Review: Especially the Apple Watch Ultra does a lot of new things | Reviews

The collision detection system recognizes when the wearer has been involved in an accident. If the watch detects a sudden blow, the 4G version can independently call emergency services or the watches can use an iPhone connected via Bluetooth.

Moreover, there is very little news to report about the 8 Series. We had hoped that battery life would be improved, but that is not the case in practice. We got about 30 hours with the Series 8 in normal daily use with the screen always on and an hour of sports using GPS.

The Watch Ultra is by far the largest of all watches to date. Fortunately, this is not just a show, because Apple has equipped the watch with a larger battery, with which the Ultra lasts much longer than its smaller brothers.

This watch has all the features of the Series 8. Plus, it has a number of extras that other Apple watches don’t have or that work better on the Ultra. For example, the watch has not one but three microphones. In practice, we already hear the Ultra sound better than the Series 8, but there’s no difference between day and night.

The same goes for larger speakers. Apple claims these sounds are 40 percent louder than the speaker on a regular Apple Watch. The difference is audible, but not significant. Its sound is still much lower than the speakers of modern smartphones. Therefore, it is difficult to make hands-free calls in a room with a lot of ambient noise.

When the Ultra Depth Gauge recognizes water, the new Dive app will launch automatically. This shows current depth and is of limited use to avid divers. Apple has announced that it will launch an app in partnership with Huish Outdoors that turns the Watch Ultra into a true diving computer.

Unique to the Apple Watch Ultra is the dial. It consists of an analog watch with a white ring on which the minutes are displayed or acts as a compass. You can switch between the two functions by simply clicking on the episode.

The extra button on the left is nice in practice, which we mainly used during workouts. Starting a Workout app right is a great job, but much nicer is the ability to quickly move to the next stage during interval training, for example. This works much better than the touchscreen, especially if you’re working with a heart rate of 170 and sweaty fingers.

Then the battery: We actually got between 50 and 54 hours using GPS per day. This means that the watch no longer needs to be charged daily, but once every two days.

The Apple Watch Series 8 is visually unchanged from last year, with new fault detection and temperature sensor features. Apple uses this temperature measurement only to track women’s menstrual cycle.

Another story is the all-new Watch Ultra: Apple is targeting a fairly specific target group of adventurers and ultra-athletes. Whether these people flock to the store for this watch is questionable. Garmin is and will continue to be a leader in this sector even after the arrival of the Apple Watch.

As an all-around smartwatch, the Watch Ultra is the best watch you can buy right now. WatchOS stands alone in terms of general functionality, ease of use, and suite of apps. But it also costs 999 euros. That’s a lot of money, double the Series 8.