Apple - Watch Ultra 1
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Reddit Reviews:
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Based on 1 year's data from Jan 26, 2026 How it works
Liked most:
375
56
"I unlock my computer and phone with it."
"the fact that they integrate to the Apple Watch simply cannot be understated for me, I couldn’t go back to Garmin now, it is just so much part of my life now. ... Tracking weightlifting workouts, nutrition and other stuff, analysis of the data, send messages to HomePod, changing NC automatically, sending emails …."
"On the Apple Watch you can be listening to Spotify at your desk, phone, livingroom, car, etc and then hit the device button on the watch and select the watch and Spotify Connect will transfer playback to the watch without missing a beat. ... You don't have to fumble around on a tiny touch screen to locate the playlist you were listening to on your phone so you can continue on the watch. You simply transfer playback and go. ... Mid run if you want to listen to something else, you simply ask Siri and it will play what ever you ask for, no presyncing or phone is necessary."
397
230
"Have run 3 half's and 2 fulls, never have ran out of battery provided they are properly charged beforehand."
"I use it for the same reasons and love it. ... I would not consider the regular Apple Watch because of battery life."
"the battery life easily lasts 10+ hours."
168
53
"I’m one of those people the Apple Watch sent to the doctors 6 years ago and I had heart surgery in August! So it technically saved my life!"
"my AW alerted me to heart irregularities that sent me to the ER and findings of a small heart attack and a secondary artery in my heart with 99% blockage. I am AW for life now."
"it has even detected heart issue during my sleep that got fixed by surgery later on."
100
21
"It will last through 3 good days of hiking while using the GPS, if each day is like 7-8h of hiking, and it goes some sun exposure."
"really happy with the tracking and training guidance it provides. ... Apple’s insights don’t even come close to the detailed analysis and guidance I get with Garmin."
"It's tough and has never failed me on a run or any tracked activity."
227
19
"I have Venu 3 and it has 90% of smartwatch features one would need. You can take/make calls, see all notifications (with pictures), react to them (reply either with predefined messages or T9 keyboard, mark them as read, dismiss/snooze notifications, turn off alarms, delete emails etc.), pay (Garmin Pay), listen to music (local files, Spotify, Google Play etc.). There are also various apps like calendar, calculator, water intake monitor, camera apps (to control phone camera) etc. ... I use mine for getting notifications from phone, reacting to them (dismiss/snooze events, mark messages or mails as read, delete spam emails, quickly respond to messages), taking/making calls sometimes, tracking things like intermittent fasting, water intake etc., playing games while sitting on the toilette :) etc. ... So usually, while at home, I "lose" my phone. I don't even know where it is. I do everything on my laptop and receive notifications on my watch. If it's a spam mail, I will delete it from the watch. If it's important one, I open Gmail on laptop and answer."
"the fact that they integrate to the Apple Watch simply cannot be understated for me, I couldn’t go back to Garmin now, it is just so much part of my life now. ... Tracking weightlifting workouts, nutrition and other stuff, analysis of the data, send messages to HomePod, changing NC automatically, sending emails …."
"I unlock my computer and phone with it."
Disliked most:
27
128
"The battery life is a literal joke. ... Do an activity? There goes 75% of your battery."
"Mine kept dieing one me mid run ... after two years of using it twice hours was about all an aw had battery for when using music and gps! By the 2:15 mark it would be dead. ... When I started running for longer than 2 hrs my battery would die mid run"
"If you’re tracking a multi day hike, or plan on being in the wilderness more than 2 days, the watch is useless to carry with you. ... satellite doesn’t help if your battery is dead"
0
26
"If you are in long sleeves in the rain, you need to lock the touchscreen to prevent accidental touches. But that prevents you from using the touchscreen without holding to unlock for a few seconds. So if you are doing intervals, it can be hard to end the interval quickly."
"the Apple interface being badly interfered with by water/and clothing contact in heavy rain. ... I lost a trail marathon stats and mapping etc mid run. ... It was frankly infuriating"
"I already got sick and tired of touch screens with my Apple Watch ... Dripping sweat, rain and sleeves really screw with touch screens ... where I live we have like 6 months worth of snow so needing to take off my gloves and disable a screen lock before being able to pause my workout is an annoying PITA."
24
55
"I tried using my apple watch at an indoor 25 yard pool and it did extremely poorly. It was off by about 100 yards at the 1000 yard mark."
"Apple Watch will count a mid-lap stroke change (as you described) as two laps very reliably. ... For example: if you do 100IM in a 50m pool, it will appear as 200m IM in the Fitness app. ... So if you are really serious about loving mid-lap stroke changes I wouldn't use it."
"it’s absolute trash at tracking my laps even with the pool length set properly. ... It consistently tracks less than I do"
36
109
"sleep is a disaster ... I was watching TV and I was already asleep ... when I go to the bathroom in the evening, the venu didn't even notice that I was sleeping, or didn't even recognize that I went to the bathroom."
"Sleep tracking is great if you are an amazing sleeper who doesn’t have interrupted sleep or gets up in the night. I get up to pray and when I go back it doesn’t pick up that sleep again. It is an issue because sleep tracking was a major reason for me buying a fitness tracker."
"I also found the sleep tracking on the GW6 to be much more reliable. ... I have small kids so I wake up every now and then during the night and on the Garmin - it's so frustrating to be told in the morning that I had a great night of sleep with only 10 mins of time awake when I spent 40 mins trying to get my 2yo to fall back asleep."
3
135
"It misses key info and HR was clearly elevated compared to baseline even on the Ultra, but it doesn't count that. So a night of drinking and shit sleep, still give you a 95 score! ... But the vitals aren’t accounted by the sleep score as far as I can tell and my HR was higher though not abnormally high by Apple Watch standard but this could be because of sampling it does compared to the Garmin ... both HR and RR were elevated but not enough for Apple to flag but the sleep score doesn’t include those metrics, which I really think they should. ... The sleep scores doesn’t take into account vitals."
"Rep Counting, Diagram and Videos of Workouts, Lactate Threshold (even if not super accurate), and GPS Heatmaps for Team Sports are all super great and simply not present on AW."
"its actually pretty wild how much apple watch will overstate your calories burned, even after a clean on the sensor ... some workouts where the whoop tells me i burned 600 calories, watch tells me i did 900 calories. ... That is a significant difference, especially when you are trying to plan out nutrition goals/fitness goals. ... sometimes when i'm doing a light lift, apple watch will tell me i'm burning 300 - 400 calories, and I'm barley breaking a sweat, but then whoop will say i only burned around 120-150 calories during that session ... to me something just seems suspiciously off with how apple calculates BMR. ... In general if you are looking to lose weight/build fitness, a more conservative approach to what whoop is offering me probably makes more sense."
1-2Midnight 1.0I’m using a awu 1 and a tactix 8 for work
303onrepeat 1.0> Satellite SOS are pretty big sellers for me. This is what I want it for. I drive in a lot of areas where cellphone service does not exist and I need the ability to contact someone if shit goes down. Got the U1 now but I am moving to the U3 because of this.
75Meatbags 1.0From the Ultra 2? Hard to say. I have an Ultra 1 and am thinking about it. But it's not an immediate thing, and if i get a decent trade in value, that will help the decision too.
AJA27 1.0Unfortunely it’s not really accurate enough to actually look for trends. It frequently measures 95% which could be a sign of medical emergency when nothing is wrong. I have an Ultra 1 but if this is your number one reason to get one, then please don’t. Just get a simple blood oxygen sensor for your fingertips which has medical grade accuracy. Ofc I’m no one to tell you what to spend your money on but I would not buy an ultra again, especially not for the blood oxygen sensor. Just waaay too expensive.
anethma 1.0I used to get 2 days when my ultra 1 was new but I’m almost down to 80% battery and now it will die half way through day 2. So I charge it daily.
brianlefebvrejr 1.0I agree. I’m still rocking the AU1. Just had it replaced at the beginning of the year under apple care, just before the extended warranty ran out. Replacement is at 96% and I was able to subscribe to monthly Apple care, no idea how long that lasts but at least I’ll get another 2 years out of it. Maybe the 4 or 5 will be worth an upgrade
Brooks823 1.0I ordered one today to replace my AWU 1. I’ll be using it for swimming, running, and the gym.
bugdelver 1.0Get the ultra. It goes 3 days on a charge and can control your Apple TVs in the house, Bluetooth speakers playing Apple Music, etc. also it allows you to get a good band that is sweat/mud/water proof. I ride 5-6000 miles annually, getting my ultra watch covered in mud, rain, sweat, etc. Is it the best thing if you need data from a power meter? No. Does the watch allow for tracking via Strava, allow you to turn your wrist up to see your hr/distance rode/avg speed quickly? Yes. Will you move onto a bike computer if you get really into cycling eventually? Almost definitely… My Apple Watch Ultra 1 has been going strong for 3 years (month of launch) and still holds 2 days of battery life at a time. The number one issue with Apple Watches is them not holding a charge -Apple figured out that issue… they just keep it behind a (ultra) paywall.
cal_jammer 1.0I’m not super excited about the ultra 3. But i ordered it and still got $250 trade in for my Ultra 1 I’ve had since launch. I may cancel my order and go Garmin. Apples formula is growing tired.
CasablancaDriver 1.0It’s not a big upgrade if you already own one but the bigger battery life of the Ultra 3 is hard to pass if it’s your first. My Ultra 1 day one is aging so bad in that regard. The longer the better.
Also surprised. I used an Enduro 3 all summer, pretty good watch by the way and last gen OHR sensor from Garmin, and the results vs my AWU1 were bad. A lot of cadence lock for example. It was not bad all the time but it was much less reliable than my Ultra gen 1. Then again those kind of results are also very dependent of the user physical profil so I guess it’s hard to make some generality. And I use also an external arm band when I train so…
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