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, we don’t tend to see 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 chances 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, but by itself you probably wouldn’t notice. You might when comparing models 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 to see in all lighting conditions. In my case, I live on a super bright sunny island, thus, ensuring good visability 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, no pun intended. 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 its lowest daytime setting is like 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 activities, 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:
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, and automatic smart actions for messages. 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 it 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. Currently, 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 in 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 are 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 consideration of other factors, such as HRV, has both pros and cons. At a high level, I found that Apple seemed to be heavily biased 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 their 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 norm, I would be penalized. I see both sides of that. On one hand, the goal is to have healthier sleep habits, on the other hand, I got the sleep it wanted, so why complain about it?
But what was more problematic was that the sleep score occasionally 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. Why 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 company’s score. Scientists often get upset about wearable companies not having a scientifically validated standard for sleep scores, and thus sometimes claim them to be 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 can be customized. In addition to that, there are 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 are 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 that there are 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 structured 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 forms 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 athletic endeavors have a seasonal cycle to them, and this would let athletes understand that better.
In any case, switching topics briefly again, I would like 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 in 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 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 don’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 water’s edge, but I can’t actually do it. There is a proper trail around the coastline, but 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, the Komoot app was available 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 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 gives 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 emailing it to yourself, or saving it to the file system, and then manually importing it. 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 geek’s paradise, but it’s also just overwhelming for not just beginners but geeks alike. There are 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 the Apple Watch, it’s developed by a single person. 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*
– 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 nor your phone are able to find a 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 from ‘GEO’ satellites (geostationary satellites) used by watches from Google & Garmin, 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 cliffs below, you can simply wait a couple of 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 was sent within about 15-30 seconds in my test. And more interestingly, it also maintains the satellite connection for subsequent text messages. You’ll see that little green satellite icon in the upper portion of the screen, indicating that the connection is still live, despite my 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 keep in mind that 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 that you’ve talked with 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). However, sending to green bubble people (regular text messages), requires the phone to be on the grid somewhere. 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. Unfortunately, it does not automatically update and is only updated when you manually tap it. But it works quickly enough.
Lastly, you’ve got emergency SOS pieces. This requires no cellular plan to be activated, and merely requires you to 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 to 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.
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 the 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 who travel internationally. Specifically around carriers. In my case, I had my Apple Watch Ultra 3 activated under a Spanish carrier (Vodafone), 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 it 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/Vodafone 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 Vodafone. 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 Vodafone 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 who are traveling right now in 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% an hour, with it usually ending up at 5%/hour rather 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 mattered 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 on to 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, save one minor moment where 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 minutes, 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 15-hour hike brought out all the software bugs. Though, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 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 a few open water 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 wasn’t good. But then after that, it’s been good.
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 its “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!
Found This Post Useful? Support The Site!
Hopefully you found this review/post useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
If you're shopping for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot.
And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Shed Talkin' video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about!
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
Here in South Korea, there’s been a huge uproar over inaccurate distance measurements on the watch OS26.
Both the existing Apple Watch and the AWU3 are a mess.
At the JTBC Seoul Marathon, one of South Korea’s three major marathons, a horrific incident occurred where most Apple Watch & Ultra users measured distances as 43.3 km.
(The existing Garmin measured 42.4 km, while the new 570/970 measured 42.3 km.)
While previous versions had a short distance measurement issue, OS26 has now caused the distances to be measured excessively long.
GARMIN Korea and its dealerships are enjoying a boom as people, feeling their patience falter, are switching to GARMIN en masse.
Interesting. Apple had a long history of doing funny GPS things (so-called Mario Karting around corners and smoothing lines to make them look prettier), but I just haven’t seen that in the last few years. I suspect their push into more data-driven sports metrics probably helped to rectify a lot of that (you can’t have Running Efficiency metrics be correct when distance data is wonky).
But distance-wise, things have been really close for me. A run a few days ago, within 10 meters. And then if I look at my 70KM mountain trek, the Suunto & Apple were within 70m (on 70,000m), which is astonishing.
I’d have to dig into the South Korea bits to see what the cause is. As always, having distance overage is just the symptom, knowing whether it’s overshooting, or bad GPS/interference causing jagged lines (which increases distance/etc…).
The other challenge with marathons, to be honest, is that most people don’t run 42.195KM. They run considerably more, due to swerving, and not running the actual measured race line. The official measured race line will be precisely 42.195KM, but that line is impossible to run in a big city race, or frankly, with anyone else on the course. For big city races, people will run considerably more, and I’d argue if you run 42.3KM in a big city marathon…then the course was probably short. ;)
Actually the real distance might be longer, even when running the measured race line exactly.
In “THE MEASUREMENT OF
ROAD RACE COURSES Road Running & Race Walking” by World Athletics, it is written:
“For measurement, the “Calibrated Bicycle Method” shall be used.
To prevent a course from being found to be shorter than the official race distance on future re-measurement, it is recommended that a “short course prevention factor” be built in when laying out the course. For bicycle measurements this factor should be 0.1% which means that each km on the course will have a “measured length” of 1001m.”
This means that a marathon race is more likely approximately 42,237 meters from start to finish.
Even if you run on an IAAF-approved course, the average distance is around 42.4km (Garmin).
The 970 case I used as an example involved a 2:20 runner who ran for 3:30 using a pacemaker and not using water stations (he carried his own water bottle to avoid confusing the group following him).
Yesterday, at a half marathon along a river (a perfectly flat course with no buildings or trees),
most Garmins measured 21.10-21.12km,
but the Apple Watch Ultras showed a noticeable range of 21.48-21.50km.
This is not an acceptable error.
The course was in open-sky conditions with perfect GPS reception, and all Korean marathoners always use the multiband option. The GPS reception that day was so excellent that it accurately indicated which lane I was driving on.
For example, I was running close to the median strip of an eight-lane road to avoid the strong winds, and the GPS line accurately depicted my line with an error of less than 1 meter (actually, it seems to be less than 30 centimeters).
This issue is a software issue.
Previous Watch OS versions overwhelmingly reported short distances,
but with Watch OS 26, the distances are now excessively long.
People are tired of the distances constantly changing like rubber bands with every update.
Koreans are impatient. Most people are impatient and tend to do everything quickly, quickly, and even faster.
Garmin Korea was happy about this issue (they have ample inventory of models like the 265, 965, and 970).
Coros Korea is constantly running low on inventory, so it’s sold out (again, Koreans don’t wait).
Any GPS can have a bad day. When a product is as widely adopted as Apple Watch, the handful of people who had bad luck (or who didn’t run the shortest course in a race) can easily find each other online, which makes it seem like there’s a widespread problem, when there isn’t.
The fact that this is only an issue in Korea is a dead giveaway. There is no plausible reason that the watch would perform worse in Korea than in other places, and it’s nonsense to suggest that Koreans are uniquely demanding consumers, while the rest of the world is willing to accept shoddy performance. The rest of the world has historically been very critical of GPS devices with poor accuracy, yet people everywhere else are consistently reporting that the Apple Watch Ultra is the most accurate GPS watch you can buy, about tied with or even a bit better than Garmin, and definitely better than Coros. It’s far more likely that the IDEA that the Apple Watch has poor GPS performance has spread within a particular community.
I’m also pretty skeptical of complaints about GPS performance that are based purely on supposedly inaccurate distances. The main way you know you have an inaccurate GPS performance is by looking at the track. If it’s zigging, zagging, and cutting corners, you have an issue (anyone remember the Forerunner 620?). The Apple Watch never shows those kinds of tracks. It shows people not just on the correct side of the street, but even on the correct side of the sidewalk. It does so even in Midtown Manhattan, where just a few years ago, no GPS stood a chance. It accurately shows where I did cut corners, and it shows neat right angles where I didn’t.
FWIW, I just ran a marathon with AWU3, and the recorded distance was 26.38 miles. Every other marathon I’ve raced has been with a flagship Garmin watch, and the total distances ranged from 26.30 (Cal International, which has only a few turns and no tall buildings) to 26.7 (NYCM), but most are pretty close to 26.4.
This is super interesting. Was just doing the NY marathon and the pacing was significantly off (which lead me to run too slow, 3 minutes off already at halfway point). The total recorded distance was 26.48 miles / 42.62 km. Does not seem to be too off from a total distance perspective but the pacing was definitely off (I displayed current pace, 0.25mi average and 1mi average). I read that you have to “calibrate” the watch for pedometer use. Also used Workoutdoors which might have an impact, i do not know. In terms of distance, I also noticed a difference at home (previously had the AW Series 6) and the AWU 3 reports a shorter distance.
The overwhelming majority of people in the Korean marathon community are complaining,
and sharing their logs with each other.
The problem isn’t the Apple Watch, but Watch OS 26 (including 26.1).
link to youtu.be
This YouTuber used a construction site distance measuring roller to mark kilometers on his riverside course, and tested the 970 with both a walk and a run (970 vs. AW3).
For the first kilometer, without any shaded areas, the 970 was perfectly accurate, while the AW3 was short. The problem is that while the 970 consistently measured distances (even with very small errors),
the AW3 fluctuated between long and short distances at each kilometer mark, as if it couldn’t find its zero point.
Honestly, one of the reasons (not only) I’m ditching the Whoop and coming back to Apple is the Sleep scores and recovery metrics.
You say Apple penalizes you for going to bed early… damn, that’s a lot worse on Whoop! I could easily go to bed 30 minutes earlier than the “optimum go to bed hour” and wake up 5 minutes later than the “optimum for waking up” and still achieve a mere 60% in Consistency, which would lead to a low sleep score. Frustrating.
Apple, for instance, while it’s true that you can deduct points for going to bed early (similar to Whoop, I’m not familiar with others), the impact on the global score appears to be lower. And it’s okay to consider this metric due to the influence of circadian rhythms, but perhaps not to that extent (non-professional opinion, I must say; just my opinion as a user).
Yeah, at this point Apple isn’t really doing ‘analysis’ per se like Whoop (or Garmin, or Fitbit, or really anyone else). Instead, it’s more of a factual ‘here’s what you did’.
In this case, despite my disagreements with it in certain areas, their sleep score is indeed simple to calculate/understand/process. But it’s not doing an analysis of other factors. It’s just the three bits: How long, when, and how many times were you interrupted.
My issue here with the guidance on being docked for going to bed early when you’re tired, is that it’s just not logical. Especially when we’re talking 11PM vs 2:30AM. I can’t imagine any sleep doctor saying “Please stay up till 2:30AM and then ensure you get less sleep tonight”.
Again, not saying their competitors are holistically any better, but ultimately, Apple put their cards in the ‘simplicity’ camp.
Completely agree. My point is (sorry for my English) at the beginning the deeper analysis of whoop (for example, and only after they started not giving all the importance to HRV) and different not so obvious impacts (I mean is there anyone who thinks drinking 4 cocktails woozy have any impact?), it could start being counterproductive.
Do you decide your training depending on your score? If you have 30% recovery do you stop going running? In my case the answer is no. And at that point the nights you do everything right (not drinking going to bed early clean eating…) and you get a yellow, it could drive you mad.
A simpler approach that still influences you enough to try to “be healthier” but does not frustrate so much could, at a certain point, be better.
Does that make sense? I swear I can explain it better in Spanish jejejje
Completely agree. My point is (sorry for my English) at the beginning the deeper analysis of whoop (for example, and only after they started not giving all the importance to HRV, intermittent fasting or some daily habits) could show you different not so obvious impacts (I mean is there anyone who thinks drinking 4 cocktails won’t have any impact?), it could start being counterproductive.
Do you decide your training depending on your score? If you have 30% recovery do you stop going for a run? In my case the answer is no. And at that point the nights you do everything right (like not drinking going to bed early clean eating…) and you still get a yellow, it could be frustrating
MAYBE a simpler approach that still influences you enough to try to “be healthier” but does not frustrate so much, at a certain point, could be better.
Does that make sense? I swear I can explain it better in Spanish jejejje
PS. I hate the “consistency” score in Whoop. Never got over 80% NAILING THE DAMN HOURS THEY SUGGEST.
Charging: my Ultra 3 charges much faster than my Ultra 1 did. I’m using the cable that came with the Ultra 3. I charge it every day, and it usually takes only a half hour to charge from the 50% that I usually have in the morning to the 80% where it usually wants to stop. (Occasionally it’ll decide to charge to 100%, which of course takes longer).
SpO2: Vitals doesn’t show SpO2 here (Pennsylvania, US). It still takes it and you can dig the numbers out if you want, but it doesn’t show in Vitals. There’s still a slot for it, but nothing is shown. Consequence of the lawsuit, I guess.
Sleep: As a 71 year old male, I usually have 2-3 “interruptions” (and not the fun kind) per night. That drags down my sleep score. I don’t think my Ultra 3 has recorded a single nap, which, because I’m a 71 year old male, usually amounts to conking out for 15 minutes occasionally. I think the only nap I ever got recorded on an Apple Watch was in the 30-45 minute range.
Sounds like you don’t know Europe at all, my friend…
Fall in Sweden for example or Northern Germany (where I live) is quite colorful and heartwarming.
And, given that you were merely jesting about food, comparing a plasticity McRib or something similar to the diverse cuisines of all our different countries or even regions is almost blasphemous! :-)
Another thorough review! On Apple’s website they mention the requirements for FindMy over satellite – link to support.apple.com and what I find most interesting is this – “Remember that while off-grid, satellite features aren’t available on Apple Watch Ultra 3 if your iPhone is nearby and in Airplane Mode”. This makes no sense, if I am in the woods with no coverage I probably have my iphone on Airplane mode to preserve some battery. Is turing bluetooth off on your watch/iphone a workaround for this? (assuming then it is not ‘nearby’ anymore from the watch’s perspective)
I agree, it’s annoying. I noticed that as well this weekend (the tidbit at the bottom). Especially since I often do the same thing if I’m trekking somewhere I know is simply out of cell range, I just go into airplane mode. In fact, sometimes I just do it on my longer trips merely to enjoy a bit of quiet.
I’ll test if turning off BT will work on my next run, perhaps sometimes knows off-hand that drives through a no-cell zone.
As noted above, I think some of these scenarios need to be thought through a bit better. The travelling scenario that I outlined above is a good example. When I was in the US, the fact that the only way to get it to work was to enable the disabled Spanish SIM’s, merely to find nothing, makes no sense. I can totally understand the product design logic that got them to that place, but they need to throw that out and step back and look at it from a “Someone is in the middle of the mountains and can’t search Google to figure out why it’s not working” standpoint.
While I’ll cover all sorts of quirks about Garmin’s satellite connectivity in my Fenix 8 Pro review this week (trust me, there are lots of quirks in this area), the one thing I do appreciate is user control over it. The ability to say “Yes, I want to send a satellite message now, cellular be darned”. And/or the ability to control whether LTE is enabled/disabled, satellite is enabled/disabled, BT is enabled/disable, etc… and have the watch simply do what you want it to.
Indeed, the number of gotchas is crazy for a feature one is likely to use in an emergency situation. I was planning to get this at a good price from KPN (hi fellow ex-countryman) at 720Eur, with the cellular cancellable after a month.
But given all the conditions, its likely better to put that money on a cheperish garmin and get an inreach instead.
I wonder why they have this restriction in place, likely they want to rely on the iPhone’s satellite/cellular connectivity before using the watch. But then again, from a real life perspective – if someone is hiking in the mountains under pouring rain, their phone is likely in a ziplock bag deep in the rugsack. Time and again I feel Apple has some great features in mind (and the hardware to support it) but they are just not doing the beta testers part, or ignoring thier feedback. Kind of like Amazfit if I think about it.
Waiting to see the fenix review. Also became a supporter :)
Thanks Ray!
So, to be super specific on the configuration first, my iPhone was configured with:
A) My Main Spanish Vodaphone EU eSIM (same plan as my phone), which is extended to my watch
B) A random US eSIM I got upon landing (not Vodaphone, just random one), which cannot be extended to the watch.
Upon landing in the US, I disabled my Spanish eSIM, and enabled my US temporary eSIM. Fast forward to out in the desert, and it won’t actually do any texting or such over cellular. Gave some error message, but did show the grey icon indicating it’d be in satellite realms now (so SOS would work, since that doesn’t require any carrier plan).
It wasn’t until I re-enabled my Spanish eSIM in the middle of the desert (my phone was with me), and then let it determine than yes, I was indeed beyond cellular, that it finally started to allow me to use satellite communications. It wouldn’t do so on the US eSIM that I had left enabled.
My assumption here, putting those puzzle pieces together with the quirky reuqirement for a carrier plan to text/FindMy updates, is that Apple is probably offloading the cost back to the originating carrier. It’s probably a trivial amount, but is likely baked into Apple’s business model here. After all, a trivial amount per-user for Apple starts to really add up with a gazillion watches (for texting and FindMy updates). So, they pass that probably trivial amount to the carrier, and the carrier is happy because it increases sign-ups (after all, I signed up specifically to get this feature working, otherwise I don’t bother having a seperate cellular plan on my watches).
Finally, of note, there are no temporary eSIM entities I’m aware of that can assign to a watch (like you can for a phone). I tried, I talked with Apple a bunch about this, and no luck. Heck, even some of my other plans that I have (I have both a US plan and a Dutch phone plan) have quirky things. Like, I couldn’t activate my new watch onto my KPN Dutch plan, unless I was physically in the Netherlands. Given how much darn time it took to get my Spanish SIM working, I probaly should have just flown back to Amsterdam for an hour to do that…
Apple should have made the case smaller instead of the display bigger.
And at the same time, they should have come up with a new and, this time, attractive Ultra design;)
I wore the Ultra 3 on my wrist for a few days:
– The edge of the display is too sharp for my liking. It feels cheap. (Apple now seems to be using a printing process for the case.)
– Too thick
– Too heavy
– The price/performance ratio isn’t right for me
Too similar to my Apple Watch 10.
Apple’s sleep score isn’t well balanced. Sorry, but with just over 4 hours of sleep, I got a score that was far too good. Garmin is better at this.
The biggest weakness is and remains watchOS, which the Ultra can’t hide.
One thing that may be relevant about satellite communications for some users: You cannot send a satellite message to another phone/watch that is also outside of cell range. It can go sat-to-cell or cell-to-sat, but not sat to sat. You still need an inReach or something for communicating with other people who are off grid. (Like every watch feature, this is one of those “why would anyone need to do that?” issues for probably 99% of users, and possibly a reason not to buy the watch for 1%.)
Also, coming from Garmin, I’m definitely seeing some strange behind the scenes stuff with the software treatment of GPS data. The tracks look perfect when I upload, but instant and current-lap pace are very weird. When I take a manual lap, it always shows that the lap was at a significantly faster pace than what my current lap pace was displayed as just before I tapped to take the lap. Maybe it figures it should err on the side of showing too slow so that people never miss their targets? And when I take a new lap, it shoes my current pace as VERY slow for the first 30-60 seconds, even if I was just cruising along at a constant pace. Like, I’ll be running six-minute per mile, take a lap, and then it will show my current lap pace as 7:30/mile, slowly working its way back down to 6 over the next minute. Not a huge deal, but I had gotten used to how good Garmin had gotten at showing instant and current lap pace over the last few watches, with a really good mix of responsiveness and stability.
That is actually quite annoying. Imagine you are off grid with other people and want to go somewhere or take a different path or something. Your plan is to meet them somewhere. It would be great if you have some sort of communication for this. Blocking SAT to SAT communication is a big problem for this. When off grid you will actually need much more to communicate with people among your group than with people at home.
Are we 100% sure about this? This is honestly the first I’ve heard of it, and unless I’ve missed it, I don’t see it listed in the very long list of requirements: link to support.apple.com
The only reason I ask, is there is a slightly different requirement, that I’m wondering if it’s getting mixed up, which is that you have to have texted a person within the past 30 days, in order to text them while off-grid. This is apparently due to the encryption side having a 30-day lifespan or something.
I can certainly follow-up with Apple on this, but if there’s something I can point to, that’d be great.
So I’ve tried to use it off-grid, and I’ve never been able to get it to work with someone else who also is. I did a bit of poking around the web to confirm that it was an issue, but I don’t recall where I read it. My understanding is that Apple’s servers can only send a message to a phone via satellite when there is an active satellite connection, i.e., the off-grid individual has to initiate the conversation.
The same seems to be true even when the other party is on-grid. I’ve experimented, and it seems that you cannot receive ANY satellite messages outside of the context of a conversation that the off-grid party starts.
I’d love it if I’m just doing something wrong. It’s probably not a dealbreaker for most, though it should be clearly explained.
For me, it doesn’t really matter. If I have emergency rescue available and I can initiate conversations, that’s the main thing. GMRS radio is plenty for most backcountry or overlanding with large groups, where you may be separated, but only by a few miles at most. The only time I’ve ever really wanted P2P satellite communication was during the Hood to Coast relay.
Hi JR. I’ve confirmed with Apple this should work just fine, between two iMessage (blue bubble) folks as long as they’ve chatted at some point in the last 30 days, they can both be fully satellite-based with the Watch, and it should text back and forth.
Sadly being in Europe, I don’t have a way to test this myself right now. Remember per above that if either person has put their phone into airplane mode, that breaks it.
The Ultra just feels so big and heavy on my wrist compared to a Series watch. For my use case as a road runner the Series watch would be perfect if only apple would make it easy for me to create laps and start/stop a workout and make it easy to customize my screen. I use it for a lot of runs despite these because if i am just running and not doing a hard workout it’s fine. But when I need to do a structured workout I pull out the Garmin.
I would try Bevel as well. It also comes with a Garmin Connect integration which makes it even more interesting for me. I am still using a combination of AWU and a Fenix..
Thanks Ray. By chance did you test out the feature to use your phone as a “mirrored” head unit of sorts with the Ultra? I like to do that for casual rides and commuting, rather than bringing a dedicated gps unit. For some reason for the last little while (2-3 months or so) neither myself (AW10) nor my wife (SE) have been able to get it to work.
The weakness of Garmin’s sleep scoring is that it doesn’t always know exactly what to do with your HRV and RHR data. If your HRV is garbage because you had 3 martinis, Garmin will give you a well deserved bad score. Apple will still tell you that your score was excellent, even if you went to bed late, slept badly, and woke with a hangover…so long as you stayed in bed for 8 hours. On the other hand, if your HRV is high because you just ran a marathon, Garmin will give you a bad score, even if you actually got a great night’s sleep, and the HRV simply reflects your underlying fatigue.
At present, I think that there are two concrete ways for sleep tracking to truly benefit people. (1) It has convinced a lot of athletes to drink a lot less. I’ve spoken to many professional athletes who have drastically reduced how much they drink, mainly because they were wearing Garmins to bed and they saw what happened to their hearts overnight. (2) Tracking makes it easier to keep yourself accountable with regard to how much sleep you’re actually getting. Even though people obviously know what time they go to bed and what time they get up, they’re amazingly good at tricking themselves, especially with regard to what their “typical” behavior is. Research has shown that people consistently overreport how much sleep they get. But if your watch tells you you’ve been averaging 7.1 hrs, and your goal for a training cycle was to average 8.3, you know you have to do better.
I think right now Garmin’s approach is better because it gives you both benefits. It may be “wrong,” sometimes, but it’s doing the job of getting people to drink less and sleep more. Apple is only getting people to sleep more.
I got a quick question about the battery burn you mentioned with 3rd-party apps, specifically Workoutdoors. Is that 2x battery burn trend vs the native fitness app you noticed only when the map screen is shown or just in general? My major use case is primarily hiking and other similar activities where I have a route loaded, but only switch to the map when needed, preferring to have a stat screen shown the other 90% of the time. I’d imagine the staying off the map screen would increase battery life slightly due to not having to constantly redraw the map.
With WorkOutDoors, in this case, it’s using the map screen primarily, thus, it does burn more battery.
The developer reached out and noted that if you use other data pages, it’s basically a wash to the native app. But did agree that if you used the map screen more, then battery goes up quite a bit. I’d have to do more testing on the non-map screens. But for me, sorta the main jam here is the mapping/navigation.
Many thanks for mentioning WorkOutDoors in your review. I really appreciate that.
I just want to clarify that battery usage is barely affected by whether the map or data screens are shown. Instead it is how often you look at the watch that makes the difference, and that is the case with every app. The extra brightness required when you look at the screen uses a lot of power.
The ‘problem’ with WorkOutDoors is that it can show a lot of information and so users generally look at the screen more frequently. This is especially true when navigating and/or when using it for the first time (or when doing a very thorough review of the watch!).
If a user looked at the screen as often when using Apple’s native Workout app then it would use about the same amount of power.
As mentioned in the review using Low Power mode will save a lot of power without any compromises to accuracy. And for even longer battery life you can disable Wake on Raise in the watchOS settings. This means that the screen needs to be tapped to see it (which can be awkward) but it makes the battery last even longer.
Props for mentioning the WorkOutDoors app. I have been using it since like forever 😉. Don’t care for its latest upgrade that added the turn by turn navigation and climbing feature – just annoying and turn all that stuff off. What remains is solid maps that you can predownload and ease of importing GPX files from trailforks (I do it on my iPhone in like 5 minutes) and the app is stable. Unlike the POS that trailforks released.
I wish the developer would make direct export to trailforks possible so I could get around that stupid Strava thing that makes all my activities private on trailforks. And MTB bike park mode. If that ever happens that will be a winner in my book.
I bit the bullet and moved over from a fenix 6, the new Canadian prices for the 8 series are just wild. I’m trying to “keep stock” and make notes on what I miss. It sounds like WorkOutdoors will fix one big void I have when in the park for a hike/walk without formal trail imports from all trails or similar.
The biggest annoyance I haven’t been able to solve for is on sleep tracking. Sometimes it will “start” my sleep at 8 when I’m putting kids to bed, then show 2 hours of awake time before I fall alseep again. On the garmin I would just edit the start time to 10:30 or whenever but it doesn’t seem like health or the watch can do that.
Also the way it/health calculates resting heart rate vs garmin is different so it totally messed up my years worth of stats (it will be fine eventually, but annoying)
Isn’t Garmin’s algorithm for resting hr controversial, as it takes the average of the lowest 30-minute period over 24 hours, whether or not you’re asleep?
(I say this as someone who’s still in the Garmin ecosystem)
I mean, Garmin may have it reasons for preferring “sleeping resting hr” over “awake resting hr”, but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right?
Because of this, I tend to look at the trends for Garmin resting HR, rather than taking the absolute number seriously. (Actually, I do the same thing for a lot of Garmin metrics)
Like, I enjoy seeing my Garmin resting HR go down, but when I set my HR zones based on heart rate reserve (which takes resting HR into account), I use a slightly higher manually entered value for resting HR.
> I mean, Garmin may have it reasons for preferring “sleeping resting hr” over “awake resting hr”, but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right?
I should probably rephrase this:
“Garmin may have its reasons for measuring resting hr all the time – whether you’re asleep or awake – but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right”
Not to state the obvious, but by not excluding periods of sleep, Garmin is probably measuring a lower resting HR than any accepted method which excludes periods of sleep.
I don’t know the precise time window of resting HR (something I’ve talked about a lot, as there’s somewhat surprisingly no actual medically agreed upon definition of what resting HR is/how to measure*), but given Garmin actually has two resting HR values in the app:
1) “resting HR”
2) “avg overnight heart rate”
But indeed ‘resting hr’ does seem to be the lowest of the two, however it’s measured.
*Specifically, what time window, when, and for how long. Do you measure the lowest 1-second HR value? The lowest 5-second HR value? 30-second value? Including or not including sleep? Most agree it’s not including sleep, but again, there’s literally not a single medical definition out there agreed upon by any organization. It’s sorta silly.
I was referring to Garmin’s own support article which claims that “resting HR” (e.g. “RHR” in the HR glance and “Resting” in the Connect Heart Rate page) is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.:
“Resting Heart Rate: This value is for the current day. Daily RHR is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.”
So I don’t think how *Garmin* measures resting HR is up for debate, unless this current algorithm is different than what they’ve done in the past, or unless it’s changed since that support article was last updated. I agree that there’s no medically agreed upon definition of resting HR, but most definitions seems to exclude sleep, as you and I both seem to agree on.
“My point is that if most people define resting HR as excluding sleep, and Garmin measures resting HR even when you are asleep, then as long as you wear your Garmin while you are asleep, Garmin’s measure of resting HR will *probably* be lower than values produced by any of the ‘commonly accepted methods of measurement’”
To circle back to the original comment I was replying to, my larger point is that Apple’s method of measuring resting HR may be different than Garmin’s, but since Apple (now) excludes sleep (from what I’ve heard), it might be the case that Apple’s resting HR is “more correct” (or at least more in line with commonly accepted definitions/measurements of resting HR).
For example, some websites suggest measuring resting HR by taking your pulse for 60 seconds right after you wake up. I think it seems likely that this type of measurement would produce a higher resting HR than any measurement Garmin would take while you are asleep.
TL;DR Garmin’s resting HR measurement is probably “too low”, compared to measurements produced by other commonly accepted methods of measurements. Even if you get your resting HR measured by a doctor, typically they do that while you are awake.
Even though all the various methods of measuring/defining resting HR may be different from each other, and may even produce different results, it seems clear that any method which chooses to include periods of sleep for measurement will produces results that are significantly lower than methods which excludes periods of sleep.
“given Garmin actually has two resting HR values in the app:
1) “resting HR”
2) “avg overnight heart rate””
Believe me, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I don’t see “avg overnight heart rate” in the Connect app or Connect website. (Either way, it’s not relevant to my point about *resting heart rate*)
What I do see…
…in the Connect app:
– Heart Rate > 1d: Resting, High
– Heart Rate > 7d: Avg Resting (over 7d, I assume), Avg High (over 7d, I assume(
– Heart Rate > 4w: Avg Resting, Avg High
– Heart Rate > 1y: Avg Resting, Avg High
…in the Connect website: same thing as the app, except the 7d avg resting HR is also listed on the 1d page.
I also disagree that “avg overnight heart rate” would or could be *generally* interpreted as a type of “resting HR”. but that’s just me.
– people aren’t necessarily asleep all night or even at any part of the night
– even if you changed that concept to “sleeping HR”, I still wouldn’t see it the same as “resting HR”. Although to me, “sleeping HR” would be a lot closer to “resting HR” than “overnight HR”
Maybe it’s just me as I’m a night owl and I’ve gone on runs after midnight. I’ve also pulled all nighters at work, getting 1 hour of sleep in a 48 hour period (for example).
It’s listed on the per-night Sleep page (scroll down to all the data, see attached).
But yes, if Garmin is saying that resting HR is including sleep in their docs, then it undoubtedly is at this point (I had discussions with them years ago about it and lack of clarity, looks like they finally documented it at some point).
That said, yes, I agree that if Garmin is including sleep data in RHR values, then the general definition most would agree to is awake. That said, equally, I just don’t think it matters a ton what anyt company does here in terms of the end-state being whether or not your trending higher or lower.
Just wish Apple would use more of the screen and give us the option to use fewer metrics with bigger font for workouts – like Garmin does. Garmin run interface is SO much easier to read at a glance than squinting to see the right line for Apple Watch run metrics.
Awesome review as always! Would love your thoughts on future expanding satellite coverage with AWU3 vs F8Pro. My understanding is since the AWU3 uses the low orbit satellites, the coverage would be nearly the same as the inReach devices – regulatory items aside (like you pointed out), I’m assuming the watch has the hardware to eventually achieve a pretty wide global coverage if the red tape is cut (I might be wrong on this).
Conversely, since the F8Pro is going off the high earth orbit, the coverage seems a little more limited (just going off the Garmin-provided map). Do you see this coverage expanding while keeping the same satellite hardware? Or do you think future Fenix devices will switch to the lower earth orbit chips like the inReach does?
Already went out and did it side-by-side (including Google Pixel too) showing different scenarios in different spots, and working through just pulling together everything into a single cohesive post/video.
It’ll cover regional differences (e.g. US vs Europe vs elsewhere), tech differences, how the underlying chips work, etc… One of my good friends works in the NTN business, so lots of interesting tidbits there.
Thanks! What’s still definitely holding me back from buying an Apple Watch is the (poor) battery life—I don’t want to have to constantly remember to charge it after 1-2 days. I would have liked to see the battery life of the Venu X1 in comparison during navigation activity…
I did a stupid amount of Venu X1 testing of long activities over the summer (e.g. 8hr hikes). I basically ended the battery at zero each time (with navigation, lowest brightness setting, and AOD on).
I haven’t done any long treks since, but given Garmin/I have talked extensively about my battery concerns there, and nobody looped back, my assumption is no change. That said, I will eventually finish that review, so will re-test it on a 2-3hr something, just to validate. link to analyze.dcrainmaker.com
Thanks, Ray. 12%/hr??? OMG- seem that every Apple watch is better! ” We have the thinnest…” , sounds like “we have micro LED first”… Btw: I am really curios about your final thoughts about the F8 pro microLED…
Yeah, it’s not ideal. The next day was slightly better, on track for about 10-11hrs, but I was specifically using it less because I knew the trails quite well. Either way, in both cases I was almos always on the data/ClimbPro screens, so nothing like the map screens the full time.
Ultimately, I think Garmin sees the tradeoff there on size as a feature. Obviously, a this point the market has disagreed (hence Garmin’s massive price drops, starting barely a month after announcement). It’s too bad, I actually like the watch, but really think it needs a few tweaks:
1) Just more buttons
2) Lower display brightness options
3) Did I mention more buttons?
Seriously, I hope they don’t give up on that form factor, but just make tweaks to make it compelling for the Forerunner/Fenix users that the watch pulls most from.
I’m following the developments in the sports-tech space with great interest and really appreciate all the insights from Ray and this awesome community — all while still wearing my well aged Forerunner 920 every single day 🙂
I’ve been a Garmin user for a long time (Edge & Fenix). Now the Epix is reaching the upgrade moment and the decisions is between a Fenix 8 or the Ultra 3.
I do structured training usually, get workouts from my coach on Training Peaks, also use TrainerRoad regularly. Before getting the Epix a few years ago I did try the Apple Watch, but they were nowhere near Garmin at that moment.
Any thoughts from who has tried both or made a recent transition?
That’s an easy choice, you choose the Fenix 8. I have an AW Ultra 3 (on my wrist at the moment), an Epix 2 and an Edge 1040. The short version is that the Apple Watch (any AW, I’ve been using them since the original) is not a sports watch, as you can see above. The Fenix 8 will be much, much better for that. On the other hand, if you want a smart watch, the AW is the absolute best one for an iPhone user. My Ultra is on my wrist almost all the time, but if I’m going to go hiking or cross country skiing, I use the Epix.
I currently AW 9 wifi and Garmin Fenix 7xpro
I’m using both, every day.
I’m evaluating AWU 3 instead of AW9.
To avoid to have both device at the same time (also outside workout) and in order to maintain the same garmin metrics , I’m evaluating to buy a garmin vivosmart 5 (i know, but for me could be better to have a garmin device like polar loop but is not possible :)) and use the Fenix 7 only during wo.
What do you think about this?
Because I don’t want to renounce to olg garmin and new Apple (healt) metrics (consider that there are other that garmin doesn’t have)
Mam oba zegarki. Z Fenixem 8 Pro biegam według planu Connect+, a w AWU 3 mam TAO. Raz biegnę według Connect, raz według TAO i patrzę, jak oba systemy reagują. :) Zadziwia mnie jedno: Fenix w stosunku do AWU zawsze pokazuje, że przebiegłem nieco krótszą trasę w słabszym tempie…
Po ostatniej aktualizacji beta AWU 3 znacznie poprawił zużycie energii. W sumie łąduję go raz na trzy dni! Kiedy biegam, słucham z niego muzyki i czasem rozmawiam. Podczas godzinnego treningu bateria spada wówczas o około 12 proc. W Feniksie spadek ten jest o połowę mniejszy.
Fenixa 8 Pro ładuję średnio raz na 16-17 dni, lecz gdy biegam z nim, zawsze mam ze sobą telefon.
Powiem tak: nie ma aplikacji na AWU, która jest w stanie dorównać Connect+. Jeśli biegasz wykorzystując trening strukturalny, możesz próbować Athletica.ai i TAO (TrainAsOne). TAO jest świetny, niestety w ogóle nie przejmuje się fizjologią biegacza: nie bierze pod uwagę ani HRV, ani snu. Twórca programu na moje pytanie odpowiedział… że sam nie wie, jak TAO ustala treningi. Serio!!! Uczy sie maszynowo. Im więcej o Tobie wie, tym ma być dokładniejsze. I niby tak jest. Biegałem z nim od kwietnia do lipca, pobijając wszystkie swoje rekordy – na 5 i 10 km oraz w teście Coopera. Później jednak coś się posypał i chciał ze mnie zrobić Kipchoge :) Connect+ świetnie za to reaguje na zmęczenie. Potrafi z dnia na dzień przebudować najbliższe treningi.
Ciężko mi zdecydować, który zegarek jest lepszy. AWU 3 denerwuje mnie lekceważeniem mojego kraju, Polski. Nie działa tu żadne połączenie satelitarne (nawet SOS) i nie ma polskiego tłumaczenia Siri, a więc mam okrojone informacje głosowe w czasie treningu. Płacę za zegarek tyle samo, co Amerykanin. Draństwo i lekceważenie, którego nie cierpię!
Dziękuję za świetny test. Jak zwykle zresztą. :)
Ray, zauważyłem coś dziwnego. Biegam mając na jednej ręce AWU 3 a na drugiej Fenixa 8 Pro/ ZAWSZE AWU pokazuje, że przebiegłem trasę dłuższa i do tego szybciej. Różnica wynosi na 10 km nawet 300 metrów, a tempo różni się o 10-15 sekund. O co tu chodzi? Który zegarek jest dokładniejszy?
Hi Ray, thx for the review. I currently have a Garmin Fenix 7S Pro.
I was considering the AWU3 but I have a very specific reason why I bought the Garmin and would like your opinion. Besides gym and some runs, I do occasional trekkings outdoors in Portugal, Spain and whatever else. These can last 10, 12, 14 hours and I use the Garmin Navigation app with their offline maps and trails downloaded from Wikiloc.
To put a trail in the watch is a 1 minute simple process. I understand from your review that some apps can’t synchronize with Workoutdoors, which is a bummer for me. Did you try Wikiloc on Apple Watch? Does it work well or not?
Before the Garmin I used Wikiloc on the phone with offline maps but it was sometimes very time demanding on the trail without mobile coverage to see alternative routes and good directions.
Thx!
Tell me why Apple built this watch? The Ultra 2 was already perfect, with enough battery life to last an Ironman easily (without battery saver, still had 42% after 11 hrs, both times), brighter screen than the Fenix 8 AMOLED, not a single glitch or oversight, unlike the Fenix which underperforms on every software design metric – despite costing me twice the price, and the Apple not even marketing itself as a fitness watch.
Shocking. If the Fenix 8 software was built into the Apple Watch, everyone would complain that Apple hasn’t done their job correctly. Instead, the Apple Watch is well thought out, and functions perfectly. And they improved it? ( yeah, maybe the GPS is 0.1% out, and if you need a watch to tell you how to sleep, but if these are your issues, you probably need more than a watch to help you out…)
Good on you Apple, for delivering the goods, truly outperforming the market. Not a bad gig for a boring laptop firm, smashing the fitness watch market.
Lol. I switched from Garmin to Apple (mostly for the connectivity bits), and I’m happy with my choice, but as a sports watch, the Ultra is inferior to even the most basic Garmins. Fortunately, most of the differences don’t matter all that much me, but they’re absolutely real.
Workoutdoors closes the gap considerably (without it, AWU just wouldn’t even be in the conversation), but AWU is still limited by its hardware. A lack of physical buttons is a serious problem, requiring simultaneous pressing of multiple buttons in order to replicate the basic functions of a 1990s Timex Ironman. It’s very easy to miss a split. If I were still more of a track runner, regularly taking 200 meter and 400 meter splits, there’s no way I’d use the AWU. The battery life is also quite poor by the standards of modern runnign watches. It’s insufficient for all but the fastest ultrarunners, notwithstanding the “ultra”moniker. I can use it for a 100k, but most wouldn’t, and a 100 miler isn’t feasible without mid-race recharging. And even if most people don’t race 100 milers, lots of people do long days of hiking, skiing, and paddling, where it’s easy to approach the AWU’s limits. Most people also don’t want to be finishing an activity with 10-15% battery left; they want enough to know there’s zero risk.
And AWU is WAY behind Garmin in terms of recovery and health monitoring. Personally, I don’t much care about the First Beat stuff, but it’s important to a lot of runners, and Apple just doesn’t have anything remotely like it. A Garmin can do everything a Whoop can do, yet tons of Apple Watch users have a Whoop on the other wrist. Admittedly, these aren’t hardware limitations–Apple’s HRM is good enough to produce the raw data for all of these advanced metrics–but these aren’t the kind of software fixes that a single developer like the WorkOutDoors guy can address. Apple would need to buy licenses from First Beat (ie Garmin) or else develop this stuff in house, at considerable expense.
Anyway, what constitutes a “better” watch is subjective, but it’s objectively untrue that Apple has “outperformed the market.” The first corral of every marathon is dominated by Garmins. I did not see a single Apple Watch other than my own at the last marathon I raced.
Hi Ray, thanks for the great review! I have been using the AWU 3 for 3 months (comming from Enduro 3 and priorly from AWU 2) and couldn’t be happier. I notice great under-the-hood upgrades in performance, such as better LTE connectivity, faster processor, better battery life, etc. My only concern is that I am noticing what seems to be a big overestimation of my V02Max. Altough I ve been training harder and specifically for a faster 5k, it has risen with every run to a current estimate of 64 (comming from a 54 under my Enduro 3). This seems very unrealistic. Have you noticed something like that being both a Garmin and AWU user? I also think cadence when running is underestimated.
Hola Ray, estoy desesperado con el funcionamiento de la precisión del GPS y el desnivel acumulado. Si lo llevas en modo avión es un desastre. Solo funciona bien con el iPhone al lado. Me marca ritmos muy lentos y duplica el ascenso o descenso.
Un saludo !
Maybe I missed it in the review but one of my favorite features in the new updates is that I can see every workout in real time on my phone. So when I bike, use the treadmill, elliptical, etc. I can see my stats like distance, HR, HR zone, time in each HR zone, active calories, etc. Its a brilliant feature and awesome for HR based training. Previously this was only available during outdoor bike rides but now its all workouts.
I’m going to replace my AW series 4 with the new AWU: it’s time. It’s clearly less of an outdoor sports watch than the others – But other apps I use every day such as to manage my medicine schedule, turn the car heating on, locate family members -they keep me in apple land.
At the same time, it is poignant that WorkOutdoors Is still the tool of choice for serious outdoor work. I am happy with that. It takes time to configure, but now I have the ideal settings for gym, walking, hiking and road bike. Really helped me navigating in Venice, FWIW. Maybe Strava should spend some of their IPO cash in buying it
Fairly niche but I tried AW1 and ended up returning this (going back to Garmin) due to what I believe are software limitation on the frequency third party complications update on the watch face. Specifically I used Dexcom to show blood sugar so I could see a live value but this would not update every 5 minutes as per my BG sensor – rather it would sometimes be blank needing me to hit it to refresh – defeating the point of having a reading I could see at a ‘glance’.
Anyone on here aware of whether the restrictions (to conserve battery I think) remain in the latest OS?
You failed at the MOST important thing I think anyone outside of the stupid Apple ecosystem should know about this watch: YOU NEED AN IPHONE 11 or NEWER TO SETUP AND USE THIS DAMN WATCH!
Please do all of us Garmin / WearOS / non iOS folks know this in the very beginning of your Apple Watch reviews. I’ve read all of your Ultra 3 watch reviews, and no where did it mention that. I’m now sitting here with a $600 paper weight.
I swim, bike and run. Then, I come here and write about my adventures. It’s as simple as that. Most of the time. If you’re new around these parts, here’s the long version of my story.
You'll support the site, and get ad-free DCR! Plus, you'll be more awesome. Click above for all the details. Oh, and you can sign-up for the newsletter here!
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
You can also pick-up tons of gear at REI via these links, which is a long-time supporter as well:
Alternatively, for everything else on the planet, simply buy your goods from Amazon via the link below and I get a tiny bit back as an Amazon Associate. No cost to you, easy as pie!
You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
While I don't partner with many companies, there's a few that I love, and support the site. Full details!
Want to compare the features of each product, down to the nitty-gritty? No problem, the product comparison data is constantly updated with new products and new features added to old products!
Wanna create comparison chart graphs just like I do for GPS, heart rate, power meters and more? No problem, here's the platform I use - you can too!
Think my written reviews are deep? You should check out my videos. I take things to a whole new level of interactive depth!
Smart Trainers Buyers Guide: Looking at a smart trainer this winter? I cover all the units to buy (and avoid) for indoor training. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Check out
my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
Get all your awesome DC Rainmaker gear here!
FAQ’s
I have built an extensive list of my most frequently asked questions. Below are the most popular.
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2024 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Here in South Korea, there’s been a huge uproar over inaccurate distance measurements on the watch OS26.
Both the existing Apple Watch and the AWU3 are a mess.
At the JTBC Seoul Marathon, one of South Korea’s three major marathons, a horrific incident occurred where most Apple Watch & Ultra users measured distances as 43.3 km.
(The existing Garmin measured 42.4 km, while the new 570/970 measured 42.3 km.)
While previous versions had a short distance measurement issue, OS26 has now caused the distances to be measured excessively long.
GARMIN Korea and its dealerships are enjoying a boom as people, feeling their patience falter, are switching to GARMIN en masse.
Interesting. Apple had a long history of doing funny GPS things (so-called Mario Karting around corners and smoothing lines to make them look prettier), but I just haven’t seen that in the last few years. I suspect their push into more data-driven sports metrics probably helped to rectify a lot of that (you can’t have Running Efficiency metrics be correct when distance data is wonky).
But distance-wise, things have been really close for me. A run a few days ago, within 10 meters. And then if I look at my 70KM mountain trek, the Suunto & Apple were within 70m (on 70,000m), which is astonishing.
I’d have to dig into the South Korea bits to see what the cause is. As always, having distance overage is just the symptom, knowing whether it’s overshooting, or bad GPS/interference causing jagged lines (which increases distance/etc…).
The other challenge with marathons, to be honest, is that most people don’t run 42.195KM. They run considerably more, due to swerving, and not running the actual measured race line. The official measured race line will be precisely 42.195KM, but that line is impossible to run in a big city race, or frankly, with anyone else on the course. For big city races, people will run considerably more, and I’d argue if you run 42.3KM in a big city marathon…then the course was probably short. ;)
Fun old post I did on this: link to dcrainmaker.com
Actually the real distance might be longer, even when running the measured race line exactly.
In “THE MEASUREMENT OF
ROAD RACE COURSES Road Running & Race Walking” by World Athletics, it is written:
“For measurement, the “Calibrated Bicycle Method” shall be used.
To prevent a course from being found to be shorter than the official race distance on future re-measurement, it is recommended that a “short course prevention factor” be built in when laying out the course. For bicycle measurements this factor should be 0.1% which means that each km on the course will have a “measured length” of 1001m.”
This means that a marathon race is more likely approximately 42,237 meters from start to finish.
Even if you run on an IAAF-approved course, the average distance is around 42.4km (Garmin).
The 970 case I used as an example involved a 2:20 runner who ran for 3:30 using a pacemaker and not using water stations (he carried his own water bottle to avoid confusing the group following him).
Yesterday, at a half marathon along a river (a perfectly flat course with no buildings or trees),
most Garmins measured 21.10-21.12km,
but the Apple Watch Ultras showed a noticeable range of 21.48-21.50km.
This is not an acceptable error.
The course was in open-sky conditions with perfect GPS reception, and all Korean marathoners always use the multiband option. The GPS reception that day was so excellent that it accurately indicated which lane I was driving on.
For example, I was running close to the median strip of an eight-lane road to avoid the strong winds, and the GPS line accurately depicted my line with an error of less than 1 meter (actually, it seems to be less than 30 centimeters).
This issue is a software issue.
Previous Watch OS versions overwhelmingly reported short distances,
but with Watch OS 26, the distances are now excessively long.
People are tired of the distances constantly changing like rubber bands with every update.
Koreans are impatient. Most people are impatient and tend to do everything quickly, quickly, and even faster.
Garmin Korea was happy about this issue (they have ample inventory of models like the 265, 965, and 970).
Coros Korea is constantly running low on inventory, so it’s sold out (again, Koreans don’t wait).
Any GPS can have a bad day. When a product is as widely adopted as Apple Watch, the handful of people who had bad luck (or who didn’t run the shortest course in a race) can easily find each other online, which makes it seem like there’s a widespread problem, when there isn’t.
The fact that this is only an issue in Korea is a dead giveaway. There is no plausible reason that the watch would perform worse in Korea than in other places, and it’s nonsense to suggest that Koreans are uniquely demanding consumers, while the rest of the world is willing to accept shoddy performance. The rest of the world has historically been very critical of GPS devices with poor accuracy, yet people everywhere else are consistently reporting that the Apple Watch Ultra is the most accurate GPS watch you can buy, about tied with or even a bit better than Garmin, and definitely better than Coros. It’s far more likely that the IDEA that the Apple Watch has poor GPS performance has spread within a particular community.
I’m also pretty skeptical of complaints about GPS performance that are based purely on supposedly inaccurate distances. The main way you know you have an inaccurate GPS performance is by looking at the track. If it’s zigging, zagging, and cutting corners, you have an issue (anyone remember the Forerunner 620?). The Apple Watch never shows those kinds of tracks. It shows people not just on the correct side of the street, but even on the correct side of the sidewalk. It does so even in Midtown Manhattan, where just a few years ago, no GPS stood a chance. It accurately shows where I did cut corners, and it shows neat right angles where I didn’t.
FWIW, I just ran a marathon with AWU3, and the recorded distance was 26.38 miles. Every other marathon I’ve raced has been with a flagship Garmin watch, and the total distances ranged from 26.30 (Cal International, which has only a few turns and no tall buildings) to 26.7 (NYCM), but most are pretty close to 26.4.
This is super interesting. Was just doing the NY marathon and the pacing was significantly off (which lead me to run too slow, 3 minutes off already at halfway point). The total recorded distance was 26.48 miles / 42.62 km. Does not seem to be too off from a total distance perspective but the pacing was definitely off (I displayed current pace, 0.25mi average and 1mi average). I read that you have to “calibrate” the watch for pedometer use. Also used Workoutdoors which might have an impact, i do not know. In terms of distance, I also noticed a difference at home (previously had the AW Series 6) and the AWU 3 reports a shorter distance.
Data for reference:
Miles Time Pace (official) Pace Watch
1 7:38 /mi
2 7:41 /mi
3 0:23:28 7:50 7:36 /mi
4 0:31:12 7:45 7:33 /mi
5 0:38:55 7:43 7:40 /mi
6 0:46:43 7:49 7:47 /mi
7 0:54:20 7:35 7:35 /mi
8 1:02:08 7:49 7:34 /mi
9 1:10:00 7:52 7:33 /mi
10 1:17:38 7:35 7:43 /mi
11 1:25:40 8:02 7:38 /mi
12 1:33:28 7:49 7:36 /mi
13 1:41:33 8:09 7:52 /mi
14 1:49:33 7:52 8:05 /mi
15 1:57:30 7:57 7:37 /mi
16 2:05:14 7:19 7:45 /mi
17 2:13:02 7:48 7:32 /mi
18 2:20:35 7:33 7:28 /mi
19 2:28:17 7:42 7:34 /mi
20 2:36:14 7:58 7:38 /mi
21 2:44:19 8:06 7:52 /mi
22 2:52:17 7:56 7:45 /mi
23 3:00:15 7:58 7:43 /mi
24 3:08:45 8:31 7:59 /mi
25 3:16:56 8:22 8:00 /mi
26 3:25:20 8:25 8:00 /mi
26.2 3:27:04 7:53 8:03 /mi
The overwhelming majority of people in the Korean marathon community are complaining,
and sharing their logs with each other.
The problem isn’t the Apple Watch, but Watch OS 26 (including 26.1).
link to youtu.be
This YouTuber used a construction site distance measuring roller to mark kilometers on his riverside course, and tested the 970 with both a walk and a run (970 vs. AW3).
For the first kilometer, without any shaded areas, the 970 was perfectly accurate, while the AW3 was short. The problem is that while the 970 consistently measured distances (even with very small errors),
the AW3 fluctuated between long and short distances at each kilometer mark, as if it couldn’t find its zero point.
Honestly, one of the reasons (not only) I’m ditching the Whoop and coming back to Apple is the Sleep scores and recovery metrics.
You say Apple penalizes you for going to bed early… damn, that’s a lot worse on Whoop! I could easily go to bed 30 minutes earlier than the “optimum go to bed hour” and wake up 5 minutes later than the “optimum for waking up” and still achieve a mere 60% in Consistency, which would lead to a low sleep score. Frustrating.
Apple, for instance, while it’s true that you can deduct points for going to bed early (similar to Whoop, I’m not familiar with others), the impact on the global score appears to be lower. And it’s okay to consider this metric due to the influence of circadian rhythms, but perhaps not to that extent (non-professional opinion, I must say; just my opinion as a user).
Yeah, at this point Apple isn’t really doing ‘analysis’ per se like Whoop (or Garmin, or Fitbit, or really anyone else). Instead, it’s more of a factual ‘here’s what you did’.
In this case, despite my disagreements with it in certain areas, their sleep score is indeed simple to calculate/understand/process. But it’s not doing an analysis of other factors. It’s just the three bits: How long, when, and how many times were you interrupted.
My issue here with the guidance on being docked for going to bed early when you’re tired, is that it’s just not logical. Especially when we’re talking 11PM vs 2:30AM. I can’t imagine any sleep doctor saying “Please stay up till 2:30AM and then ensure you get less sleep tonight”.
Again, not saying their competitors are holistically any better, but ultimately, Apple put their cards in the ‘simplicity’ camp.
Completely agree. My point is (sorry for my English) at the beginning the deeper analysis of whoop (for example, and only after they started not giving all the importance to HRV) and different not so obvious impacts (I mean is there anyone who thinks drinking 4 cocktails woozy have any impact?), it could start being counterproductive.
Do you decide your training depending on your score? If you have 30% recovery do you stop going running? In my case the answer is no. And at that point the nights you do everything right (not drinking going to bed early clean eating…) and you get a yellow, it could drive you mad.
A simpler approach that still influences you enough to try to “be healthier” but does not frustrate so much could, at a certain point, be better.
Does that make sense? I swear I can explain it better in Spanish jejejje
Completely agree. My point is (sorry for my English) at the beginning the deeper analysis of whoop (for example, and only after they started not giving all the importance to HRV, intermittent fasting or some daily habits) could show you different not so obvious impacts (I mean is there anyone who thinks drinking 4 cocktails won’t have any impact?), it could start being counterproductive.
Do you decide your training depending on your score? If you have 30% recovery do you stop going for a run? In my case the answer is no. And at that point the nights you do everything right (like not drinking going to bed early clean eating…) and you still get a yellow, it could be frustrating
MAYBE a simpler approach that still influences you enough to try to “be healthier” but does not frustrate so much, at a certain point, could be better.
Does that make sense? I swear I can explain it better in Spanish jejejje
PS. I hate the “consistency” score in Whoop. Never got over 80% NAILING THE DAMN HOURS THEY SUGGEST.
Charging: my Ultra 3 charges much faster than my Ultra 1 did. I’m using the cable that came with the Ultra 3. I charge it every day, and it usually takes only a half hour to charge from the 50% that I usually have in the morning to the 80% where it usually wants to stop. (Occasionally it’ll decide to charge to 100%, which of course takes longer).
SpO2: Vitals doesn’t show SpO2 here (Pennsylvania, US). It still takes it and you can dig the numbers out if you want, but it doesn’t show in Vitals. There’s still a slot for it, but nothing is shown. Consequence of the lawsuit, I guess.
Sleep: As a 71 year old male, I usually have 2-3 “interruptions” (and not the fun kind) per night. That drags down my sleep score. I don’t think my Ultra 3 has recorded a single nap, which, because I’m a 71 year old male, usually amounts to conking out for 15 minutes occasionally. I think the only nap I ever got recorded on an Apple Watch was in the 30-45 minute range.
Good point for Vitals for US people on watch no longer showing SpO2 (must go to app). Sounds like you should move to Europe. ;)
Eeww, no. Can’t get good food in Europe. Can you even get a McRib (limited time!) there? And I’ll bet there isn’t a Sheetz or a Wawa to be found.
More seriously, I wouldn’t want to live in a place without spectacular fall colors.
Sounds like you don’t know Europe at all, my friend…
Fall in Sweden for example or Northern Germany (where I live) is quite colorful and heartwarming.
And, given that you were merely jesting about food, comparing a plasticity McRib or something similar to the diverse cuisines of all our different countries or even regions is almost blasphemous! :-)
Another thorough review! On Apple’s website they mention the requirements for FindMy over satellite – link to support.apple.com and what I find most interesting is this – “Remember that while off-grid, satellite features aren’t available on Apple Watch Ultra 3 if your iPhone is nearby and in Airplane Mode”. This makes no sense, if I am in the woods with no coverage I probably have my iphone on Airplane mode to preserve some battery. Is turing bluetooth off on your watch/iphone a workaround for this? (assuming then it is not ‘nearby’ anymore from the watch’s perspective)
I agree, it’s annoying. I noticed that as well this weekend (the tidbit at the bottom). Especially since I often do the same thing if I’m trekking somewhere I know is simply out of cell range, I just go into airplane mode. In fact, sometimes I just do it on my longer trips merely to enjoy a bit of quiet.
I’ll test if turning off BT will work on my next run, perhaps sometimes knows off-hand that drives through a no-cell zone.
As noted above, I think some of these scenarios need to be thought through a bit better. The travelling scenario that I outlined above is a good example. When I was in the US, the fact that the only way to get it to work was to enable the disabled Spanish SIM’s, merely to find nothing, makes no sense. I can totally understand the product design logic that got them to that place, but they need to throw that out and step back and look at it from a “Someone is in the middle of the mountains and can’t search Google to figure out why it’s not working” standpoint.
While I’ll cover all sorts of quirks about Garmin’s satellite connectivity in my Fenix 8 Pro review this week (trust me, there are lots of quirks in this area), the one thing I do appreciate is user control over it. The ability to say “Yes, I want to send a satellite message now, cellular be darned”. And/or the ability to control whether LTE is enabled/disabled, satellite is enabled/disabled, BT is enabled/disable, etc… and have the watch simply do what you want it to.
Indeed, the number of gotchas is crazy for a feature one is likely to use in an emergency situation. I was planning to get this at a good price from KPN (hi fellow ex-countryman) at 720Eur, with the cellular cancellable after a month.
But given all the conditions, its likely better to put that money on a cheperish garmin and get an inreach instead.
I wonder why they have this restriction in place, likely they want to rely on the iPhone’s satellite/cellular connectivity before using the watch. But then again, from a real life perspective – if someone is hiking in the mountains under pouring rain, their phone is likely in a ziplock bag deep in the rugsack. Time and again I feel Apple has some great features in mind (and the hardware to support it) but they are just not doing the beta testers part, or ignoring thier feedback. Kind of like Amazfit if I think about it.
Waiting to see the fenix review. Also became a supporter :)
Thanks Ray!
Can you elaborate more why your temporary US eSIM was not accepted? It’s still a cellular coverage, isn’t it? What problem has Apple with it?
So, to be super specific on the configuration first, my iPhone was configured with:
A) My Main Spanish Vodaphone EU eSIM (same plan as my phone), which is extended to my watch
B) A random US eSIM I got upon landing (not Vodaphone, just random one), which cannot be extended to the watch.
Upon landing in the US, I disabled my Spanish eSIM, and enabled my US temporary eSIM. Fast forward to out in the desert, and it won’t actually do any texting or such over cellular. Gave some error message, but did show the grey icon indicating it’d be in satellite realms now (so SOS would work, since that doesn’t require any carrier plan).
It wasn’t until I re-enabled my Spanish eSIM in the middle of the desert (my phone was with me), and then let it determine than yes, I was indeed beyond cellular, that it finally started to allow me to use satellite communications. It wouldn’t do so on the US eSIM that I had left enabled.
My assumption here, putting those puzzle pieces together with the quirky reuqirement for a carrier plan to text/FindMy updates, is that Apple is probably offloading the cost back to the originating carrier. It’s probably a trivial amount, but is likely baked into Apple’s business model here. After all, a trivial amount per-user for Apple starts to really add up with a gazillion watches (for texting and FindMy updates). So, they pass that probably trivial amount to the carrier, and the carrier is happy because it increases sign-ups (after all, I signed up specifically to get this feature working, otherwise I don’t bother having a seperate cellular plan on my watches).
Finally, of note, there are no temporary eSIM entities I’m aware of that can assign to a watch (like you can for a phone). I tried, I talked with Apple a bunch about this, and no luck. Heck, even some of my other plans that I have (I have both a US plan and a Dutch phone plan) have quirky things. Like, I couldn’t activate my new watch onto my KPN Dutch plan, unless I was physically in the Netherlands. Given how much darn time it took to get my Spanish SIM working, I probaly should have just flown back to Amsterdam for an hour to do that…
Fenix 8 Pro review still on track?
Apple should have made the case smaller instead of the display bigger.
And at the same time, they should have come up with a new and, this time, attractive Ultra design;)
I wore the Ultra 3 on my wrist for a few days:
– The edge of the display is too sharp for my liking. It feels cheap. (Apple now seems to be using a printing process for the case.)
– Too thick
– Too heavy
– The price/performance ratio isn’t right for me
Too similar to my Apple Watch 10.
Apple’s sleep score isn’t well balanced. Sorry, but with just over 4 hours of sleep, I got a score that was far too good. Garmin is better at this.
The biggest weakness is and remains watchOS, which the Ultra can’t hide.
One thing that may be relevant about satellite communications for some users: You cannot send a satellite message to another phone/watch that is also outside of cell range. It can go sat-to-cell or cell-to-sat, but not sat to sat. You still need an inReach or something for communicating with other people who are off grid. (Like every watch feature, this is one of those “why would anyone need to do that?” issues for probably 99% of users, and possibly a reason not to buy the watch for 1%.)
Also, coming from Garmin, I’m definitely seeing some strange behind the scenes stuff with the software treatment of GPS data. The tracks look perfect when I upload, but instant and current-lap pace are very weird. When I take a manual lap, it always shows that the lap was at a significantly faster pace than what my current lap pace was displayed as just before I tapped to take the lap. Maybe it figures it should err on the side of showing too slow so that people never miss their targets? And when I take a new lap, it shoes my current pace as VERY slow for the first 30-60 seconds, even if I was just cruising along at a constant pace. Like, I’ll be running six-minute per mile, take a lap, and then it will show my current lap pace as 7:30/mile, slowly working its way back down to 6 over the next minute. Not a huge deal, but I had gotten used to how good Garmin had gotten at showing instant and current lap pace over the last few watches, with a really good mix of responsiveness and stability.
That is actually quite annoying. Imagine you are off grid with other people and want to go somewhere or take a different path or something. Your plan is to meet them somewhere. It would be great if you have some sort of communication for this. Blocking SAT to SAT communication is a big problem for this. When off grid you will actually need much more to communicate with people among your group than with people at home.
Are we 100% sure about this? This is honestly the first I’ve heard of it, and unless I’ve missed it, I don’t see it listed in the very long list of requirements: link to support.apple.com
The only reason I ask, is there is a slightly different requirement, that I’m wondering if it’s getting mixed up, which is that you have to have texted a person within the past 30 days, in order to text them while off-grid. This is apparently due to the encryption side having a 30-day lifespan or something.
I can certainly follow-up with Apple on this, but if there’s something I can point to, that’d be great.
So I’ve tried to use it off-grid, and I’ve never been able to get it to work with someone else who also is. I did a bit of poking around the web to confirm that it was an issue, but I don’t recall where I read it. My understanding is that Apple’s servers can only send a message to a phone via satellite when there is an active satellite connection, i.e., the off-grid individual has to initiate the conversation.
The same seems to be true even when the other party is on-grid. I’ve experimented, and it seems that you cannot receive ANY satellite messages outside of the context of a conversation that the off-grid party starts.
I’d love it if I’m just doing something wrong. It’s probably not a dealbreaker for most, though it should be clearly explained.
For me, it doesn’t really matter. If I have emergency rescue available and I can initiate conversations, that’s the main thing. GMRS radio is plenty for most backcountry or overlanding with large groups, where you may be separated, but only by a few miles at most. The only time I’ve ever really wanted P2P satellite communication was during the Hood to Coast relay.
Hi JR. I’ve confirmed with Apple this should work just fine, between two iMessage (blue bubble) folks as long as they’ve chatted at some point in the last 30 days, they can both be fully satellite-based with the Watch, and it should text back and forth.
Sadly being in Europe, I don’t have a way to test this myself right now. Remember per above that if either person has put their phone into airplane mode, that breaks it.
What band do you think is best? I swim pretty regularly, but I also want something comfortable enough to run with. Do you have any recommendations?
I like the trail ones, though, do slightly dislike them being wet later on.
Great thanks!
When can we expect the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2025 review?
It’s honestly fallen off the viable backlog to-do list (with honestly, even fewer requests). :-/
The Ultra just feels so big and heavy on my wrist compared to a Series watch. For my use case as a road runner the Series watch would be perfect if only apple would make it easy for me to create laps and start/stop a workout and make it easy to customize my screen. I use it for a lot of runs despite these because if i am just running and not doing a hard workout it’s fine. But when I need to do a structured workout I pull out the Garmin.
Thanks again, Ray!
Do you have any perspectives/recommendations on the third party recovery/strain apps for AW like Bevel, Athlytic, The Outsiders, etc?
I’ve long been meaning to do a post on Athlytic, but just keeps getting kicked down the road. I’ve had it for a few years now.
I would try Bevel as well. It also comes with a Garmin Connect integration which makes it even more interesting for me. I am still using a combination of AWU and a Fenix..
Thanks Ray. By chance did you test out the feature to use your phone as a “mirrored” head unit of sorts with the Ultra? I like to do that for casual rides and commuting, rather than bringing a dedicated gps unit. For some reason for the last little while (2-3 months or so) neither myself (AW10) nor my wife (SE) have been able to get it to work.
The weakness of Garmin’s sleep scoring is that it doesn’t always know exactly what to do with your HRV and RHR data. If your HRV is garbage because you had 3 martinis, Garmin will give you a well deserved bad score. Apple will still tell you that your score was excellent, even if you went to bed late, slept badly, and woke with a hangover…so long as you stayed in bed for 8 hours. On the other hand, if your HRV is high because you just ran a marathon, Garmin will give you a bad score, even if you actually got a great night’s sleep, and the HRV simply reflects your underlying fatigue.
At present, I think that there are two concrete ways for sleep tracking to truly benefit people. (1) It has convinced a lot of athletes to drink a lot less. I’ve spoken to many professional athletes who have drastically reduced how much they drink, mainly because they were wearing Garmins to bed and they saw what happened to their hearts overnight. (2) Tracking makes it easier to keep yourself accountable with regard to how much sleep you’re actually getting. Even though people obviously know what time they go to bed and what time they get up, they’re amazingly good at tricking themselves, especially with regard to what their “typical” behavior is. Research has shown that people consistently overreport how much sleep they get. But if your watch tells you you’ve been averaging 7.1 hrs, and your goal for a training cycle was to average 8.3, you know you have to do better.
I think right now Garmin’s approach is better because it gives you both benefits. It may be “wrong,” sometimes, but it’s doing the job of getting people to drink less and sleep more. Apple is only getting people to sleep more.
Thanks for all the reviews, Ray!
I got a quick question about the battery burn you mentioned with 3rd-party apps, specifically Workoutdoors. Is that 2x battery burn trend vs the native fitness app you noticed only when the map screen is shown or just in general? My major use case is primarily hiking and other similar activities where I have a route loaded, but only switch to the map when needed, preferring to have a stat screen shown the other 90% of the time. I’d imagine the staying off the map screen would increase battery life slightly due to not having to constantly redraw the map.
With WorkOutDoors, in this case, it’s using the map screen primarily, thus, it does burn more battery.
The developer reached out and noted that if you use other data pages, it’s basically a wash to the native app. But did agree that if you used the map screen more, then battery goes up quite a bit. I’d have to do more testing on the non-map screens. But for me, sorta the main jam here is the mapping/navigation.
Many thanks for mentioning WorkOutDoors in your review. I really appreciate that.
I just want to clarify that battery usage is barely affected by whether the map or data screens are shown. Instead it is how often you look at the watch that makes the difference, and that is the case with every app. The extra brightness required when you look at the screen uses a lot of power.
The ‘problem’ with WorkOutDoors is that it can show a lot of information and so users generally look at the screen more frequently. This is especially true when navigating and/or when using it for the first time (or when doing a very thorough review of the watch!).
If a user looked at the screen as often when using Apple’s native Workout app then it would use about the same amount of power.
As mentioned in the review using Low Power mode will save a lot of power without any compromises to accuracy. And for even longer battery life you can disable Wake on Raise in the watchOS settings. This means that the screen needs to be tapped to see it (which can be awkward) but it makes the battery last even longer.
Props for mentioning the WorkOutDoors app. I have been using it since like forever 😉. Don’t care for its latest upgrade that added the turn by turn navigation and climbing feature – just annoying and turn all that stuff off. What remains is solid maps that you can predownload and ease of importing GPX files from trailforks (I do it on my iPhone in like 5 minutes) and the app is stable. Unlike the POS that trailforks released.
I wish the developer would make direct export to trailforks possible so I could get around that stupid Strava thing that makes all my activities private on trailforks. And MTB bike park mode. If that ever happens that will be a winner in my book.
I bit the bullet and moved over from a fenix 6, the new Canadian prices for the 8 series are just wild. I’m trying to “keep stock” and make notes on what I miss. It sounds like WorkOutdoors will fix one big void I have when in the park for a hike/walk without formal trail imports from all trails or similar.
The biggest annoyance I haven’t been able to solve for is on sleep tracking. Sometimes it will “start” my sleep at 8 when I’m putting kids to bed, then show 2 hours of awake time before I fall alseep again. On the garmin I would just edit the start time to 10:30 or whenever but it doesn’t seem like health or the watch can do that.
Also the way it/health calculates resting heart rate vs garmin is different so it totally messed up my years worth of stats (it will be fine eventually, but annoying)
Isn’t Garmin’s algorithm for resting hr controversial, as it takes the average of the lowest 30-minute period over 24 hours, whether or not you’re asleep?
(I say this as someone who’s still in the Garmin ecosystem)
I mean, Garmin may have it reasons for preferring “sleeping resting hr” over “awake resting hr”, but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right?
Because of this, I tend to look at the trends for Garmin resting HR, rather than taking the absolute number seriously. (Actually, I do the same thing for a lot of Garmin metrics)
Like, I enjoy seeing my Garmin resting HR go down, but when I set my HR zones based on heart rate reserve (which takes resting HR into account), I use a slightly higher manually entered value for resting HR.
> I mean, Garmin may have it reasons for preferring “sleeping resting hr” over “awake resting hr”, but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right?
I should probably rephrase this:
“Garmin may have its reasons for measuring resting hr all the time – whether you’re asleep or awake – but the conventional definition of resting hr excludes sleep, right”
Not to state the obvious, but by not excluding periods of sleep, Garmin is probably measuring a lower resting HR than any accepted method which excludes periods of sleep.
I don’t know the precise time window of resting HR (something I’ve talked about a lot, as there’s somewhat surprisingly no actual medically agreed upon definition of what resting HR is/how to measure*), but given Garmin actually has two resting HR values in the app:
1) “resting HR”
2) “avg overnight heart rate”
But indeed ‘resting hr’ does seem to be the lowest of the two, however it’s measured.
*Specifically, what time window, when, and for how long. Do you measure the lowest 1-second HR value? The lowest 5-second HR value? 30-second value? Including or not including sleep? Most agree it’s not including sleep, but again, there’s literally not a single medical definition out there agreed upon by any organization. It’s sorta silly.
I was referring to Garmin’s own support article which claims that “resting HR” (e.g. “RHR” in the HR glance and “Resting” in the Connect Heart Rate page) is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.:
link to support.garmin.com
“Resting Heart Rate: This value is for the current day. Daily RHR is calculated using the lowest 30 minute average in a 24 hour period.”
So I don’t think how *Garmin* measures resting HR is up for debate, unless this current algorithm is different than what they’ve done in the past, or unless it’s changed since that support article was last updated. I agree that there’s no medically agreed upon definition of resting HR, but most definitions seems to exclude sleep, as you and I both seem to agree on.
“My point is that if most people define resting HR as excluding sleep, and Garmin measures resting HR even when you are asleep, then as long as you wear your Garmin while you are asleep, Garmin’s measure of resting HR will *probably* be lower than values produced by any of the ‘commonly accepted methods of measurement’”
To circle back to the original comment I was replying to, my larger point is that Apple’s method of measuring resting HR may be different than Garmin’s, but since Apple (now) excludes sleep (from what I’ve heard), it might be the case that Apple’s resting HR is “more correct” (or at least more in line with commonly accepted definitions/measurements of resting HR).
For example, some websites suggest measuring resting HR by taking your pulse for 60 seconds right after you wake up. I think it seems likely that this type of measurement would produce a higher resting HR than any measurement Garmin would take while you are asleep.
TL;DR Garmin’s resting HR measurement is probably “too low”, compared to measurements produced by other commonly accepted methods of measurements. Even if you get your resting HR measured by a doctor, typically they do that while you are awake.
Even though all the various methods of measuring/defining resting HR may be different from each other, and may even produce different results, it seems clear that any method which chooses to include periods of sleep for measurement will produces results that are significantly lower than methods which excludes periods of sleep.
“given Garmin actually has two resting HR values in the app:
1) “resting HR”
2) “avg overnight heart rate””
Believe me, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I don’t see “avg overnight heart rate” in the Connect app or Connect website. (Either way, it’s not relevant to my point about *resting heart rate*)
What I do see…
…in the Connect app:
– Heart Rate > 1d: Resting, High
– Heart Rate > 7d: Avg Resting (over 7d, I assume), Avg High (over 7d, I assume(
– Heart Rate > 4w: Avg Resting, Avg High
– Heart Rate > 1y: Avg Resting, Avg High
…in the Connect website: same thing as the app, except the 7d avg resting HR is also listed on the 1d page.
Apologies if I missed something.
I also disagree that “avg overnight heart rate” would or could be *generally* interpreted as a type of “resting HR”. but that’s just me.
– people aren’t necessarily asleep all night or even at any part of the night
– even if you changed that concept to “sleeping HR”, I still wouldn’t see it the same as “resting HR”. Although to me, “sleeping HR” would be a lot closer to “resting HR” than “overnight HR”
Maybe it’s just me as I’m a night owl and I’ve gone on runs after midnight. I’ve also pulled all nighters at work, getting 1 hour of sleep in a 48 hour period (for example).
It’s listed on the per-night Sleep page (scroll down to all the data, see attached).
But yes, if Garmin is saying that resting HR is including sleep in their docs, then it undoubtedly is at this point (I had discussions with them years ago about it and lack of clarity, looks like they finally documented it at some point).
That said, yes, I agree that if Garmin is including sleep data in RHR values, then the general definition most would agree to is awake. That said, equally, I just don’t think it matters a ton what anyt company does here in terms of the end-state being whether or not your trending higher or lower.
Just wish Apple would use more of the screen and give us the option to use fewer metrics with bigger font for workouts – like Garmin does. Garmin run interface is SO much easier to read at a glance than squinting to see the right line for Apple Watch run metrics.
Feel the same way – not sure why this isn’t more customizable. I would have switched if not for this reason.
Ok, reading some of the comments here and looking into it – looks like workoutdoors might be the solution!
Hey Ray,
Awesome review as always! Would love your thoughts on future expanding satellite coverage with AWU3 vs F8Pro. My understanding is since the AWU3 uses the low orbit satellites, the coverage would be nearly the same as the inReach devices – regulatory items aside (like you pointed out), I’m assuming the watch has the hardware to eventually achieve a pretty wide global coverage if the red tape is cut (I might be wrong on this).
Conversely, since the F8Pro is going off the high earth orbit, the coverage seems a little more limited (just going off the Garmin-provided map). Do you see this coverage expanding while keeping the same satellite hardware? Or do you think future Fenix devices will switch to the lower earth orbit chips like the inReach does?
Apologies if I got any assumptions wrong. Thanks!
Already went out and did it side-by-side (including Google Pixel too) showing different scenarios in different spots, and working through just pulling together everything into a single cohesive post/video.
It’ll cover regional differences (e.g. US vs Europe vs elsewhere), tech differences, how the underlying chips work, etc… One of my good friends works in the NTN business, so lots of interesting tidbits there.
Thanks! What’s still definitely holding me back from buying an Apple Watch is the (poor) battery life—I don’t want to have to constantly remember to charge it after 1-2 days. I would have liked to see the battery life of the Venu X1 in comparison during navigation activity…
I did a stupid amount of Venu X1 testing of long activities over the summer (e.g. 8hr hikes). I basically ended the battery at zero each time (with navigation, lowest brightness setting, and AOD on).
I haven’t done any long treks since, but given Garmin/I have talked extensively about my battery concerns there, and nobody looped back, my assumption is no change. That said, I will eventually finish that review, so will re-test it on a 2-3hr something, just to validate. link to analyze.dcrainmaker.com
Thanks, Ray. 12%/hr??? OMG- seem that every Apple watch is better! ” We have the thinnest…” , sounds like “we have micro LED first”… Btw: I am really curios about your final thoughts about the F8 pro microLED…
Yeah, it’s not ideal. The next day was slightly better, on track for about 10-11hrs, but I was specifically using it less because I knew the trails quite well. Either way, in both cases I was almos always on the data/ClimbPro screens, so nothing like the map screens the full time.
Ultimately, I think Garmin sees the tradeoff there on size as a feature. Obviously, a this point the market has disagreed (hence Garmin’s massive price drops, starting barely a month after announcement). It’s too bad, I actually like the watch, but really think it needs a few tweaks:
1) Just more buttons
2) Lower display brightness options
3) Did I mention more buttons?
Seriously, I hope they don’t give up on that form factor, but just make tweaks to make it compelling for the Forerunner/Fenix users that the watch pulls most from.
I’m following the developments in the sports-tech space with great interest and really appreciate all the insights from Ray and this awesome community — all while still wearing my well aged Forerunner 920 every single day 🙂
The 920 was one of my favorites.
Fantastic review as always!
I’ve been a Garmin user for a long time (Edge & Fenix). Now the Epix is reaching the upgrade moment and the decisions is between a Fenix 8 or the Ultra 3.
I do structured training usually, get workouts from my coach on Training Peaks, also use TrainerRoad regularly. Before getting the Epix a few years ago I did try the Apple Watch, but they were nowhere near Garmin at that moment.
Any thoughts from who has tried both or made a recent transition?
That’s an easy choice, you choose the Fenix 8. I have an AW Ultra 3 (on my wrist at the moment), an Epix 2 and an Edge 1040. The short version is that the Apple Watch (any AW, I’ve been using them since the original) is not a sports watch, as you can see above. The Fenix 8 will be much, much better for that. On the other hand, if you want a smart watch, the AW is the absolute best one for an iPhone user. My Ultra is on my wrist almost all the time, but if I’m going to go hiking or cross country skiing, I use the Epix.
I currently AW 9 wifi and Garmin Fenix 7xpro
I’m using both, every day.
I’m evaluating AWU 3 instead of AW9.
To avoid to have both device at the same time (also outside workout) and in order to maintain the same garmin metrics , I’m evaluating to buy a garmin vivosmart 5 (i know, but for me could be better to have a garmin device like polar loop but is not possible :)) and use the Fenix 7 only during wo.
What do you think about this?
Because I don’t want to renounce to olg garmin and new Apple (healt) metrics (consider that there are other that garmin doesn’t have)
Mam oba zegarki. Z Fenixem 8 Pro biegam według planu Connect+, a w AWU 3 mam TAO. Raz biegnę według Connect, raz według TAO i patrzę, jak oba systemy reagują. :) Zadziwia mnie jedno: Fenix w stosunku do AWU zawsze pokazuje, że przebiegłem nieco krótszą trasę w słabszym tempie…
Po ostatniej aktualizacji beta AWU 3 znacznie poprawił zużycie energii. W sumie łąduję go raz na trzy dni! Kiedy biegam, słucham z niego muzyki i czasem rozmawiam. Podczas godzinnego treningu bateria spada wówczas o około 12 proc. W Feniksie spadek ten jest o połowę mniejszy.
Fenixa 8 Pro ładuję średnio raz na 16-17 dni, lecz gdy biegam z nim, zawsze mam ze sobą telefon.
Powiem tak: nie ma aplikacji na AWU, która jest w stanie dorównać Connect+. Jeśli biegasz wykorzystując trening strukturalny, możesz próbować Athletica.ai i TAO (TrainAsOne). TAO jest świetny, niestety w ogóle nie przejmuje się fizjologią biegacza: nie bierze pod uwagę ani HRV, ani snu. Twórca programu na moje pytanie odpowiedział… że sam nie wie, jak TAO ustala treningi. Serio!!! Uczy sie maszynowo. Im więcej o Tobie wie, tym ma być dokładniejsze. I niby tak jest. Biegałem z nim od kwietnia do lipca, pobijając wszystkie swoje rekordy – na 5 i 10 km oraz w teście Coopera. Później jednak coś się posypał i chciał ze mnie zrobić Kipchoge :) Connect+ świetnie za to reaguje na zmęczenie. Potrafi z dnia na dzień przebudować najbliższe treningi.
Ciężko mi zdecydować, który zegarek jest lepszy. AWU 3 denerwuje mnie lekceważeniem mojego kraju, Polski. Nie działa tu żadne połączenie satelitarne (nawet SOS) i nie ma polskiego tłumaczenia Siri, a więc mam okrojone informacje głosowe w czasie treningu. Płacę za zegarek tyle samo, co Amerykanin. Draństwo i lekceważenie, którego nie cierpię!
Dziękuję za świetny test. Jak zwykle zresztą. :)
Ray, zauważyłem coś dziwnego. Biegam mając na jednej ręce AWU 3 a na drugiej Fenixa 8 Pro/ ZAWSZE AWU pokazuje, że przebiegłem trasę dłuższa i do tego szybciej. Różnica wynosi na 10 km nawet 300 metrów, a tempo różni się o 10-15 sekund. O co tu chodzi? Który zegarek jest dokładniejszy?
Hi Ray, thx for the review. I currently have a Garmin Fenix 7S Pro.
I was considering the AWU3 but I have a very specific reason why I bought the Garmin and would like your opinion. Besides gym and some runs, I do occasional trekkings outdoors in Portugal, Spain and whatever else. These can last 10, 12, 14 hours and I use the Garmin Navigation app with their offline maps and trails downloaded from Wikiloc.
To put a trail in the watch is a 1 minute simple process. I understand from your review that some apps can’t synchronize with Workoutdoors, which is a bummer for me. Did you try Wikiloc on Apple Watch? Does it work well or not?
Before the Garmin I used Wikiloc on the phone with offline maps but it was sometimes very time demanding on the trail without mobile coverage to see alternative routes and good directions.
Thx!
Tell me why Apple built this watch? The Ultra 2 was already perfect, with enough battery life to last an Ironman easily (without battery saver, still had 42% after 11 hrs, both times), brighter screen than the Fenix 8 AMOLED, not a single glitch or oversight, unlike the Fenix which underperforms on every software design metric – despite costing me twice the price, and the Apple not even marketing itself as a fitness watch.
Shocking. If the Fenix 8 software was built into the Apple Watch, everyone would complain that Apple hasn’t done their job correctly. Instead, the Apple Watch is well thought out, and functions perfectly. And they improved it? ( yeah, maybe the GPS is 0.1% out, and if you need a watch to tell you how to sleep, but if these are your issues, you probably need more than a watch to help you out…)
Good on you Apple, for delivering the goods, truly outperforming the market. Not a bad gig for a boring laptop firm, smashing the fitness watch market.
Tell me you didn’t read the review, without telling me you didn’t read the review. 😂
Lol. I switched from Garmin to Apple (mostly for the connectivity bits), and I’m happy with my choice, but as a sports watch, the Ultra is inferior to even the most basic Garmins. Fortunately, most of the differences don’t matter all that much me, but they’re absolutely real.
Workoutdoors closes the gap considerably (without it, AWU just wouldn’t even be in the conversation), but AWU is still limited by its hardware. A lack of physical buttons is a serious problem, requiring simultaneous pressing of multiple buttons in order to replicate the basic functions of a 1990s Timex Ironman. It’s very easy to miss a split. If I were still more of a track runner, regularly taking 200 meter and 400 meter splits, there’s no way I’d use the AWU. The battery life is also quite poor by the standards of modern runnign watches. It’s insufficient for all but the fastest ultrarunners, notwithstanding the “ultra”moniker. I can use it for a 100k, but most wouldn’t, and a 100 miler isn’t feasible without mid-race recharging. And even if most people don’t race 100 milers, lots of people do long days of hiking, skiing, and paddling, where it’s easy to approach the AWU’s limits. Most people also don’t want to be finishing an activity with 10-15% battery left; they want enough to know there’s zero risk.
And AWU is WAY behind Garmin in terms of recovery and health monitoring. Personally, I don’t much care about the First Beat stuff, but it’s important to a lot of runners, and Apple just doesn’t have anything remotely like it. A Garmin can do everything a Whoop can do, yet tons of Apple Watch users have a Whoop on the other wrist. Admittedly, these aren’t hardware limitations–Apple’s HRM is good enough to produce the raw data for all of these advanced metrics–but these aren’t the kind of software fixes that a single developer like the WorkOutDoors guy can address. Apple would need to buy licenses from First Beat (ie Garmin) or else develop this stuff in house, at considerable expense.
Anyway, what constitutes a “better” watch is subjective, but it’s objectively untrue that Apple has “outperformed the market.” The first corral of every marathon is dominated by Garmins. I did not see a single Apple Watch other than my own at the last marathon I raced.
Hi Ray, thanks for the great review! I have been using the AWU 3 for 3 months (comming from Enduro 3 and priorly from AWU 2) and couldn’t be happier. I notice great under-the-hood upgrades in performance, such as better LTE connectivity, faster processor, better battery life, etc. My only concern is that I am noticing what seems to be a big overestimation of my V02Max. Altough I ve been training harder and specifically for a faster 5k, it has risen with every run to a current estimate of 64 (comming from a 54 under my Enduro 3). This seems very unrealistic. Have you noticed something like that being both a Garmin and AWU user? I also think cadence when running is underestimated.
Hola Ray, estoy desesperado con el funcionamiento de la precisión del GPS y el desnivel acumulado. Si lo llevas en modo avión es un desastre. Solo funciona bien con el iPhone al lado. Me marca ritmos muy lentos y duplica el ascenso o descenso.
Un saludo !
Thanks for the review. You referenced “gold standard” sleep tracking, what are the best/”gold standard” sleep tracking devices out there in 2025?
Maybe I missed it in the review but one of my favorite features in the new updates is that I can see every workout in real time on my phone. So when I bike, use the treadmill, elliptical, etc. I can see my stats like distance, HR, HR zone, time in each HR zone, active calories, etc. Its a brilliant feature and awesome for HR based training. Previously this was only available during outdoor bike rides but now its all workouts.
I’m going to replace my AW series 4 with the new AWU: it’s time. It’s clearly less of an outdoor sports watch than the others – But other apps I use every day such as to manage my medicine schedule, turn the car heating on, locate family members -they keep me in apple land.
At the same time, it is poignant that WorkOutdoors Is still the tool of choice for serious outdoor work. I am happy with that. It takes time to configure, but now I have the ideal settings for gym, walking, hiking and road bike. Really helped me navigating in Venice, FWIW. Maybe Strava should spend some of their IPO cash in buying it
Thank you for the article, hope to see AWU3 vs Fenix 8 Pro comparison soon))
Thanks as ever for your work Ray.
Fairly niche but I tried AW1 and ended up returning this (going back to Garmin) due to what I believe are software limitation on the frequency third party complications update on the watch face. Specifically I used Dexcom to show blood sugar so I could see a live value but this would not update every 5 minutes as per my BG sensor – rather it would sometimes be blank needing me to hit it to refresh – defeating the point of having a reading I could see at a ‘glance’.
Anyone on here aware of whether the restrictions (to conserve battery I think) remain in the latest OS?
Thanks
You failed at the MOST important thing I think anyone outside of the stupid Apple ecosystem should know about this watch: YOU NEED AN IPHONE 11 or NEWER TO SETUP AND USE THIS DAMN WATCH!
Please do all of us Garmin / WearOS / non iOS folks know this in the very beginning of your Apple Watch reviews. I’ve read all of your Ultra 3 watch reviews, and no where did it mention that. I’m now sitting here with a $600 paper weight.
Wait, where’d you get it for $600? That’s a good deal. The lowest I saw it was $699.