We’re well past the era when year-over-year Apple Watch upgrades made any sense at all, and I’d argue that even if you bought the original Apple Watch Ultra three years ago, there’s still no real reason for most people to even entertain an upgrade to the brand new Ultra 3. Comparing this model to the two-year-old model it replaces leaves so little to talk about that I find myself scouring Apple’s compare page to remind myself what exactly I can even talk about in this review.

Battery life

I happy to report that it wasn’t just changes to how Apple measures battery life, the stamina of the Ultra 3 is noticeably better than my Ultra 2. I’m a relatively light Apple Watch user, but I do sleep tracking every night and record 60-90 minutes of outdoor walk and run workouts everyday. I always have my phone with me, so I’m effectively never stressing the cellular functionality or pairing AirPods to the watch itself.

Apple advertises 36 hours of battery life on the Ultra 2, and I would regularly get 40-48 hours on a charge. Apple has bumped their prediction up to 42 hours in the Ultra 3, and I routinely get 55-62 hours, or about 2.5 days.

An interesting mental side effect of this is that I actually initially thought I was getting pretty poor battery life with this new watch. I was getting low battery alerts in the afternoon, which I wasn’t used to. Since the Ultra 2 got basically 2 days of battery, I was on a consistent routine of charging it before bed every other day. This behavior was backed up my watchOS poking me around 8pm reminding me it might be a good idea to charge before bed. I guess I’d gotten used to the added battery, because these new low battery alerts weren’t coming on day 2, they were coming on day 3.

I think I’ll generally have the same 2-day charging schedule with this watch since it can’t quite make it to the end of day 3 for me, but having that extra juice is nice for those weekend trips where I leave the charger at home and those busy days where I am off my normal charging routine.

The new display

The “new” display here is basically the same screen upgrade the Series 10 got last year, so it’s not the most thrilling thing ever, but it is my low-key favorite thing about this model upgrade.

The six added pixels around all 4 edges slightly reduce the bezels, but the Ultra still has chunky bezels compared to the Series and even the new SE models, so that’s no big deal to me.

The new LTPO3 display tech offers better off-axis visibility, which I was able to see when doing a side-by-side comparison, but it’s pretty minor. This was never really a challenge for me in the first place.

What really moved the needle for me is the fact that the screen updates every second when in the always-on mode. This means you see seconds tick away on the watch face, and this makes the watch feel more like a classic watch to me in a very big way. I routinely need to track thins in seconds, not minutes, and it was always annoying to have to twist my wrist or tap the screen every few seconds to see them on older watches. Now it just acts like an old-school watch and that’s great.

One criticism I have here is that this 1-second refresh rate is not consistent across the experience. The time on the watch face updates every second, but complications still update once a minute. The Workout app gets per-second updates during a workout, but Map doesn’t when navigating somewhere. Timers tick down the seconds in their app, but as stated above, not on the watch face. I’m not horribly bothered by this, but it would be nice if Apple let me treat this more like the “ultra” watch it is and spend a little of that battery performance on enabling the new always-on refresh rate in more places where it makes sense.

Everything else

Beyond that, almost nothing has changed with this model. The cellular modem has been upgraded to 5G and supports Emergency SOS just like the last few iPhones, which are nice things to have, even if they're unlikely to change my life in any way. That said, Apple markets this to people who are going out into the wilderness where this might be more practical, so for the right person this could be really good for them.

The new S10 chip powering the watch isn't meaningfully faster than the S9 from the Ultra 2 in my use.

The charging speed is marginally quicker, going from 0-80% in 45 minutes compared to 60 minutes on the last two Ultra models, although I haven't changed my watch charger in years, so I don't think I'm getting any benefit here either.

Final thoughts

I think the Apple Watch Ultra has been a really great product right from the jump, and whether you got one today or 3 years ago, I think you've still got a very capable device. I thought the Ultra 2 was a massive disappointment as its only remotely notable update was the double-tap gesture, which I actively disliked. This upgrade, which I recognize is not "worth it" to many people, at least makes the product feel meaningfully better in my eyes. The new always-on tech makes it so the screen just always feels "on" to me, which has always been the dream of smart watches. And the updated battery performance means I easily get to a third day on a single charge, which is lovely as well.

As for the cost, $799 is a lot to ask for these upgrades, but Apple gave me $350 back for me two-year-old Ultra 2, so I was $450 out of pocket for this upgrade. I recognize that's not nothing, but considering I'll use this everyday for at least 2 more years and the changes make it genuinely nicer, it's something I can justify (if only just). As I've said, if you already have an Ultra and don't find the things I've mentioned super compelling, then you're surely fine to hold off for another year or two.