The Apple Watch Ultra 4 arrives four years after the original Ultra, bringing a brighter and larger display, satellite connectivity, new health sensors, a more capable chip, and longer battery life. For owners of the first-generation model, the question is whether those cumulative upgrades justify buying now or whether the existing watch can last another year.
Both watches share a 49mm titanium case, an Action button, a siren, dual-frequency GPS, and support for recreational diving to 40 meters. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at $799 in the U.S. Apple discontinued the original Ultra in 2023 and no longer supports the latest major watchOS release.
The Ultra 4 offers a wide-angle LTPO3 OLED display with up to 3,000 nits of brightness, compared with 2,000 nits on the original. Its screen is 5% larger, with thinner borders, and supports 1Hz always-on updates that can show ticking seconds. The new S11 chip, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage replace the S8, 1GB RAM, and 32GB storage of the first model. Health features expand as well, with background heart-rate measurements every five seconds, more frequent HRV tracking, daytime Vitals, a Readiness app, and hypertension notifications.
The Ultra 4 also adds on-device Siri for supported requests, a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip for Precision Finding with AirTag 2 and AirPods Pro 3 cases, and cellular support that now includes 5G. Battery life rises to up to 50 hours of normal use, compared with 36 hours on the original, and satellite features such as Emergency SOS and Find My carry over to the new model.
Source: MacRumors · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing