Apple Watch Ultra 3 review: Greater expectations

Four in, the Apple Watch Ultra feels like it’s at risk of being backed into a corner. Right from the very beginning, the ultra-premium wearable was billed as overkill for most everyday users with a bigger battery, a larger screen and a more rugged design. When you’re already so far ahead of the curve, the kind of year-on-year iteration found in its siblings becomes a little harder to find. 

Even so, the third incarnation of Apple's high-end workout wearable ups the ante with more battery life, the same S10 processor found in its siblings, satellite connectivity and a larger display. It’s far from a revolution, but it is a timely redo. The Apple Watch Ultra 3 isn’t likely to sway those outside its target audience, but it ticks all the right boxes for consumers that lie within it. 

In Australia, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 starts at $1399. That makes it one of the most expensive consumer smartwatches out there, beating out the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra by around $100.

Still, you can save some money if you shop around. Check out the table below for a round-up of deals for the Apple Watch Ultra 3.

Since it looks like a dead-ringer for last year’s Apple Watch Ultra 2, there’s no mistaking the new Apple Watch Ultra 3 for the standard Series 11 Apple Watch. The new wearable boasts an LTPO screen that’s larger in both size and resolution. This upgrade offers a higher peak brightness of up to 3000 nits and lower refresh rates of as low as 1Hz. 

Even if the end result still offers a similar look to last year's ultra-premium Apple Watch, these tweaks to the form factor do translate into tangible benefits like greater power efficiency, better off-angle visibility and an always-on display with a moving hands.

Unlike the regular Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is only available in a single 49mm titanium variant. That size might not fit all but I found it wasn’t as much of a burden as I expected, given the difference between it and more mainstream smartwatches. All told, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 weighs around 61.8g. That’s not quite double the weight of a regular smartwatch, but it’s not far off the mark either.

As with predecessors, one edge of the Apple Watch Ultra is host to a speaker and the action button. Meanwhile, its opposite boasts a beefier version of the usual digital crown and shortcut key found on the standard Apple Watch. Naturally, this control scheme lines up pretty neatly with the one found on Apple’s other wearables.

Of course, where the Apple Watch Ultra 3 differs is that it’s built to take more than a few hits. To start with, there’s the standard IP6X dust resistance. Then, there's the titanium body and sapphire crystal display, which tends to offer better scratch resistance over the Ion X one found in the rest of this year’s Apple Watch lineup.

Like the Apple Watch Ultra 2, the third-generation model also comes graded for up to 100m of underwater usage, an EN13319 certification and a MIL-STD 810H grading for military durability. If you don’t understand what half of the above acronyms mean, then the short version is that this might not be the smartwatch for you.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is built to go places where its counterparts cannot and while you don’t need to be a scuba diver to benefit from the bigger screen here, you are paying a pretty sizable premium for it regardless. 

On that note, it’s worth flagging that one of the biggest upgrades that this model has over its predecessor is the addition of support for Satellite SOS connectivity. Again, this isn’t something that most users are going to use every day, but if you’re going off the grid, then it is a solid addition to the arsenal of connectivity options already built into the hardware here. Regardless of where you end up taking the Apple Watch Ultra 3, though, the health tracking happening under the hood here is fairly comprehensive.

Even if you aren’t getting anything extra for going in on Apple’s most expensive smartwatch, you aren’t missing out on anything either. There’s the usual heart rate, sleep, and ECG tracking. There’s also noise monitoring and a whole bunch of other fitness-oriented features built into Apple Health. None of it is new, but it is all nice to have. 

There is one key exception to this. In other regions, the new Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers support for blood oxygen tracking and hypertension notifications. This feature is currently not available in Australia. The most plausible explanation for this is that the feature has yet to receive formal approval from Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). If the rollout of earlier Apple Watch features like ECG in Australia is any precedent, this addition to the formula will eventually make its way down under. It may just take a little longer. 

Blood oxygen tracking isn’t the only feature on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 to come with a similar caveat. 

As reported by WhistleOut, Australian variants of the Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3, and Apple Watch Ultra 3 all ship with 5G connectivity. However, local telcos currently don't offer 5G for smartwatches. Once this changes, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 will be able to connect to 5G. Until then, it’s stuck on 4G.

That being said, this isn’t necessarily going to be a massive deal-breaker for most. Compared to something like a smartphone, there aren't that many use cases for the faster speeds and lower latency that 5G offers when it comes to smartphones. Still, it is something to keep in mind given the steep price you’re paying.

Under the hood, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is powered by the same S10 processor found in the rest of this year’s Apple Watch lineup, which is good news in the sense that it proved to be more than powerful enough to keep up during everyday usage. Even if it is an upgrade on the S9 silicon found in the Apple Watch Ultra 2, it's a little disappointing in that it is the same processor found in last year’s Apple Watch Series 10. When you're paying this much more for your smartwatch, a slightly faster processor feels like a pretty reasonable expectation.

In any case, the hardware powering the Apple Watch Ultra 3 quickly proved itself snappy and responsive. For all my nitpicking above, I can’t really say that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 ever really felt slow or what I'd even use a faster processor for. 

The same can’t be said for the battery life side of the equation.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers a whopping 42 hours of usage per charge as standard, though your mileage may vary as per usual. As with its predecessor, the wearable can go all the way to 72 hours when in low power mode. Then, once it's out of charge, fast-charging ensures you won’t be waiting all that long.

When paired with the right charger, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 can go from 0 to 80% charge in 45 minutes.  If you’ve got even less time to work with, it only takes 15 minutes to get around 12 hours of usage out of the hardware. 

Naturally, not having to worry about charging up the Apple Watch Ultra 3 was one of the biggest perks of relying on it as my standard smartwatch. I’ve used plenty of low-spec devices that offer comparable or even better battery life, but none that come with the snappy performance or comprehensive software support that this one commands.