How can they call 36 hours of battery life "long"? The $799 version Garmin Fenix 7 solar (which they seem to be targeting) has an 18-22 days of battery life.
I totally agree with you as well. I currently have a Garmin Fenix 6 pro and it lasts around 14 days. As someone who is into trail running and backpacking, a 36 hour battery life is untenable, and charging it every night seems like a pain.
The irony is that AirPods have a really great battery life (especially the carrying case) despite the small form factor, and are my go-to for long runs.
The real irony of the charge-at-night model is that you miss the single biggest source of error in human life: lack of sleep. Accurate sleep measurement is, on a day-to-day basis, far more valuable than many of the features advertised on this system. That said, the red night vision setting, dive computer capability, and the iPhone's satellite messaging capability are pretty awesome. Combined with the ability for the parent-child Apple Watch pairing capability, I can imagine a legit workforce management system (imagine a commander in Ukraine, for example, being able to manage his troops' sleep through basic watchstander schedule modifications).
Dumb question, if I may, having never used a GPS smartwatch: How easy to use are the Garmin watches on the trails? Can I download a certain route (like from Alltrails or Trailforks or Gaia) onto it and then have it position + route me in the woods, with just GPS and no cell signal?
I don't really want a smartwatch (ugh, slack on my wrist? no thanks), but a backpacking safety companion would be awesome!
Only in "smartwatch" mode - ie. pretty much everything is turned off. In GPS mode, you get 73 hours (which is more than the 60 you get on the Watch Ultra in conservation mode, yes, but vastly lower than "18-22 days"!)
On the Garmin devices, you start recording when you are performing an activity. The idea is that when you're running, riding, whatever, you start recording it as needed. The GPS doesn't run unless you're active.
You can leave the other sensors like HRM and pulseox enabled when outside of "activities," and bluetooth is connected by default when in an activity or not, so I don't know where your "everything is turned off" assertion comes from.
So this is 73 hours of actually being active. Even if you're moving all day, you wouldn't ever set it to record GPS data while you're resting, and you'd over double the battery life from what you describe.
I'm a moderately active person, riding and/or running several hours a week, and have an older Garmin device with HRM always on and pulseox enabled during sleep. I charge the thing maybe once a week, usually during a shower after a run. There's really just no way you can squint at this and come to the conclusion that Apple is in the same ballpark on battery life.
The Apple Watch battery life quote seems misleading due to this: "1. During normal use, Apple Watch Ultra can reach up to 36 hours of battery life with iPhone present."
Normal use WITH an iPhone present. I have a feeling the Apple Watch by itself in GPS mode will be much less.
I definitely agree with you. Even my Garmin Phoenix 5x plus will last multiple days with GPS usage for Backcountry camping. Another factor I worry about is the durability of the screen. Although you should always travel with backup Maps nobody wants to lose their primary navigation tool because a touch screen is nicer than Sapphire glass displays.
That said the Apple watch is a nicer experience than the Phoenix which I don't tend to take out of the house too often outside of activities now. Indeed the Apple watch is claiming to be usable for recreational scuba for which the Phoenix is not and you would need to use an alternative Garmin watch
Perhaps the next iteration of the ultra watch will have features to extend battery life beyond the 60 hours in low battery mode it claims and hopefully towards 100 hours (14 hours * 7 days) of usage on low battery
> Even my Garmin Phoenix 5x plus will last multiple days with GPS usage for Backcountry camping.
Sporadic GPS usage, I'm guessing, since Garmin themselves only claim 13 hours of GPU usage (can't tell if it has UltraTrac though - the 5x non-plus can do 50 hours in UltraTrac mode.)
What is the value of having 18 days of battery on a device like this? To me there are diminishing returns pretty quickly when it comes to battery life. I agree, there is a lot of value if you are able to hit 72-96 hours and you can go away for a weekend without worrying about charging, but 18 days seems like a waste. Are people really regularly away from their chargers for that long? At that point, I would much rather have a lighter device or one with more features.
I recently returned from week long road trip, and while my wife would plug in and charge her Apple Watch every single night, I kept wearing my Pebble without a thought at all -- didn't even pack a charger.
Granted, it does have fewer features, but how good are all those whiz-bangs if the battery is dead?
The value is you can leave it on your wrist without having to take it off all the time to charge it. Like a normal watch. It's one less thing to have to have go flat on you because you forgot to charge it the night before. One less thing to be a slave to charging.
I’d love to not have to charge my watch on a 10 day backpacking trip. I’m old enough that most of my formative camping trips were before cell phones, and taking a charger and battery on a hike seems crazy to me. :)
I don't need 18 days. I'd like to be able to go on a trip without worrying about bringing yet another charger though. So for me, getting to 6 or 7 days is the sweet spot. I'm guessing the AWU will hit 4-5 in low power mode for people who don't use it intensively. But of course the battery will only get worse over time, and if you're running in low power mode that takes much of the value out of having an AW in the first place.
Battery is a big reason why I mostly don’t use my fairly old Apple Watch. Daily charging is mostly more trouble than it’s worth. As some point I may just get a new Fenix. I also don’t find any of the available Apple Watch outdoor apps all that great.
I've enjoyed 23 days of battery life with Amazfit Bip for four years, and will never get a watch that requires charging more often than, say, two weeks.
The last time I had a smartwatch with "long" battery life like that was 2018 with a Polar M600. I got tired of charging it all the time and upgraded to a Garmin with a week of battery life.
It really annoys me to have to charge my Apple Watch every day, especially because I want/need it for both sleep tracking and exercise tracking. If I use it for sleeping it invariably runs out of bettery during the night, then in the morning when I want to work out I have to charge it before the gym, it's just frustrating. I would LOVE three days of charge.
Agreed. They say this is for explorers and adventure, but it seems like I’d be out of charge after the first segment of a backpacking trip. Need a map of an area for the return or the next day? Good luck.
It's not a huge deal. When I go on multi-day backpacking trips, I carry battery packs and/or solar chargers with me anyway, because I need to be able to charge my phone.
Agreed. I'm a competitive runner and nobody in that community is showing up to interval workouts with an Apple watch. I don't see this watch changing that, especially when better battery life and tracking (which is all the road/track running segment really cares about) can be had at a fraction of the cost with Garmin or Coros. The ultra/hiking community will run into problems with the 36 hour battery life, especially if they're using the map features.
I really have a hard time seeing who this watch is for.
I put in an order for one. I currently wear an Apple Watch Series 4 every day, which I use for logging workouts and other health metrics, and as a daily-driver smartwatch for receiving notifications, checking time and weather, etc. This seems like a really worthy upgrade to me - with the parts that interest me in particular being the improved battery life, larger and brighter screen, always-on display, and cellular support (which my current watch doesn't have).
> I really have a hard time seeing who this watch is for.
I would say basically anyone who likes their Apple Watch (and there are a lot of us out there), is comfortable with the size and aesthetic, and has $800 to blow on a smart watch.
Remember will be 60 hours in low power mode, and that seems to only disable things such as always on (which I always disable with hikes as drastically improves battery life and theater mode), and won't auto detect workout, but one can easily just set to hike or what not when starting the workout manually. 60 hours for all the benefits of the watch seems impressive. The 49mm size however will be the bigger issue presumably for most woman and men with small wrists, since the small was already large for that demographic.
I think this is a the first act from apple entering into active lifestyle market for the endurance/outback/mountain and outgoing folks.
It is definitely not for me this year, it does not have the battery life I need during an excursion and there is no possibility of charge on the go (like good old Garmin watches that you can charge while using during an activity).
But in few years it will advance the same way apple watch has advanced :-).
Same with cyclists. Head units from Garmin or Wahoo are far superior but an Apple Watch could be a decent alternative if it at least supported ANT+ to connect a power meter and a range of sensors. Or Strava Live Segments (maybe they do via the Strava App?).
Currently The Apple Watch is a nice casual fitness tracker and the Watch Ultra doesn't change any of that.
> I got the feeling it's one of those products designed for regular people who like to roleplay as explorers
This seems like an overly cynical take to me.
I agree that the marketing was a bit over the top, and most people who buy one will not be doing things like running ultra marathons in the Sahara. And for people who do those things, there are probably better watches out there from Garmin, etc.
But you don't need to be an explorer (or roleplay as one) to benefit from the longer battery life, larger and brighter display, improved GPS accuracy, improved audio and microphone quality, etc.
Kind of... Apple's sleep tracking is by far the best on the market[1]. However if your watch doesn't last many days it's a pain in the ass to use it that way, because you charge it overnight instead of tracking your sleep.
Though I would tend to agree with you (and many other commenters clearly do).
I think this is just how Apple markets themselves. They know that most of the people who buy the Apple watch are not going to use it for 100 milers, and don't need the extra battery life.
I love how they call it a "revolutionary new design", yet most people on the street likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the Ultra and non-ultra.
I don’t think their phone is going to get a lot of traction either, considering that the competitors phones all have about a week of battery life. My Nokia 5110 actually lasts about ten days without charging.
Now you see the Apple Watch Series N wherever you go, which is ~$400, not the Ultra. It will be interesting to see how common the ultra is over the next few years. My guess is it won't be super common, as it's large, fairly unattractive (IMO), and much more expensive for features that don't even match the competition that much of this Garmin/Ultra/etc type of demographic cares about.
There are third-party wireless chargers that can charge your phone, airpods and watch concurrently, but I agree, it seems silly having to deal with many small batteries on a daily basis.
The only long-lasting battery is the iPhone's, but it gained that capability years after it became common in comparable Android phones.
You have to realize Apple is creating the equivalent of the luxury Mercedes G-Wagon for off-roading, when in reality a Jeep Rubicon (Garmin) addresses all of your real needs at 1/3 the price.
The problem with Garmin is that they obsessively fragment/segment/differentiate their market/products.
It's infuriating that such an expensive watch will be unable to do some basic feature because they want to sell a "golf" version of the watch or a "sailing" version and so on.
They'll also release some feature that clearly is possible to implement on even current products elsewhere in the lineup - and isn't even really implemented on the watch at all but just some processing done on their cloud. But you don't get the feature, even if you bought a current model elsewhere in the lineup, because only the new watches get it.
With increased competition, supply chain issues, and consumer spending tightening it's been amusing to see Garmin suddenly drop much of that; the Vivoactive 4 and Forerunner 255 are absent most of their typical segmentation crap. The Forerunner 255 is a running watch that supports cycling power meters, for example, which had been a feature that had been limited to their absurdly expensive, huge, gaudy-looking "Fenix" watches.
Famously, Steve Jobs rescued Apple from oblivion largely by stopping their market segmentation and forcing the company to have "one great product in each major category". As in one phone, one PC, one music player, etc...
Meanwhile Apple's competition is flailing around releasing literally hundreds of minor model variations each, which all require design, parts sourcing, warehousing, warranty support[1], standards licensing, FCC approvals, etc...
Remember Nokia? They had something like over 100 phone models when Apple release the iPhone!
More models isn't more choice. It's more confusion, more fragmentation, more overhead, and more upset customers that can't get the combination of features they want.
[1] This one in particular is a killer, especially in some markets like California and Australia. Needing to keep spares on hand for legally-mandated warranty drags down the profitability or jacks up the price for a lot of companies that don't "get" the Apple Way of having fewer SKUs.
Garmin’s branding and segmentation is complete mess. After hour of browsing I still cannot figure out what to buy and the real differentiators. Their compare tool is useless. It has all the characteristics of no attention to details. The whole company is surviving simply because they turn off GPS, wifi and always on to boost the battery life to 5X. There is no other visible magic souse. It is also beyond me why Apple can’t simply add “modes” to extend battery life is same manner.
I generally agree with your points, but cycling power meters had been supported even on some older Forerunner models like the 935 that was released in 2017. It's cheaper and smaller than a Fenix, but internally shares much of the same hardware and software.
It seems like Garmin is missing out on an opportunity to upsell existing device owners on apps. Like if someone sails occasionally then they're probably not going to spend $800 for another smart watch with sailing features, but they might spend $20 to add the sailing app to their existing device.
36/60 hours still seems pretty low to me honestly in an adventuring context. Apple had a great opportunity to innovate the watch massively but this is kinda disappointing. Software is cool, as always, but hardware is the let down. The bands seem pretty cool though.
I'm more concerned about the safety aspects of using an app running on a consumer watch for this kind of purpose. We've all seen the "water resistance is not a permanent condition...limited warranty does not cover water damage" warning before.
Can a user of this app easily determine whether the waterproofing of the watch has been compromised, perhaps invisibly? After all, most Apple products rely on double sided adhesives and thin rubber membranes for waterproofing, due to sensors etc, but most other watches use a O-ring seal or similar. What happens if the App crashes, or the watch experiences a freeze/reboot during a dive? Will the app relaunch and handle its state correctly? Will the battery aging impact ability to prevent unexpected restarts in cold water?
My past experiences with mobile apps and devices has been that while in the vast majority of situations they work fine, due to the large feature surface area and constraints associated with being a general purpose device, there are caveats to using them for a fixed purpose, where preventing failure could be critical. This is usually why purpose made equipment like dive computers are bulky and expensive, and I'm not sure this is the answer.
I have a Suunto Spyder which I bought around 2003. It was the first dive computer that was small enough to be worn as a daily driver.
The thing about Spyder is that I need to replace its battery every two-three years, but otherwise it still does exactly what it did in 2003.
The thing about AWU is that it will long be a deadweight brick, while my Spyder will just keep on going. That's what bothers me about Apple-made dive computers.
Already preordered and am looking forward to using it for freediving. The UX on dive watches has long been a nightmare, they are expensive, and the replaceable batteries open them up to waterproofing issues. Most computers also treat freediving/spearfishing as an afterthought so I'll probably create my own software for it. Maybe a business opportunity here...
The freediving UX on the Garmin Descent Mk2 series seems fine to me. Have you tried it? The battery is rechargable and lasts a long time so there's no need to replace it.
The only catch is the scuba diving (aka dive computer) feature relies solely on 3rd party app. It happens that Oceanic+ to be the first one and the first one that will requires a subscription.
I ordered and cancelled the order right after I read the fine lines of the 3rd party and subscription requirement of the app.
I guess I would go back to a better, dedicated dive computer at this price point then.
Really hoping they solve the rumored glucose monitoring at some point. I've never owned an apple watch, but I would dump all my traditional watches, oura ring and CGM.
Size is probably driven by the size of the electronics, size of batteries, and size of screen. You could probably get a usable system on a smaller screen, but the rest of it, I suspect, is already up against the limits of what we can manufacture today.
There is a general trend of huge watches though outside of these concerns. Omega seamaster used to be available in 36mm. No more. Even the larger ones went from 40mm to 41mm, and last year they upped it to 42mm.
They also mentioned being able to use it with gloves on. You'll need bigger controls for that. Plus reading and interacting with it underwater probably is better with a bigger screen as well.
I’m a man with 6 1/4” wrists, a 40mm traditional watch looks enormous on my wrist, I can’t even imagine what a 2” wide Apple Watch Ultra would look like.
My every watch is 36mm, I’d definitely buy a sub 40mm Apple Watch.
Most ladies, and many men like myself have small wrists, so the "small" apple watch is already quite large compared to normal watches for most woman or men with small wrists. The "large" would over hang on many of those people, so you can only imagine how a 49mm would fit for most woman and people with thin wrists.
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The irony is that AirPods have a really great battery life (especially the carrying case) despite the small form factor, and are my go-to for long runs.
I don't really want a smartwatch (ugh, slack on my wrist? no thanks), but a backpacking safety companion would be awesome!
Only in "smartwatch" mode - ie. pretty much everything is turned off. In GPS mode, you get 73 hours (which is more than the 60 you get on the Watch Ultra in conservation mode, yes, but vastly lower than "18-22 days"!)
You can leave the other sensors like HRM and pulseox enabled when outside of "activities," and bluetooth is connected by default when in an activity or not, so I don't know where your "everything is turned off" assertion comes from.
So this is 73 hours of actually being active. Even if you're moving all day, you wouldn't ever set it to record GPS data while you're resting, and you'd over double the battery life from what you describe.
I'm a moderately active person, riding and/or running several hours a week, and have an older Garmin device with HRM always on and pulseox enabled during sleep. I charge the thing maybe once a week, usually during a shower after a run. There's really just no way you can squint at this and come to the conclusion that Apple is in the same ballpark on battery life.
Normal use WITH an iPhone present. I have a feeling the Apple Watch by itself in GPS mode will be much less.
Retina display with 2k nits. I guess it looks awesome.
I prefer my garmin too. I charge it like two times a month and my gps fixes very fast and is very accurate
/s but only so slightly
That said the Apple watch is a nicer experience than the Phoenix which I don't tend to take out of the house too often outside of activities now. Indeed the Apple watch is claiming to be usable for recreational scuba for which the Phoenix is not and you would need to use an alternative Garmin watch
Perhaps the next iteration of the ultra watch will have features to extend battery life beyond the 60 hours in low battery mode it claims and hopefully towards 100 hours (14 hours * 7 days) of usage on low battery
Sporadic GPS usage, I'm guessing, since Garmin themselves only claim 13 hours of GPU usage (can't tell if it has UltraTrac though - the 5x non-plus can do 50 hours in UltraTrac mode.)
The explorer focus was just wacky.
So my guess is their thinking is:
- Garmin has 10 times the battery life
- We have a 10 times better user experience
- Most "outdoorsy people" (or prosumers or, let's face it, lazy people who want to look cool) will prefer user experience over battery life
- So we prioritize on that
It’s totally valid to think that a different product more clearly suits your needs - you don’t have to fake incredulity about it.
Granted, it does have fewer features, but how good are all those whiz-bangs if the battery is dead?
(which just happened to me)
Recharging every 36 hours seems reasonable to me, even in very austere conditions.
Their competitors: Garmin, coros all offer weeks of battery life with tradeoffs people in this segment happily make.
I get 20 days of battery life on my coros pace 2. Charging a apple watch every night or two would not be acceptable.
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I really have a hard time seeing who this watch is for.
> I really have a hard time seeing who this watch is for.
I would say basically anyone who likes their Apple Watch (and there are a lot of us out there), is comfortable with the size and aesthetic, and has $800 to blow on a smart watch.
It is definitely not for me this year, it does not have the battery life I need during an excursion and there is no possibility of charge on the go (like good old Garmin watches that you can charge while using during an activity).
But in few years it will advance the same way apple watch has advanced :-).
Currently The Apple Watch is a nice casual fitness tracker and the Watch Ultra doesn't change any of that.
This seems like an overly cynical take to me.
I agree that the marketing was a bit over the top, and most people who buy one will not be doing things like running ultra marathons in the Sahara. And for people who do those things, there are probably better watches out there from Garmin, etc.
But you don't need to be an explorer (or roleplay as one) to benefit from the longer battery life, larger and brighter display, improved GPS accuracy, improved audio and microphone quality, etc.
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=LPqtfC70QTU
I think this is just how Apple markets themselves. They know that most of the people who buy the Apple watch are not going to use it for 100 milers, and don't need the extra battery life.
I love how they call it a "revolutionary new design", yet most people on the street likely wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the Ultra and non-ultra.
The only long-lasting battery is the iPhone's, but it gained that capability years after it became common in comparable Android phones.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
You have to realize Apple is creating the equivalent of the luxury Mercedes G-Wagon for off-roading, when in reality a Jeep Rubicon (Garmin) addresses all of your real needs at 1/3 the price.
It's infuriating that such an expensive watch will be unable to do some basic feature because they want to sell a "golf" version of the watch or a "sailing" version and so on.
They'll also release some feature that clearly is possible to implement on even current products elsewhere in the lineup - and isn't even really implemented on the watch at all but just some processing done on their cloud. But you don't get the feature, even if you bought a current model elsewhere in the lineup, because only the new watches get it.
With increased competition, supply chain issues, and consumer spending tightening it's been amusing to see Garmin suddenly drop much of that; the Vivoactive 4 and Forerunner 255 are absent most of their typical segmentation crap. The Forerunner 255 is a running watch that supports cycling power meters, for example, which had been a feature that had been limited to their absurdly expensive, huge, gaudy-looking "Fenix" watches.
Meanwhile Apple's competition is flailing around releasing literally hundreds of minor model variations each, which all require design, parts sourcing, warehousing, warranty support[1], standards licensing, FCC approvals, etc...
Remember Nokia? They had something like over 100 phone models when Apple release the iPhone!
More models isn't more choice. It's more confusion, more fragmentation, more overhead, and more upset customers that can't get the combination of features they want.
[1] This one in particular is a killer, especially in some markets like California and Australia. Needing to keep spares on hand for legally-mandated warranty drags down the profitability or jacks up the price for a lot of companies that don't "get" the Apple Way of having fewer SKUs.
It seems like Garmin is missing out on an opportunity to upsell existing device owners on apps. Like if someone sails occasionally then they're probably not going to spend $800 for another smart watch with sailing features, but they might spend $20 to add the sailing app to their existing device.
Garmin is targeting the actual market of consumers who are going deep outdoors. Apple is targeting the much bigger market of everyone else.
"along with recreational scuba diving to 40 meters with the new Oceanic+ app."
I was looking at $1,000 Garmin watches and was really not excited at buying one.
Can a user of this app easily determine whether the waterproofing of the watch has been compromised, perhaps invisibly? After all, most Apple products rely on double sided adhesives and thin rubber membranes for waterproofing, due to sensors etc, but most other watches use a O-ring seal or similar. What happens if the App crashes, or the watch experiences a freeze/reboot during a dive? Will the app relaunch and handle its state correctly? Will the battery aging impact ability to prevent unexpected restarts in cold water?
My past experiences with mobile apps and devices has been that while in the vast majority of situations they work fine, due to the large feature surface area and constraints associated with being a general purpose device, there are caveats to using them for a fixed purpose, where preventing failure could be critical. This is usually why purpose made equipment like dive computers are bulky and expensive, and I'm not sure this is the answer.
The thing about Spyder is that I need to replace its battery every two-three years, but otherwise it still does exactly what it did in 2003.
The thing about AWU is that it will long be a deadweight brick, while my Spyder will just keep on going. That's what bothers me about Apple-made dive computers.
I ordered and cancelled the order right after I read the fine lines of the 3rd party and subscription requirement of the app.
I guess I would go back to a better, dedicated dive computer at this price point then.
Plenty of ladies have larger risks than me (a man)
My every watch is 36mm, I’d definitely buy a sub 40mm Apple Watch.
Are folks wanting something the size of a jacket button?
As a small-wristed male, I would also love a thin watch, without a lot of the sensors.