Seven years after its debut, Apple surprised fitness enthusiasts last year when it announced a more powerful watch for the more adventurous among us – thus it comes as no surprise that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 will work on the success of its predecessor.
Rugged, larger and packed with more advanced tracking features, it was a boon for extreme sport enthusiasts and divers, as it turned the activitity tracker into something more precise and useful for them.
Made with aerospace grade titanium that has since made its way to this year’s iPhone 15 Pro series, the larger device offered longer battery life and even an action button that could be used to trigger activity tracking directly. Not surprisingly, a variant of this action button has also made its debut on the iPhone 15 Pro models.
Apple has also doubled the storage capacity to 64GB, providing you with more space to keep music, podcast and apps, for that really long and arduous run. Like the Watch 9, you can also use your Watch Ultra 2 to more precisely locate your phone, as it uses a second generation Ultra Wideband chip that helps locate and interact with other connected devices more precisely, including your iPhone, down to an exact distance.
The bumped up brightness, of 3,000 nits compared to 2,000 nits before should also prove useful for divers, or when you’re running under the hot sun and need to check your Apple Watch Ultra 2 for information. To be fair, 2,000 nits is very bright and we haven’t seen the need for it to be even brighter. Even when we tested the dive feature of the first device, we noted that the Watch Ultra was already much brighter than its competitors in the murky waters.. Still, it’s good to have a much brighter display for those small handful of situations where it’s needed.
In terms of activities, cycling workouts now appear as Live Activity, and the revamped Compass app shows the current elevation, along with a 3D display of waypoints that takes into account elevation, to let you know your precise location and proximity in relation to your surroundings.
We haven’t had a chance to try out these new features, but if you were an early adopter and picked up the original last year, you’re still in capable hands. For those thinking of upgrading from a mere fitness tracker or an Apple Watch Series 8, the larger battery of up to 36 hours under typical use and 72 hours on low power, is the biggest draw for the Watch Ultra series, and the addition of a new processor and more precise tracking with the Ultra Wideband location chip makes this worth a second look.
Hsals needs more space in his house, and more money in his bank account to pay for all the toys, collectibles and other geek related items that companies are churning out. Free-time? Girlfriend? Who’s got time for those?
Si Jia
