two-way satellite communications, and in my testing over the past nearly two months, it’s also the watch with the easiest to use satellite communications features that largely ‘just work’ (at least, depending on where you live). But more than that, my usage during this time has pushed the limits of what this watch is capable of, from both a battery and sports standpoint. That includes a 70KM non-stop hike/trail-run to see if the battery would hold, as well as plenty of other more sane workouts.

Beyond that though, did the new larger display, 5G connectivity, and WatchOS 26 features eat away at battery life? Or, has it managed to hold its own? And ultimately, who does this watch make sense for? I’ll dive into all of that over the course of this review, which is skewed towards the fitness/sports/health/outdoors realm.

Certainly, I’ll cover plenty of the basics here too. But if you’re looking for tips on how to use the on-watch calculator, this might not be the place to find it. But if you want details on (almost) everything else? I’m here for ya.

With that, let’s get into it!

What’s New in Ultra 3?

Let’s first look at everything that’s new in the Apple Watch Ultra 3

– New display for increased viewing angle brightness
– Increased display size to the largest in an Apple Watch (roughly 5% bigger in pixel sq mm)
– New LTPO3 display increased refresh rate in always-on mode “without impacting battery”
– Added ability to see ticking seconds in watch faces in dimmed always-on state
– Decreased bezel/borders slightly (but same case size)
– Added new Waypoint watch face
– Added 5G cellular
– Added Satellite SOS
– Added Satellite text messaging
– Added Satellite FindMy location sharing
– Apple says they doubled the signal strength compared to Ultra 2
– Added Hypertension tracking/notifications
– Added sleep score (also available on all WatchOS 26 units)
– Increased battery life to 42 hours of regular battery life, from 36 hours
– Available in both black and natural titanium (like before)
– Added new band colors
– Price remains $799USD (including cellular hardware)

Just for some quick comparison photos, here are the differences between the Apple Watch Ultra 2 versus the Apple Watch Ultra 3:

You can (barely) see the difference at a lower viewing angle. In my usage over the past nearly two months now, I just haven’t noticed much of a real-world difference here (I show a number of examples in the above video moving the camera around). There are certainly very specific light scenarios where you might see it, but on the whole, it’d be very challenging for most people to tell the difference in a pop quiz.

Whereas, inversely, you can very clearly see the difference in the decreased bezel area (between display and frame) compared to the Ultra 2:

As always with Apple products, it doesn’t tend to be massive changes between models, but rather incremental changes that are instead designed to get you to upgrade from a few generations back. These changes, when taken in total, tend to add up.

So with that, let’s get into all the daily usage basics.

The Daily Basics:

First up, let’s look at the overall basics of the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Keeping in mind that the Apple Watch is a sprawling device covering lots of areas, and I’m mostly focused on the health/fitness elements here. And even that’s widespread as Apple continues to add more and more medical features (e.g. Hypertension detection).

In any case, starting quickly on the external buttons/hardware front, the unit remains the same in this realm compared to previous Apple Watch Ultra units. That means it still has the ‘Action Button’ on the left side, and then two more buttons on the right side (one of which is also the Digital Crown), with those right-side buttons having a button guard around them to decrease the changes of accidental button presses.

That action button is customizable to certain apps/actions. By default, it’ll open up the Workout App, and also serve to allow ‘Precision Start’ within the workout app. But again, you can tweak how that all works.

Meanwhile, while the screen is bigger and appreciated, by itself you probably wouldn’t notice. Side-by-side, of-course, but on the daily, it’s just not something I’ve thought about. Same goes for the differences in the off-angle viewing. So while those don’t seem noticeable, what is notable is that the watch remains super easy too see in all lighting conditions. In my case, I live on a super bright sunny island, thus, ensuring good viability in bright light is important, and I’ve had zero issues there:

But frankly, more important, is the low-light side of things. Not so much seeing it in low light, but rather not being blinded by it. This is where the Apple Watch Ultra 3 (and also the Series 10/11) really do shine compared to their competitors. Examples being movie theaters, redeye flights, etc… where you’re in close proximity to others, and want the screen super dim but still visible. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 here easily beats something like the new Garmin Fenix 8 Pro MicroLED, which on it’s lowest daytime setting is light a lighthouse on your wrist.

It’s hard to tell in this comparison because the camera makes both look bright. But look at how much light each watch is throwing down to the sheets:

Note, however, that in the case of both watches, this shouldn’t be confused with sleep modes. Both watches have dedicated sleep modes that basically turn off the display, or drastically reduce brightness. You can tap the watch/display to see the time (in a super-dim backlight setting), but otherwise, it’ll stay off so that you don’t illuminate yourself or others. It’s great.

Now, I’ll cover the sleep score bits in the next section, but just to briefly point out I didn’t have any issues when it came to general sleep tracking here. The only slight quirk with Apple’s sleep tracking feature though is that it always displays your last ‘asleep’ period on the watch face and in the app. Meaning, if that last ‘asleep’ period was a nap, it’ll show that, instead of your actual sleep the night before. Not a huge deal, but kinda quirky.

Setting that side, you can see your sleep data on the watch face, or within the dedicated sleep app:

And likewise, you can see that also on the phone app of course:

The same is true for daily activity like steps, standing, and movement, which are shown initially through the Activity Rings that you’ll see on your watch. These rings are ‘closed’ when you complete each threshold. By default this is standing at least once within each of 12 hours per day, 30 minutes of exercise, and 300 calories. In this context, the threshold/bar for what counts as exercise is pretty low, so even just walking briskly to the ice cream shop will get you credit.

All of this is also available on the app for longer timeframe viewing, showing your ring closures over time (plus, on this given day).

And likewise, you’ll get any streaks shown that you may have as well:

Last year, as part of WatchOS 11, Apple also introduced the ability to tweak your rings for either a given day, or a daily basis. This can be useful if you’ve got some commitment or issue making it impossible to get your rings completed that day (e.g. flying from San Francisco to Singapore), or just a tough shift-work schedule on a given day of the week)

The next general health feature is the ‘Vitals’ app. This app looks at five core trending features each night:

1) Nightly resting heart rate
2) Overnight respiratory rate
3) Overnight wrist temperature trending
4) Overnight sleep duration
5) Overnight SpO2 (blood oxygen)

You’ll then see them shown on a chart, indicating if any of them are out of alignment with the norms:

If there is an outlier, it’ll flag that in pink, so that you can figure out what to do about it. I don’t really have any good photos of outliers anytime recently on the Ultra 3, and I find in general it’s pretty darn loose on when it flags outliers (even sleep duration I can go silly-low on, such as redeye flights with just 2-3 hours, and it still doesn’t get upset). That said, my wife did manage to get some on the Series 11 in the first couple of days of switching to it, so here’s an example of what that looks like:

Of course, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 includes WatchOS 26, which has a host of new features like call screening, Liquid Glass, automatic smart actions for messages anymore. But in having used WatchOS 26 now since June, about the only one that really sticks out to me is finally having the Notes app on my wrist. While the features are a bit more limited here than on your phone, they key thing for me is simply quickly browsing notes. I often use it for lists (grocery, filming checklists, to-do lists, etc…), and this just makes it easy and in-sync.

Now, switching direction entirely, there’s the new 5G support. This is something that’s kinda hard to really take advantage of on a watch, and is otherwise mostly transparent to you. Instead, Apple (and other companies), note that is really about battery savings, rather than trying to get you massive speed to download big files to the watch. Sure, you’ll be able to download music faster, but in most cases you were already downloading music faster than you could have listened to it.

Point being, I didn’t notice any obvious differences here, it all just worked ‘as expected’, which, I guess is sorta the point.

Lastly, when it comes to battery charging, there hasn’t really been any improvements here, unfortunately. Currentl,y it sits at 80% charged in 45 minutes (and a full charge in 75 minutes). This isn’t horrible per se, this means you can basically charge it to half-way it about 15-20 minutes in my experience, which I often tend to do just before bed (some people do it in the morning while doing breakfast/shower/etc…). In most cases, half a charge will get me a full day’s battery life, including about an hour of GPS time.

That said, with the introduction of the Pixel Watch 4 getting to 80% in just 25 minutes, it’s started to show just how much better the charging experience can be for all watches (not just versus Apple). Having worn these watches side-by-side a lot over the last month or so, it’s amazing how fast that watch charges compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 (since I often put them down at the same time to charge). Hopefully we’ll see others start to match those speeds in future models.

The New Sleep Score:

When it comes to sleep tracking, there’s new sleep scores as part of WatchOS 26. Mind you, the underlying sleep tracking hasn’t changed (or at least, noticeably changed). That remains as with the past, which is largely pretty accurate. As I note often, I don’t do comparisons of sleep stages/phases, because there’s not really any super accurate way of assessing that (so-called ‘gold standard’ sleep monitoring technologies only top out in the mid-80% accuracy range). Instead, I focus on the time I went to sleep and woke up, which Apple does well.

And in fact, that’s largely how Apple’s new sleep score metrics work as well. The new sleep score joins effectively every other wearable on the market from the last few years, with Apple being a bit late to the party. Their sleep score essentially cares about three things:

1) Consistency in the time you went to sleep (30 points)
2) The duration of the sleep (50 points)
3) How many interruptions you had during sleep (20 points)

It does not care about sleep phases/stages, nor HRV, or any other metric. You’ll first see it on the main sleep screen, and then from there you can tap into it for more details.

Once you tap that little ‘I’ for information, it expands out to the following:

In my testing over the past nearly two months, the lack of considering other factors like HRV has pros and cons. At a high level, I found that Apple seemed to (heavily) bias towards a higher sleep score than all of its competitors. This is likely because those other competitors would downgrade my sleep score if HRV was poor, or sleep stages weren’t to its liking.

Here’s an example of comparative data for a week long period (there are many more factors at play than just time asleep, but the chart starts to get crazy messy after that):

Yet concurrently, Apple’s score was heavily impacted by the time I went to sleep (in terms of consistency). So even if I had 9 hours of sleep that was as uninterrupted as possible, if I went to sleep later than my norms, I would be penalized. I see both sides of that. On one hand, the goal is to have healthier sleep habits, on the other hands, I got the sleep it wanted, so why complain about it?

But was more problematic was that the sleep score on occasion actually penalized either me or my wife for going to bed early. The best example of this was last month when my wife went to bed hours early after being tired from some big workouts, got 9.5 hours of sleep, and it was still upset at her for going to bed too early (seriously, look at that, she got docked 6 points for going to bed early!).

While Apple says they won’t penalize users for going to bed early during jet lag, this penalty as seen above seems to defeat the entire purpose. She was tired, she went to bed, she stayed in bed a long time. What is the sleep score downranked? Anyways, I’ll save that for my Apple Watch Series 11 review, though, it’s the exact same software.

In any event, no sleep score is perfect, because (in part), no sleep score standard exists. Every company has their own way of calculating it, and one can take issue with any aspect of any companies score. Scientists often get upset about wearable companies not having a scientifically validated standard for sleep scores, and thus sometimes claiming them invalid.

The problem there is twofold. First, even with their imperfections, these sleep scores are accomplishing their underlying goal: Getting you to pay attention to sleep practices, and ultimately, getting more sleep. In most cases, these scores achieve that.

The second problem is that scientists rarely agree on human-body related standards in the health and fitness realm. Hell, there still isn’t an official standard on what/how a ‘resting heart rate’ is defined as. Is it just when awake? Or any time of day? And if just awake, is it the lowest 1-second point, or the average of the lowest minute during the day? And so on. And this is the most basic thing that virtually no entity or organization can agree upon. Let alone similar data points for HRV, running power, and so on.

Point being, don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. As long as one understands the limitations and benefits, there’s tons to be gained for most wearable metrics.

Sports Tracking:

In this section, I’ll cover the sports tracking pieces specifically, including some of the changes made here in the Workout App. Note that I also cover Mapping/Navigation in the next section, along with a dedicated section on workout battery life, if you plan to go longer with the watch. Finally, I’ll briefly cover the depth gauge in this section as well as the Training Load pieces.

First up, is opening up the Workout app. This app has all the sport modes in it, from Outdoor Run to Dance to Core Training and more. There’s a whole host of workout types (here’s the full official list), and each one you can customize. In addition to that, there’s also the workout profiles that have Workout Buddy enabled. We’ll get into that in a second, but not every workout type has that (for example, Dance doesn’t). Here’s the ones that do have Workout Buddy enabled (there may be others added over time):

– Outdoor Run
– Indoor Run
– Indoor Walk
– Outdoor Walk
– Outdoor Ride
– Indoor Ride
– High Intensity Interval Training
– Traditional & Functional Strength Training
– Hiking
– Elliptical
– Stair Stepper

In fact, the mere selecting of a workout type shows some of the new user interface that Apple has implemented in the Workout app. The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s simply showing a single sport at a time (seen above), whereas in the past, you had 2-3 tiles worth of sports (e.g., Running, Cycling, Swimming, etc…). However now, when you scroll, it then uses Liquid Glass to show roughly three workout types at a time, as you go up/down.

Once you’ve picked one, you’ll see in the upper corners there’s four new ways to get into additional settings/features (shown above):

Upper left: Workout Views (aka your data pages/settings)
Upper right: Workout goals & structured workouts (aka the different ways you can have the watch tell you to suffer)
Lower left: Music (all things music)
Lower right: Workout Buddy & Voice Alerts (thus, all things voice-over related)

All of these make quite a bit of logical organizational sense, so this is nice to see.

In terms of features like the Workout Views, once within this, they haven’t changed from the past. And the same goes for Workout Goals/Structured Workouts. All of it is the same once within this menu:

Whereas Music is changed, and there’s now a new option “Picked for You”, which will automatically create a playlist on the fly for you (or you can automatically start an existing playlist). This new playlist on the fly feature is leveraging Apple Music, and aims to automatically match the type of workout – such as HIIT with a high energy, versus Yoga will be more chill. It does not use awareness of structured workouts, etc, just the overall sport type.

In my use of this over the last little while, mostly on runs, the playlists varied between “holy crap that was great” to “totally missed the mood”. For example, last night, on a trail run right at sunset, the songs as the sun was disappearing into the ocean were spot on. Almost ethereal, matching the beat of the running cadence. However, about 10-15 minutes later, the music took on a totally different vibe-breaking mood, going towards hardcore rap. And while music is obviously very personal, these two didn’t seem to fit together on the same automatically generated playlist. Since using the ‘For You’ feature a bunch this summer, I just went back to using my Spotify playlists.

In any case, once you’ve selected all your settings, you can go ahead and start your workout. Here, this too remains the same as the past, and you’ll see all your workout stats as you suffer, just like before:

One of the new WatchOS 26 features is of course Workout Buddy. Arguably, that’s *the* key feature of WatchOS 26, fitness or otherwise. I wrote an extensive post about it here already, which covers all of the details from using it on a ton of workouts. I’ve used it on many more workouts since (including the last few days), and my existing opinions are basically the same as then. It hallucinates slightly less than it did previously, but still says some wonky stuff from time to time. For example, yesterday on my run as I was passing through 58 minutes, it said “you’re 48 minutes into your run”, which is exactly the sort of bug I saw this summer. Likewise, I’ve seen other hallucinations that just don’t make sense. I’d say about 10%-15% of the things it says in my runs are wonky.

Note that you’ll need to have some form of headphones with you, in order to make it work. Also, the other downside now is that other alerts leverage the workout buddy components, so if you drop out of cellular range (such as on a trail run), those won’t work.

If you’re doing structure workouts, you’ll get that guidance as well. In fact, it should be mentioned that a sneaky new feature of WatchOS 26 is the ability to now create custom workouts on the iPhone. Previously, this required doing it with a partner platform (e.g. TrainingPeaks/etc…), now, you can simply create them here instead. I wrote a whole post about it, in case you want to dig into it more.

At the end of the workout, you’ll see your summary stats:

You’ll see all these same stats within the Apple ‘Fitness’ app on your smartphone too:

Additionally, within that workout-ending workflow, you’ll also get the opportunity to change/set your Effort Rating, a feature Apple rolled out last year. This essentially forks the basis for training load in the Apple ecosystem.

Apple then takes this rating and multiples it by the duration of the workout, to determine your training load. You can then see this training load trended over time, such as this:

As I said last year, this is ok-ish, but lacks the detail that every other endurance sports-focused watch has (specifically, showing you the actual training load number, not just % difference). Sure, Apple is going for a wider base here, but realistically, there are countless examples of other super-detailed metrics that Apple provides (e.g. running efficiency metrics like ground contact time), that have very little real-world value. Yet in this case, something that does have value, isn’t provided.

The specific case here where having an exact number is critical is when coming back from off-season, or simply returning from injury. Because the % value is simply against your last 4 weeks, it doesn’t let you compare beyond that. Whereas most athletes have a seasonal cycle to it, which would let athletes understand that better.

In any case, switching topics briefly again, which is to mention the depth gauge. I’ve covered this extensively in the past, but the depth gauge allows your Apple Watch Ultra to show depths down to 40m (130ft). This all remains the same as the past. The built-in features are fine for snorkeling and playing around in the water (which I do a ton). You’ll see all your underwater antics afterwards in the Fitness app:

But for scuba diving, you’ll really want to grab the Oceanic+ app, which is the company that Apple has partnered with for proper scuba diving (and free diving) support. This will include a more detailed data in the logbook, as well as (critically) more alerts and such when actually diving. I’ve previously covered the scuba features quite a bit, so I won’t rehash it here, as nothing has changed in this realm.

Mapping & Navigation:

Now, when it comes to navigation with the Apple Watch Ultra 3, that’s where things mostly fall apart. They fall apart in one or two ways, depending on where you live. To begin, the Apple Watch doesn’t have navigation within the Workout app. Instead, you’ll need to use the Maps app (the same one you’d use for driving in your car). While that’s fine for navigation while driving, or walking around town, it’s not super ideal for hiking navigation.

Thus, last year Apple recognized that with WatchOS 10 (in 2024), and added the ability to create and download pedestrian-based routes to the Apple Watch, including offline maps. They even curated some hikes in various US national parks and such. And to an extent, that works OK, as long as you’re in the US, in a major park/parkland that has the right map data, and don’t mind switching back and forth between the workout app and the navigation (Maps) app. It’s cumbersome compared to most dedicated sports watches, but for a big chunk of the US population, it’s good enough.

The problem is, Apple has only focused their off-road maps attention on the US. Outside the US, the map data is pretty bad. Where I live in Spain, I can’t even make it a few hundred meters from my house, before the trail data evaporates. Even portions of major trails used by thousands of people each summer day doesn’t exist here. You simply can’t create a route, unless the trail exists in Apple Maps. Yes, you can download an offline map of almost anywhere on earth, but that map just won’t have the trail data, or, the ability to create your planned hike/run/etc…

So for example, in the below, you can see me trying to click along the ‘beach’ area, which is a trail along that waters edge, but I can’t actually do it. Which is a proper trail around the coastline. Thus, it takes me on random roads nearby.

Apple desperately needs to either partner with more mapping providers, or, allow routes to be created using 3rd party route engines (e.g. Strava, Komoot, etc…), and then synced to the Apple Watch to follow. Essentially, they need to do what they did for structured workouts, but for routes.

Which then brings us to alternatives. A few weeks ago Komoot announced they’ll be (finally) allowing route following and offline routes on the Apple Watch. Who knew I’d have something positive to say about the Bending Spoons acquisition, but hey, here we are. For years, there was the Komoot app on Apple Watch, but it was never truly offline. It always required a phone connection to work. Now, by the end of the year, they’re saying it’ll work.

In the meantime, you’ve got WorkOutdoors. This app has been around since forever, and has just about every option under the sun, including deep customization. It allows you to import in route files (e.g. GPX/TCX files), and then has route following, including turn prompts. Further, it even has things like ascent profiles (roughly something like Garmin’s ClimbPro), and more. And again, there are approximately 1,438 options in the menus.

And you’ll get all sorts of cool ClimbPro-like features too:

In any case, here’s me navigating a route, out on the trails. You can see the upcoming turn prompts, the upcoming climb profile, and so on.

Additionally, it gifts audio voice alerts (from the watch speaker, or headphones), as those turns approach, and tells you when you’re off-course. For my trail run yesterday, this worked great.

But there are a few challenges with WorkOutdoors. First up, it can’t pull in routes from Strava or Komoot automatically. Those are the two behemoth routing platforms in the industry today, and without a connection to them, it adds a cumbersome step of needing to manually export the .GPX/.TCX file (usually from a desktop computer), then e-mailing it to yourself, or saving it to the file system, and then manually importing it in. Versus it just automagically syncing and working seamlessly. I can’t stress how important this is to do, in terms of minimizing friction.

The second challenge is more of a double-edged sword. As I noted, WorkOutdoors has a gazillion options. It’s a geeks paradise, but, it’s also just overwhelming for not just beginners but geeks alike. There’s so many options, and the user interface isn’t super intuitive, especially the watch-side, in terms of getting back and forth between pages/settings/options. Any quick browsing of Reddit or other reviews will note the same challenges.

Like many small fitness apps for Apple Watch, it’s just a single person developing it. And it’s awesome, but equally, it could be so much more, and really become a go-to for not just geeks, but everyone else as well. It just needs to be simplified a bit. Keep all that geekery in a storage closet for power users, but make the core experience simpler.

Now, the last piece that had me hesitate was battery burn. As I discuss in my battery burn section, when it comes to the default Workout app (the sports app on Apple Watch), I’d see a battery burn of roughly 6-7%/hour. With WorkOutdoors, that’s nearly double, at 10-11%/hour. Here’s an example from yesterday’s trail run:

Starting Battery: 95% at 6:02PM
Ending Battery (1hr 59mins later): 78% at 8:01PM

Of course, in this case, it’s doing true navigation/routing, along with showing ascent profiles, voice navigation, and more. This was kept on the map page. So obviously, that’s going to burn more battery than just showing my current pace/HR. Still, it’s something to keep in mind.

Satellite Communication:

One of the biggest features of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is its two-way satellite messaging connectivity. That connectivity has three core features, which are roughly divided up into two camps: Emergency usage, and non-emergency usage. This means you can message from areas without cellular coverage, assuming it’s within the larger geographical/continental areas that are defined as covered.

Starting off with the features first, here’s the three core areas:

– Satellite SOS (Emergency): This allows you to notify an emergency response center, which can coordinate emergency responders. It has a defined workflow to collect information about what’s wrong, to minimize back and forth messaging and confusion.

– Satellite text messaging (regular chatting): This is standard text messages, just as you’d do on your phone. It doesn’t include photos/videos, but can include emoji.

– Sending FindMy location/position: This allows you to manually update your location that your friends/family would see within the FindMy app. This is not automatic, and can only be manually updated every 15 minutes.

Now that we’ve established the three types of satellite features, we’ll get into where they are offered. The 2-second TLDR version is that only SOS & FindMy updates are supported in Europe, whereas US/Canada/Mexico get all three.

– Satellite SOS (Emergency): All 17 countries currently supported by the iPhone Emergency SOS*

– Satellite text messaging (regular chatting): 3 countries: US, Canada, Mexico

– Sending FindMy location/position (non-emergency): All 18 countries supported by the iPhone for FindMy (basically includes Mexico that’s not in the SOS list)

But wait, there’s more! The next piece is that you have to have a cellular plan activated on your Apple Watch for either the FindMy updates or Text Messaging pieces. A cellular plan does *NOT* have to be activated for the Satellite SOS piece.

My assumption here is that this is Apple’s clever way of getting the carriers to cover some of the satellite costs here, for non-emergency usage. Even though those costs are tiny on a per-user basis, at scale they add up. Even more-so when you think about this really long term (e.g. a decade from now), when your watch will probably do plenty more crazy satellite things than just the above list. This sets up that stage nicely.

So, let’s look at how this works. First up, we’ll start with the text messaging piece, since that’s probably got the widest appeal (albeit, is only available at the moment in US/Canada/Mexico). Once you leave cellular service range, you’ll see a small grey satellite icon at the top of the watch screen. This indicates that neither your watch or phone are able to find cellular signal:

Once that happens, if you use your watch to send a message, it’ll automatically notify you that it needs to leverage satellite instead.

At this point, it’ll have you rotate your body/wrist/watch towards the satellite as it’s passing by. Apple is using low earth orbit satellites from GlobalStar, also known as LEO satellites. These satellites are constantly orbiting earth, and thus their position is moving past you within a roughly 10-minute timespan. However, there’s enough overlap that as one passes, another appears from a different direction. This is different than ‘GEO’ satellites (geostationary satellites) used by watches from Google & Garmin watches, in that those satellites are stationary above a given location (e.g. Colorado). Note that Garmin’s dedicated inReach devices (e.g. Garmin inReach Mini 2 or Messenger) use a different satellite network/concept entirely.

The benefit to Apple’s satellite technology type/choice is that if you are blocked by terrain, such as those very real cliff below, you can simply wait a couple minutes for a new satellite to appear in a given direction, which is exactly what I did. Whereas in the Garmin/Google case, if I couldn’t move (for example, a cliff blocking my movement), then it wouldn’t have ever connected.

In any case, the message sent within about 15-30 seconds in my test. And more interestingly, it actually holds the satellite connection too for subsequent text messages. You’ll see that little green satellite icon in the upper portion of the screen, indicating that connection is still live, despite me walking around a bit.

Though, eventually I got to a point while walking that it told me I had to turn around entirely to still see satellites. But once I did, it immediately locked back again. Super cool stuff (and again, a pretty big contrast to Garmin, though also keeps in mind, Garmin isn’t limited to just the US, like Apple is for messaging). I’ll have a separate post on comparing these up very shortly.

In any case, when it comes to messaging, you can always send messages to iMessage recipients. However, sending to green bubble people (regular text messages), requires that you’ve talked to that number at some point in the last 30 days (it has a 30-day limitation because it needs to maintain a secure channel which was instantiated within that time window), or any SMS contact as long as your phone is online elsewhere. Meaning, if your phone is with you (and also offline), then you’ll need to use iMessage to another contact.

Next up, is FindMy location updating. This is available in all applicable regions. Here, again, once your watch is out of cellular range, you’ll see the grey satellite icon at the top. Then, within the Find People app on your Apple Watch Ultra 3, you’ll scroll to the bottom to find yourself. At which point at the bottom of that option again, you’ll see the ability to update via satellite:

This can be done once every 15 minutes. It does not automatically update, unfortunately, and is only updated when you manually tap it. But, it works quick enough.

Lastly, you’ve got emergency SOS pieces. This requires no cellular plan be activated, and merely requires you be within the borders of one of the aforementioned countries. To begin, you’ll start an emergency call like any other. When the watch detects there’s no cellular signal, it’ll offer to escalate it to satellite. In my case, I was able to receive a live/in-person demo of it from Apple (thus while it connected to the emergency center, it was done in a way to not send a helicopter to our location).

As you iterate through the steps, the watch is designed to gather all the required information up front, and try and ensure they have the data they need in case subsequent communication attempts fail (e.g. you stop responding, battery dies, etc…).

Once that’s done, you can continue to communicate back and forth with the emergency response center, and in turn, they will escalate to the appropriate local responder to get you sorted out. Doesn’t really matter if you’re deep in the mountains, or simply in a weird no-cell spot off a major highway. They coordinate with the appropriate entity, using the GPS coordinates from your watch, and the severity of the situation.

All of this is the same as previous with Apple’s phone-based SOS, which came out a number of years back.

Ultimately, in using the text message pieces, as well as the FindMy piece (across both Europe and the US), I’m pretty impressed with one piece in particular: How fast it was. Having used both the Garmin & Google connectivity bits, those were much slower than Apple’s. Now as I noted earlier, Apple only supports the US/Canada/Mexico for text messages, whereas Garmin has US & Europe. Further, Apple’s ability to loosely hold the satellite connection for text message conversations is super handy, versus the others requiring each message be manually repointed at the satellite. Ultimately, I expect the features on this technology will only continue to expand.

Finally, one tiny little thing to mention for folks that travel internationally. Specifically around carriers. In my case, I had my Apple Watch Ultra 3 activated under a Spanish carrier (Vodaphone), and I was curious if that would allow me to use the satellite features in the US (notably, text messages). Indeed, it did work (and I confirmed with Apple ahead of time that would work). Meaning, I could use all three features in the US, whereas in Europe the satellite messaging isn’t available.

However, one super important thing needed to be toggled: That Spanish/Vodaphone cellular service had to be enabled on my phone (and thus watch), even if there was no US service enabled for it. To understand more clearly: I had also activated a generic eSIM for my US trip, because it was like $9 for the few days I would be in the US, and cheaper than Vodaphone. When I went to use the satellite feature on my watch, it didn’t work at all. Like, hard-no wouldn’t even start working. That’s because I had disabled the EU/Spanish Vodaphone cellular eSIM on my phone (and thus also my watch), and only had a US eSIM activated. To access the satellite bits, I had to manually enable that EU eSIM again on my phone (and thus also my watch). To me, that’s a bit of (big) an ask for non-technical folks to figure out is the problem. Apple should definitely have some better error wording there, other than a generic message that cellular service wasn’t enabled. Thinking about my parents that are traveling right now on a foreign country in very non-cellar areas, using foreign eSIMS, there’s no way they’d have figured out that the only way to make it work was to turn back on their (home) US SIMs.

Battery Life Testing:

To begin, let’s look at smartwatch battery life (daily life). Below are Apple’s claims for the Ultra 3:

Basically, in my real-world usage, I was having to charge it towards the end of each day, which often included an hour GPS workout, though not a ton of other usage beyond normal smartphone notifications and activity tracking. I didn’t notice the slight increase in official smartphone battery life to 42 hours.

Next, we’ve got GPS battery life. Here’s how that’s described:

During workouts, with GPS (in all default settings), I am very consistently seeing about 5-6% a hour, with it usually ending up at 5%/hour than 6%/hour (Apple doesn’t report fractions of a %, thus I can’t be any more precise than that). This means that I’d be on-target for about 20 hours (if at 5%/hour), or 16.6 hours at 6%/hour. That’s overshooting very slightly the claim of 14 hours. It hasn’t matter what activity type, or the conditions, in terms of that battery burn. Be it cycling, running, openwater swimming, sailing, etc… all burned the same amount. The only scenario that seemed to burn a bit more was diving, for reasons that aren’t clear to me.

In fact, that’s how my battery life looked during my nearly 15 hour hike. It ended the 14hr marker at 12%, and then ended 14hr and 50mins at 6% (so basically 15 hours). Thus, the battery would have died somewhere at/around the 16 hour marker.

That said, if you need longer battery life than that, there’s still the lower-power GPS modes as well. I don’t tend to use those modes because I rarely need to go more than 14 hours, though frankly, there’s also little reason I couldn’t, since most of the limitations aren’t really things that tend to impact me.

Accuracy of GPS & Heart Rate:

I’ve done probably close to 60 workouts now on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and thus have kinda figured out the general trends here. So, I’ve somewhat picked the data sets that exemplify that best. On the whole, things continue to be good. Yet concurrently, there are little quirks, especially in heart rate tracking, that I’ve noticed in not just the Apple Watch Ultra 3, but the Ultra 2 as well over the past year or so. Something that I assume is an algorithm change they’ve made across the board.

In any case, let’s dive into it – pulling from data sets over the last 60 days, including some in just the last few days. I haven’t seen any differences (good or bad) during this time period.

First up, let’s look at a tempo run of sorts. This is compared to the Suunto Vertical 2 (optical HR), and then a chest strap connected to a Garmin Fenix 8 Pro. Here’s that data set:

As you can see, all three units decided to agree quite nicely here. Looking at the GPS track there, this was a relatively easy one, so I didn’t expect any problems:

And indeed, zooming in on a few intersections, I don’t see anything of meaningful difference here, with all of them in a 1-2m spread:

Thus, let’s move onto something a bit more challenging.

This time we’ve got a bit of a trail run – part interval workout, part hill workout. Starting off on the heart rate side:

You can see it starts off doing well here, but once I get past sending that satellite message in the middle, it struggles quite a bit more. Never quite spot-on.

It’s interesting, this is what I was referring to earlier on. When the heart rate lock is good, all is great (even on really hard interval workouts). But for reasons I can never quite pin down, sometimes it’s just like it gets lazy, and…the accuracy isn’t great.

For example, this interval workout (400m repeats), it’s basically spot-on, same one minor moment it entirely lost the plot. My guess is I adjusted it or something there for a second. But otherwise during the hard part, it’s spot-on. Yet, if you look at the warm-up, it wobbles inaccurately quite a bit.

The GPS side of that one is super easy too, so we’ll skip it (since it’s boring).

Instead, let’s increase the GPS complexity up in the mountains a bit. But first, the heart rate. As you can see, it did super well on this 2-hour road ride, including plenty of shifts in heart rate. Only a few minor moments to briefly be upset. Outdoor cycling continues to be one of the more challenging things for optical HR sensors, and this does super well.

Looking at the GPS tracks, this one included the Pixel Watch 4, though, that was a hot-mess while riding (as covered in my Pixel Watch 4 In-Depth Review). So, because it was messing up the track here so much, I removed it. But, you can still see it in the original data set here in the DCR Analyzer if you want to. In any case, as for the Apple Watch Ultra 3, it nailed these ascents and then fast-paced descents down switchback roads:

Zooming in, you can see these are great:

And that’d extend to other mountain activities, such as my 70KM hike, where it too showed as spot-on, even when against huge cliffs and other areas. Here’s the full data set:

In case you’re curious about the route (Strava here), there’s big sections of this route just getting to/from where I live near the ocean. But the core of it in the mountains is actually on the same trails as the Galatzo Trail ultra races, especially the 43KM one. That event is held each March (a very nice time/temp of the year to run here in Mallorca).

And then zooming into some sections, for example, alongside cliffs that go upwards nearly 1,000ft:

(Note: Above I removed the Fenix 8 Pro track when it had been effectively paused by a bug for a few mins, since it was just a straight-line. Likewise, below I removed the APEX 4 track when it too had some sort of export issue/bug, causing a straight line. This 15hr hike brought-out all the software bugs. Though, the Apple Watch3  had none).

Or this super tight switchback section, back and forth a gazillion times up a 20% grade:

Or this other section against mountains too:

I’ve done a gazillion indoor trainer rides, and other mostly boring runs, and for the indoor trainer rides, they were pretty much all spot-on (HR). And for the runs, they matched above where most of the times on HR they were fine, but every once in a while I’d see weird things. For GPS, it was great across the board.

Finally, looking at few openwater swims, I’m finally getting good results here. I’ve had a heck of a time the last year or so with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and open water swims. Like, darn-near impossible to get good swims. And in fact, one of my early Ultra 3 swims weren’t good. But then after that, it’s been good.

Here’s an example of one from earlier in September:

And another from a week or two ago:

Overall, GPS performance of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is solid, with heart rate performance generally being quite good, though I’d say it’s fallen slightly from it’s “industry leading” reliability that I found a few years earlier. Given the sensor itself has remained the same, my guess here is that they’ve made algorithm changes (for any number of reasons), that have decreased accuracy slightly. And again, this isn’t really specific to the Ultra 3. In wearing the Ultra 2 for the previous year, I saw much the same over near-daily workouts with it. Most of the time it was good, but sometimes it just had relatively unexplainable accuracy issues.

(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks, and plenty more. You can use it as well for your own gadget comparisons, more details here.)

Wrap-Up and Recommendations:

As I’ve said in the past, Apple’s general goal with their watches (as well as their phones) isn’t necessarily to sell you on a new watch every year. Instead, it’s to keep you in the ecosystem, knowing that you’ll come and upgrade your watch (and phone) every few years. They know that by delivering incremental updates to software each year (in WatchOS or iOS) and doing that for years on end, that you’ll become loyal to them and their products. They’re really good at doing this.

If you’ve got an Apple Watch Ultra 1 or Ultra 2, or any other Apple Watch made in the last 5ish years, then you’re getting virtually all of the software updates already, via WatchOS26. Instead, it’s about the incremental hardware updates. In this case that’s things like display updates, inclusion of 5G cellular, battery life tweaks, and so on. None of these, frankly, are reasons to upgrade from an Ultra 1 or Ultra 2. They just aren’t. Instead, the key reason to upgrade here is the satellite connectivity. And more so than the hardware side, but rather, that said satellite connectivity just works really darn well. Especially if you’re in the US/Canada/Mexico and can also text message over it. Now, there are other reasons to upgrade from an Ultra 1, like previous display and processor enhancements – but again, the big kicker here is satellite. And if you travel outside of cellular range frequently without a phone, even just briefly on trail runs/rides and such, this makes it an easy upgrade choice.

Still, there are areas Apple really needs to focus on if they want to draw more of that off-the-grid outdoors crowd, specifically, mapping/navigation. All things, and everything, navigation and mapping are severely lacking here. Even more so if you live outside the US, where Apple’s trail maps are essentially non-existent. And even in the US, the ability to create trail routes isn’t great, especially compared to even the most budget of sports watch options. While Apple has made good ground in many other sports aspects over the last few years, the divisions between product groups/teams clearly shows here (Maps is owned by a different team entirely).

Hopefully, we’ll see Apple improve in those areas in WatchOS27 next year, and then likewise, spend some time as they usually do, to continue to tweak WatchOS26 over the winter, specifically around Workout Buddy and incorrect data, along with some Sleep Score tweaks. Still, on the whole the WatchOS26 changes are solid, and more critically to me, the satellite communication components are just super well executed. They work, they work well, and they work fast.

With that – thanks for reading!