I've worn the Ultra 2 for more than a year — here's why it's the best Apple Watch for runners
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is the biggest, toughest, most endurance-friendly watch in Apple’s line-up. Built for bigger adventures than the daintier Apple Watch Series 10, it offers increasingly comprehensive running credentials, along with all the life-taming tools that arguably make it the best smartwatch in the business.
This second-gen rugged tracker offers 12 hours of GPS runtime, dual frequency GPS and a brighter screen, plus better training insights, more mid-run metrics and some class-leading heart rate to boot. However, even with new Training Load insights, offline mapping and a battery life that’s got your Sunday long run licked, the question still remains: does the Apple Watch Ultra 2 really offer the running capability to rival the best running watches from the likes of Garmin, Polar, Coros and Suunto? I’ve been living and training with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 on and off since it launched in 2023. Here’s my verdict.
Apple Watch Ultra 2 GPS + Cellular 49mm
Price and rivals
Before we get into the nitty gritty, a quick word on price. The GPS+Cellular Apple Watch Ultra 2 comes in at £799. That’s a £300 premium over the Apple Watch Series 10 which starts at £399, rising to £499 for the GPS+Cellular.
If you’re weighing up Apple vs Garmin, the non-AMOLED Garmin Enduro 3 (£729) and the AMOLED Garmin Epix Pro (£739.99) come in around the same price. Meanwhile, the closest-spec rival smartwatch, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, is a good chunk cheaper at £499. But this only plays nice with Samsung and Android phones.
Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs Apple Watch Series 10: What’s the difference?
In a nutshell, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 offers longer battery life, a bigger, more rugged, durable build, a brighter screen and multi-band/dual frequency GPS compared with the Series 10. The choice boils down to whether you want the Ultra 2’s rugged design and better staying power, or you’d prefer the lightweight, disappearing styling of the Apple Watch Series 10.
GPS Accuracy: The Apple Watch Ultra 2 offers accuracy-boosting multiband/dual-frequency GPS/GNSS while the Series 10 has regular GPS/GNSS. In testing, we didn’t find too much between the GPS accuracy.
Battery life: The Apple Watch Ultra 2 staying power is perhaps the biggest lure. It offers 36 hours of everyday use while the Apple Watch Series 10 stretches to 18 hours. When you fire up the GPS, both watches cover a marathon. The Ultra 2 run time extends to 12 hours versus 7 hours on the Series 10.
You’ll charge the Series 10 more frequently. However, you can offset the battery life gap somewhat with the Apple Watch Series 10’s speedier fast charging which hits 80% in just 30 mins compared with an hour on the Ultra 2.
Size, comfort & durability: Both the 42mm and 46mm Apple Watch Series 10 case sizes are dainty by comparison to the Ultra 2. The Ultra 2’s 49mm case size has a big, hench build, with a larger brighter display (3,000 nits vs 2,000 nits). It doesn’t just look more rugged, it’s more knock-proof too, with a build tested to MIL-STD 810H durability standards. It’s also better in the water, with water resistance to 100m versus 50m for Series 10.
Controls: It may seem like a small thing, but you don’t get the Apple Watch Ultra 2’s customisable action button on the Series 10. This shortcut button makes it a doddle to launch straight into runs and workouts. And when you don’t have it, you miss it. Speaking of speedy starts, there’s also no ‘Precision Start’ for workout modes on the Apple Watch Series 10. Instead you get a 3-second countdown.
Safety features: The emergency SOS, fall and crash detection safety features are largely the same across both watches. However, the Apple Watch Series 10 doesn’t offer the safety siren you get on the Apple Watch Ultra 2.
How I tested
I’ve been testing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 on and off since it launched. I’ve used it to train, and I’ve raced half, full and ultra marathons with it, including a solo 100-mile lap of Lake Garda.
I put it up against watches like the higher-end Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED and Garmin Enduro 3 along with other smartwatches, including Apple’s own Series 10, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra and some midrange AMOLED-screen watches like the Suunto Race S Titanium.
I benchmarked the heart rate accuracy against a couple of top-tier chest straps – the Polar H10 and Garmin HRM Pro+ chest straps, dug into the GPS tracks in detail and tracked the battery life closely.
Design
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 screams premium quality, with a slick, sophisticated case made from 95% recycled titanium. It’s a design that’s well finessed and looks great on the wrist – in a confidently hench, adventure-ready way.
It comes in one 49mm case size and you can choose between two finishes – natural and stealth-bomber black. There are four strap options: alpine loop, trail loop, ocean band and a titanium milanese loop. The nylon trail loop is the most run-friendly.
The 50% brighter display – up to 3,000 nits from 2,000 on the first-gen – is excellent. When you put them side by side, the screen brightness is notably improved over the first-gen Apple Watch Ultra. It’s bright, punchy, colourful and pin sharp with loads of real estate for the myriad tools. It also makes for an even brighter flashlight.
Despite Garmin, Coros and Suutno all getting in on the AMOLED game, when it comes to brightness, crispness and clarity and visibility in all lights, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 still packs the best screen we’ve seen on a smartwatch – and a better screen than you’ll find on any running watch.
The Apple Silicon S9 chipset makes taps, swipes and rendering those post-run stats super snappy. The touchscreen is brilliantly responsive and a joy to use. This is one area where Apple excels and the rivals are still playing catch up.
You also get the Ultra’s familiar two-button controls along with the digital crown. The customisable Action button is a really neat touch that lets you shortcut some tasks, like launching straight into a running workout.
At 14.4mm thick and 61.4g, this is a chunky watch. Sure, so are its rivals, but while testing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 with the Trail Loop, I found it had a habit of working its way loose. The watch tugs a bit more than those other devices and I noticed the weight somewhat more than the big Garmins. If you’ve got smaller wrists, this might be more challenging. I’d love to see an Apple Watch with a smaller but still rugged build.
Features & tracking
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is now a much more comprehensive run tracker. From a sports tracking perspective, most of the major stuff is covered, with outdoor, treadmill and track running modes. The latter spots when you hit your local track and snaps you to the lanes for added accuracy. The Ultra 2 also covers all of your major mid-run metrics, from pacing and rolling mile splits to cadence and ground contact time, with up to five stats on two customisable screens.
The mid-run tracking and post-run insights within the native Workouts app have improved incrementally over the years and the recent WatchOS 11 updates brought new features to nudge things along further.
The biggest upgrade was the addition of Training Load, which Garmin, Polar and Coros have offered for a while. Apple’s take on load blends biometric data including heart rate, respiratory rate and sleep duration, with optional user input.
Once you’ve logged enough activity to load your baseline, the Watch provides a daily rating on the scale of 'Well Below' to 'Well Above' to estimate how much exertion you might be able to handle on any given day compared to your benchmark. The aim: to help you to make better decisions about when to go hard and when to go home within the context of your training plan.
I salute the Effort Rating – a post-run subjective assessment – that lets you adjust Apple’s automatic scores based on your own perceived effort during the workout. If you don’t want to add your own, Apple automatically estimates the effort levels but it’s really quick and easy to input your own Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). This adds crucial context to the Training Load readout that you can’t get from heart rate alone – letting you factor in things like how muscle soreness or a long day at work may have made that run feel harder than your heart rate suggests.
You can dig much deeper into post-run detail via the Fitness app on your iPhone. Some of the standout insights include VO2 Max and Running Pace trends that chart improvements over time.
You can also create custom workouts directly on the watch and there’s automatic running track detection that picks up when you enter your local 400m arena.
Beyond running, there’s also temperature sensing and menstrual cycle tracking – fantastic for monitoring symptoms during different phases and adapting your training, or monitoring any deviations that may be of concern.
Siri can also now log Apple Health metrics via voice, including weight, menstrual cycle information, as well as respond to Health requests (for example, asking how your sleep went last night).
All-in-all, most of the mission critical running bases are covered, but despite improvements to the running and training feature set, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 still doesn’t quite match the breadth and depth you’ll get from Garmin, Polar and Coros’ top watches — at least not without leaning on third party apps. This is down to gaps in the experience. Some key performance metrics are missing from the native Workout app and things like uploading and exporting GPX routes still needs to be done via third party apps.
However, if you’re happy to use third party services to plug holes then, there’s almost nothing on rival watches that you can’t do here.
GPS & heart rate accuracy
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 features multi-band GPS. In testing, I found it performed well across all the power modes. It matched the Garmin Fenix 8 and Enduro 3 on overall distance and pacing, even in the lower-reading-frequency power-saving mode. Real-time pacing was also well matched and responsive. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 does a great job of snapping you to paths, pavements and tracks with good accuracy.
When it comes to heart rate, the optical sensor was also about as reliable as they come. The average heart rate readings were mainly within two beats of the Garmin HRM Pro+ and Polar H10.
I did have a couple of instances where the Apple Watch Ultra 2 clocked a higher HR Max — sometimes a good 7-12 beats above the chest strap — but these rogue spikes were rare.
Overall on accuracy, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 was a match, if not better than similarly priced rivals. A good solid, accurate performance.
Battery life
Even though it’s the best in the smartwatch business, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 battery life still lacks the staying power of the big endurance running watch beasts like the Garmin Enduro 3, Garmin Epix 2 Pro or the Coros Vertix 2.
However, the Ultra 2 is the running smartwatch that kills battery anxiety – at least for racing. With 1.5 days general use and 12 hours GPS run time, it’s got you covered for marathon race weekends – not just the race.
It can now also cope with most single day ultra distances if you use the low-power modes. When you factor in the rapid charge, it’s also not that far off having the battery chops to handle a multi-stage ultra.
I did a 3-day, 100-mile solo ultra around Lake Garda testing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 battery life in the three power modes while carrying my phone.
In its lowest power/lowest accuracy mode, a 5-hour marathon burned 11%. I’d estimate you’ll get close to 45 hours run time with the Apple Watch Ultra 2.
In the 17-hour Low Power mode with regular heart rate and GPS readings, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 burned 33% for a run close to 8 hours. I estimate this mode could well stretch to 24 hours run time.
Finally in the regular GPS mode, a 7.5 hour run burned 37%. While a 1-hour run in normal power mode burned just 5%
When it comes to day to day training, it’s obviously miles off the monthly training time you get on a single charge of the likes of the Garmin Enduro 3. But for me it stretched to 2 days of regular training in full power mode with general daily usage between runs. You might get three days if you tweak the power settings in between runs.
One limiter here, however, is the overnight battery burn, which was around 10% in my tests. That’s quite high and puts a cap on the multi-day potential.
RW verdict
The first-gen Apple Watch Ultra set a new benchmark for smartwatches with genuine running credentials and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 builds on that — if only in a small way. Most of the iterative upgrades between the OG Ultra and the Ultra 2 are general improvements rather than run specific, so the overall running watch capabilities haven’t changed that significantly. If you already own an Apple Watch Ultra, I wouldn’t recommend upgrading. If you can find a cheap deal on a first-gen, I’d go for that.
However, if you’re willing to part with the big bucks, this is still the best running smartwatch you can buy. Note that I said running smartwatch and not running watch. It’s a lovely piece of kit, well built, durable, refined. I like the design – though I wish it were a little lighter. The screen is top notch and the breadth of apps to boost the running capabilities is unrivalled. Plus, there’s loads here outside of running that I wish my Garmin could, but probably never will, do.
I’ve said this with every Apple Watch and I’m not sure it’s ever going to change. I still see the Apple Watch as a life tool that can take care of running business, rather than an ‘out and out’ running watch. While this is an increasingly powerful running tool and the GPS, heart rate and battery life are all now pretty excellent, I’d still only recommend it to those who care more about the smartwatch capabilities than they do about the pure-play running credentials.
While it’s great for general, casual running, it lacks the depth of running-specific features, fitness analytics and integrated mapping and navigation tools, to be a true replacement for a Garmin Fenix 8 or an Enduro 3. Plus, that 2-3-day battery life still doesn’t quite cut it when you can pop the Garmin Fenix 8 on charge once a month.
You Might Also Like
