Apple Watch Ultra 2 Review: A Brighter, Faster Ultra That Still Trails Its Predecessor in Newness

Turn the Apple Watch Ultra 2 over and the underside still reads "Apple Watch Ultra." That detail captures the central finding of Joe Maring's review for Digital Trends: set beside the original, the new watch is impossible to tell apart, except for a new green and gray Trail Loop band. Maring still names it the best, most premium Apple Watch you can buy, and the site gave it an Editors' Choice designation at an $799 price.

The changes are real but mostly out of sight. The display is the same size OLED panel as before, but peak brightness rises from 2,000 nits to 3,000, the brightest Apple has put on a watch. It can also dim to a single nit, which Maring found useful at night or in a dark room. He reports no legibility problems, even in the last sunny days of October in the Midwest.

Inside is the new S9 chip, built on the A15 Bionic used in the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus. Apple claims it is 30% faster than last year's Ultra. Maring says the watch is fast, but admits he has not noticed a significant gap from his previous-generation Ultra. He expects the extra power to matter after years of use and software updates.

The place he did notice a difference was Siri. With the S9, requests that don't need an internet connection are processed on the watch rather than relayed to the iPhone and back. Setting a timer on his old Ultra often meant a delay of a couple of seconds; on the Ultra 2 it happens almost instantly. He calls it one of the most impactful changes of his testing. Other additions include Precision Finding for owners of an iPhone 15 or 15 Pro, which uses a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip to show the distance and direction of a lost phone, and internal storage doubled from 32GB to 64GB.

The headline feature, Double Tap, gets the harshest verdict. Tapping index finger and thumb together can play or pause music, answer calls, start a voice reply to a text, stop a timer or alarm, or scroll widgets in the watchOS 10 Smart Stack. It works reliably, Maring says, but does too little. He has used it a handful of times, mostly for the Smart Stack, and has to remind himself it exists. He wants it to handle notifications, pause and resume workouts, and switch recent apps, and he notes Apple's interface doesn't show where it works. He hopes software updates will expand it, but for now calls it a cool party trick.

The hardware is unchanged: a 49mm titanium case in natural finish only, despite rumors of a new color. It weighs 61.4 grams, more than 22 grams heavier than the 45mm aluminum Series 9, yet Maring, who describes his wrists as tiny, finds it comfortable. He praises the larger Digital Crown, the side button and its guard, and the Action button, especially pressing it with the side button to pause and resume runs. Health tracking is also unchanged, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring, SpO2, ECG, cycle tracking and custom heart rate zones.

Battery life runs a little over two days per charge in his use, with always-on display, workouts, notifications and no sleep tracking, and without Low Power Mode. That falls short of the Garmin Forerunner 265 or Fitbit Charge 6, but it is the best among Apple Watches. Last year's testing showed Low Power Mode can stretch the original Ultra to five days. Charging from zero to full takes about an hour and a half on the familiar magnetic puck.

The watch ships with watchOS 10, whose main addition is the Smart Stack: spin the Digital Crown from the watch face to reveal rearrangeable widgets. Maring keeps a five-hour forecast, calendar events, Activity rings and a heart rate graph, and the stack can add media, timer and Wallet widgets automatically. His advice is plain: current Ultra owners almost certainly don't need this one, while anyone considering their first Ultra should buy it.