Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review: The Most Capable Apple Watch Yet

Well, to be honest, it began with a dead phone on the back roads outside Dover. It was not a dramatic tale, just me, a rented kayak stuffed into the truck bed and a quick detour to Killens Pond which ended up being an hour of driving down unmarked county roads as my phone’s GPS succumbed somewhere past the cornfields. When I reconnected to the cell signal my battery was at 4% and my patience was lower than that. I sat on my porch with my legs burnt from sitting in a never used kayak and opened the Apple Store just out of curiosity. No intentions to buy.

I had checked out the Ultra line and stopped for Watch Ultra 3, I had long admired it like a boat you really didn’t have the money to purchase for. But that night, as I slowly scrolled through the configurator while I was really tired from a long day of doing nothing useful, there was a click. I didn’t want a smartwatch, I wanted a smart cell phone. I wanted something that wouldn’t give out on me like my phone.

Apple Watch Ultra 3 Quick Specs

Choosing the Band Nobody Talks About

Everyone is writing about The Trail Loop or Ocean Band when they review the Ultra. Hiking blogs love them, people in the boating and fishing community down at Bowers Beach are dedicated to them, and I’m not surprised, they are the obvious choices here. I’m no ordinary person, but as soon as I saw the Titanium Milanese Loop in Natural, it was all I could think about.

Well, it’s not a common occurrence to fall in love with the accessory before the device, but this is what happened. This Milanese mesh is elegant in its quiet, almost architectural simplicity, no buckle for the clasp, no holes to measure for, no places where it can be misplaced; simply a band that folds magnetically wherever you put your wrist that day. 

With the Natural Titanium case, things no longer felt like outdoor gear and began to feel more like the kind of watch I might wear to a meeting at Legislative Hall one day, and a kayak the next. It was the versatility that sold me on this. I write about gadgets for a living, but I also have to look like I write about gadgets, if that makes sense.

I will state that the cost stopped me at the cashier. The Milanese Loop is far from the lowest-priced band on the Ultra 3, which from the beginning comes in at $899. Open the cart, I sat with it all day long before I pulled the trigger. I thought about the cornfields, and the dead phone experience and I clicked on buy.

Unboxing: Heavier Than I Expected, In a Good Way

Upon arrival two days later, dropped off right at my porch, I remember being surprised at how heavy the case was when I lifted it out of the box. Not this is too heavy, but this feels like it costs what I paid for. Titanium is a strangely light metal that at the same time feels more solid than aluminum. The Natural finish is not shiny or polished, rather it has a brushed look, more like matte, and absorbs light differently depending on the angle from which it is viewed. It was a light gold color under my kitchen lights. It was almost silver on the porch at golden hour.

I took a few moments to get used to the Milanese band. No notch counting, no fiddling with which hole fits, it wraps around and presses the magnetic closure and is adjusted to fit right. The first time I used it left me with a slightly numb wrist after 20 minutes. The lesson learned is that the mesh will settle next to the skin when you are wearing it, which doesn’t happen with silicone.

Installation was nearly effortless.. It connects to my iPhone in just a few minutes, with my old watch faces, the Activity rings history and my Apple Music downloads transferred over. No manual restoring, no looking through settings menus.

The First Week: Getting Used to a Watch That Won’t Let You Ignore Your Body

I’m not the type of person who obsesses over fitness. I talk about gadgets, I spend my day sitting at a desk, I drink more coffee than I claim to. So, the first few days were not about the exercise, but more about ambient awareness. The watch listened to me complain about a deadline to an editor, and subtly reminding me to get up and move with a stand reminder while I was in the middle of a 3 hour writing marathon.

What surprised me, was that the Always-On Retina display, at up to 3000 nits, was really the brightest screen I’ve ever used on any wearable. I checked in the thick humidity of June in Delaware, with the sun blazing off the surface of Silver Lake, and the time was still perfectly legible, no squinting, no shading with my hand. But the one thing that blew me out of my mind was the Vitals app. All these daily metrics of heart rate, respiration rate, wrist temperature, and duration of sleep are neatly packaged in one screen every morning. I began to look at it before I looked at my phone and that was something I never thought I’d say about myself.

It was a small, almost funny moment around day 4. My sleep was disturbed by a thunderstorm that swept through Kent County early this morning, about 2 a.m., though I didn’t feel afraid it was coming, I just felt it, and the watchmen gently touched me in the morning with a watch flag, not an alarm or lecture, but a simple note in the Vitals summary: Numbers are outside the usual range. It wasn’t dramatic. It made me GO TO BED earlier that night rather than saying I will! I guess it was either because I changed my behavior, or I finally listened to data that I had ignored over the last few years, but something happened.

The other surprise was the ECG app. I don’t have a history of heart trouble, I don’t need to be constantly checking it and yet, there’s something about a real reading in thirty seconds and a finger on the crown. I ran it twice within the first week because I just wanted to see what it did, kind of like you would poke and see about a new gadget, and both times I was a little more aware of my body than the week prior.

However, when it comes to blood pressure, Apple Watch Ultra 3 doesn’t do the same thing as a traditional blood pressure monitor, so it won’t provide a systolic/diastolic reading, such as 120/80 mmHg. It can track your blood pressure over time, and send alerts if your patterns are indicative of high blood pressure. It also enables the monitoring of blood oxygen, which is a different health measurement altogether.

Battery Life: The Part Everyone Actually Cares About

I expected the usual Apple Watch battery routine , charging it every night like a phone and planning my day around its limits. That never really happened. I managed a full day of notifications, a walk around my block, some app usage, and sleep tracking overnight and had battery to spare by the end of the day. Apple puts a 42 hours rating on the Ultra 3 and when I first used it, that seemed to hold true with no abuse of it or turning off features to achieve that rating.

The actual challenge was during a weekend trip up to Rehoboth, where I left my charging cable at home. I had to use Low Power Mode, I predicted the worst. Two full days later, with the sand in my shoes, it was still there, still monitoring my sleep and displaying notifications, although some of the more elaborate always-on features were muted. I didn’t test it for as long as Apple states (which is up to 72 hours), but I’m now more impressed than I was.

I don’t remember being concerned at all about whether or not that watch would survive, just as I don’t remember the weather. I used to have this problem with my old phone and charger where if it was forgotten, it would be useless by lunchtime and unusable an hour later with the watch. I really forgot that the watch was running on a borrowed battery until I looked at it on the second evening at the beach house, and said, Oh! I forgot this is on a borrowed battery. I almost hadn’t thought about that.

It is also a joy to charge. With the magnetic fast charger, I can charge for about 15 minutes and get back 12 hours of use,enough that I can make a cup of coffee in the morning without having to charge all night.

Living With It: Small Moments That Added Up

The things that really made a difference in my daily routine were the ones I didn’t read about. The double tap action to skip a podcast episode or mute a call without touching your phone, ridiculous. Like how satisfying it felt the first few times, especially with both hands full of grocery bags. What I didn’t have to think about is whether or not I could wear it kayaking, fishing or when it suddenly rained in Delaware in the summer. It was the water resistance rating, 100 meters for pool laps to scuba.

Then there was the night I tried to use the satellite Emergency SOS as I was driving on a back road south of Dover where cell phone reception is nonexistent. It worked, albeit not during a real emergency, just out of curiosity. I watched the watch as it walked me calmly over to the closest satellite, knowing that the feature will exist for the actual emergency. I hope I never go out on one of these empty farm roads while using it.

Quick Scoreboard

Would I Buy It Again?

Yes, but for different reasons than what I had hoped for when I got there. I believed I was getting a more durable and powerful Apple Watch, but I was not. I was expecting something more rugged and powerful from the Apple Watch, but no. I got a watch, however, that took at least a dozen little worries off my plate like worrying about dead battery, can I get wet?, is someone going to find me?, even in this quiet, small town, where nothing particularly dramatic happens. The Natural Titanium Milanese Loop proved to be the right move as well. The only rugged tech I’ve ever had anyone describe as rugged tech without me telling them.

It is not a cheap watch and it is not trying to be. But it’s been three weeks since I first did the drive past the cornfields with my dead phone and it feels like it was so long ago. It was, in fact.