@@ChaseTheSummit yeah the normal low power mode where you get all the recorded data but the screen turns off until you turn your wrist and messages are delayed. Delayed messages/ alerts are actually good on a race I don’t want to be pinged by emails etc. for navigation work out doors meant no mistakes all day on a self nav course.
This is amazing. If it was just smaller, more buttons, $600 price point, it'd be enough to get me to jump ship from garmin to apple. Maybe awu 2 will make it a tough decision for me.
Workout focus is the way to go. Workout focus will start anytime you start a workout. In that focus you can choose what apps and what people can alert/call/message you when your workout filter is set. you can turn off the talking feature in the workout settings on the watch.
Well done! Just wanted to let you know that you can set it up to pause by pressing the side button and action button together at the same time instead of the side button and crown together. It’s much more ergonomic that way.
pro on ultra side is that you can wear it at the office, and if work travelling you go to meetings with execs, set an outdorsy statement and also look slick. you´re never out of place wearing an apple watch to any type of work event. And you can record your activities, and sports during off-work hours. Cool. People wearing garmins at work or important meetings look off. Disclaimer: I love my Fenix 6 (I´ve own F5 and F3) for mountaineering and serious mapping capabilities and how I can trace a route in my phone and sync with the fenix at base camp and then pursue the summit.
Ran an Ultra (34 mile) last weekend. Everything about the Apple Watch Ultra was brilliant EXEPT me knowing about the water lock! The rain drops registered as presses so it ended recording after 13 miles. SO annoyed! Would LOVE Apple to add a 'cancel' or 'dismiss'n the summary screen after you end a work out. That single extra layer would help with accidental ends. However, not I know about the water lock it (hopefully) won't happen again.
Heyo - you can pause during a run with the action button by pushing it and the opposing button at the same time. Much easier than doing the crown and old button. Action button to load the run, action again to start the run, action + opposite button to pause/resume run. =) Hope that helps!
For sure! I suppose I should have mentioned that but the fact is it’s always a 2 button situation. I wish there was a setting to let you pause/resume with a single press like a Garmin. That’s just me being picky though!
You can start, pause, and resume a workout all with just the action button in WorkOutDoors. (It’s almost a trope for everything Apple left out.) If you go under Settings>Command>Shortcut Gestures>Action Button, you can select Pause/Resume. I understand that this was not a thing for the purposes of this video.
Schedule of my Watch Ultra bought in October 2022: On the wrist: 21:45 Theater mode during night and AutoSleep to check sleep patterns. Wake up: 04:45 (from the watch:)) Calisthenics: from 4:50 to 6:00 using Streaks Workouts or WorkOutDoors when I run during weekend or late afternoons.) Shower, breakfast and work (I’m a teacher) 21:00 Watch Ultra on charge even though it battery is at between 65% and 70%. Of course, I’ve never used to low consumption mode. I love this Watch Ultra.
I was an avid Apple Watch user for many years, but reached a point where I wanted a little less connectivity and longer battery life as well as more substance behind my fitness stats. For those reasons I switched over to the garmin family. I still do enjoy the Apple Watches, but for my needs I felt more supported by garmin.
@@crowehar what stats does apple provide? 🤔 besides HR, distance, pace and calories. I just ditched the AWU for Garmin and it amazing how it can integrate all the recorded data to give you insights and easily understand how everything affects your health and overall training. For example integrating stress (hrv), sleep, previous workouts to determine training readiness or training load. Or telling you how much you’re improving on either fitness or health. Never looking back (until Apple decides to do something actually different with the AW not just a metal jacket and an extra battery day).
@@marcelopadilla1198 I love the insights feature. "Are you ready for more sleep?" As a new dad who's kid is getting his chompers in, yes! But I don't think you can help me Garmin
@@AHungryHunky lol I didn’t mean those insights that pop from time to time. But the actual insights inside of the different widgets or interpretations such as training readiness or recovery
I don't run ultras but I run and cycle and I am a long time Garmin Fenix user. Recently, I've been testing wearing my wife's old Apple Watch Series 6 on my right wrist. I can really see the appeal of the phone on your wrist as well as the superior implementation of fall and crash detection which can notify 911 and not just your emergency contacts. Not to mention the ability to more easily answer texts and use Siri while on long rides seems appealing. Although wearing an Apple Watch Ultra and Fenix at the same time seems a bit extreme in itself.
I own the Apple Watch SE2 and Garmin Instinct Solar. The only thing that brings me back to the Apple Watch is the phone call functionality for emergencies when running on the road. I love my Garmin for the battery life, Apple watch needs to be charged almost every day.
One thing to be careful about with the Apple Watch Ultra: rain. I did an ultra with it and halfway through everything was smooth but it started to rain and along with having my rain coat on top of my wrist, the watch was registering inputs randomly and actually stopped the workout 😢 I noticed it a few miles after and had to start a new workout
Yep, spurious inputs are a real pain - jacket, gloves, rain, wrist etc. Swiping to/from the Stop/Pause/screen is a pain during a race. Due to a spurious input during a race, the watch navigated there. I tried swiping it away, but it inadvertently stopped the workout. Super frustrating.
You can also change what alerts you get by tapping the three dots on the run workout. You can set time alerts for example, to remind you to eat or drink or distance alerts at whatever interval to remind you to eat or drink that’s how I used them anyways. There are other options for things like cadence, etc.
6:11 I am an avid user of the Apple Watch Ultra, and I hear where you’re coming from. If pace and heart rate are important to you and you want the always on display off, you can set an alert that will turn on the screen and tap your wrist when it is triggered. For this, you can go into that setting by tapping the triple dots and scrolling down to the alerts for pace and heart rate. You can make it alert you for a rolling mile an average or current. I prefer the rolling mile pace, alert, because if it is less effected by obstacles or brief speed ups, downhill, and slight slow, downs, uphill.
I haven’t done an ultra or even a marathon (yet) with my Apple Ultra but I have ran a 20 mile long run (2:45) with the Nike, Strava, and Apple all recording my run while also listening to music and I used 22% of the battery. Love your content
@@HaswellCore no the only stats that show up in Apple Health are stuff recorded on Apples workout App or general movement stuff like stand hours and walking. I do think the Nike does count 2xs toward me getting the 7 workout per week ‘award’ but I don’t pay that stuff any mind. Strava is completely separate and not recognized as anything to Apple’s awards, stats etc
I wanted to see how long the battery would last on a marathon day. So I charged it to 100% and left home at 6:46 AM. I biked five miles to the course with music on my AirPods and no phone. Then I ran the whole 26.2 miles using the native workout app and Footpath giving me voice directions from a GPX file. The always on display was on, brightness was set to the highest setting and I used LTE to text and call during the run. With lots of breaks, it took me six hours and 12 minutes to finish. By 1:17 PM, I still had 19% battery left. That’s not bad for such heavy usage, don’t you think?
@David Bell it's simple I have used both ... Ultra makes a difference for me in diving ... soo easy in intuitive the Oceanic+ plus is ... but if you are into outdoor fitness ... garmin fenix 7 is the king ... baterry is great ... connectivity with android or IOS is good ...
I ran a 50k back in October with the AWU new, streamed music for about 2 hours and used the Nike+ app to track the run. Forgot to turn off the always on screen and still managed to keep it alive for about 6.75 hours. I've got another 50k coming up in 2 months and I will be turning off the always on display for that one.
7:44 I couldn’t agree with you more and wishing that Apple had implemented a mapping feature out of the box. Hopefully with watchOS 10! would be curious to see how WorkOutDoors would do on an ultra. Footpath lets you use navigation while recording an activity with another app but that probably would have affected battery life, unfortunately.
Thank you for your video! I try the Apple Watch ultra but if you had to turn off all connections, no music, worry about battery life… a lot of trouble! W Garmin!
I picked up a Coros Pace 2 last year and dumped my Apple series 4 watch and haven’t looked back on Apple. I’ll have my Pace 3 arrive soon and I can’t wait to use that one.
Why didn't you turned Low power Mode on? I have used the Apple Watch Ultra on some long races this year with LPM on, cellular off, bluetooth on (but not connected to anything, not even my iPhone because I usually don't carry it with me on trails) and using WorkOutDoors, sometimes I get an estimated total battery of 20h!
By turning off bluetooth, cell, and WiFi it basically was in Low Power mode. I wanted to see what it could do with these settings. I’ll be doing more testing at longer races in the near future.
Great video as always. Glad to see your toe is good enough for the run. These real life applications are appreciated; seeing actual use cases is great. I wonder how the battery life would be if you kept cellular on, as that is the only reason that I would wear the Apple Watch Ultra over my Garmin. That’s probably my realistic use case, and for others too who want a do-it-all watch.
With cellular on I suspect I could have finished this 6 hours race depending what I was doing (text, phone call, music streaming etc...). Cellular use really depends on how much you use the connection. When it's in standby mode it only sips power but retrieving a large email attachment with a bad signal would tax the battery. I turned everything off to see how much I could milk from the AWU for longer races like 50 milers, or possibly 100 miles. Thanks for watching!
Hey Dave, love your videos! Unfortunately, I'm having trouble figuring out if an Apple Watch ultra is for me because of what my needs are. I currently use a Garmin 245 and my questions about the Ultra are (1) is there a lag time in the start of a run with the ultra or can I just hit the action button to start a run? This is super important to me for track racing and (2) for interval workouts, I need to be able to hit a physical button to register a "lap." Am I apple to set up the action button to do that and (2) how many variables can I display on the Apple Watch Ultra and can I use my Stryd to display power, 10s power, etc directly on the Apple Watch? Can I choose which variables to display like with my Garmin? Thanks!
Great to learn more about your experience running with it in an Ultra. I've run and taken mine on hikes, but no 100k! Good to know it lasts. For cycling I have dedicated bike computers. Hiking/backpacking/camping I still prefer my 7X. But for running up to marathon, the Ultra is perfectly adequate. Sometimes I just run with both my7X and my Ultra because I don't want to bring my phone.
I switched to the Apple Watch Ultra and am very happy with the battery and control speed, but I have some questions about the GPS accuracy. By default, the Apple Watch underestimates the distance. It feels like it's about 100-130 meters short of 10 kilometers. I participated in a HALF competition with someone using an Apple Watch 6 and we both got a distance of 20.85km. The garmin255 measured 21.07km. I think the distance is more accurate when I run a road with workoutdoors selected as gps, even when I use it normally. Have you checked this by any chance? I don't think it's a hardware issue, it's just that Apple is calibrating the distance measurement to be less accurate. The consistency is very good - if I run the same place, it shows the same distance every time.
I’ve been a Garmin user for most of my running starting on my first marathon till my last 100 mile ultra. I’ve also completed an Ironman with a Garmin fenix 3. I just switched to the Apple Watch ultra and plan to run my 50k with it next month. I plan on using the work outdoors app but haven’t decided about the low power mode yet. I did learn that you can charge the watch while using the GPS and it should still work though I’ve not tried it yet. I did the same with the Fenix 3 but it still died at mile 97ish. Hoping to have better results with the apple watch ultra.
You can pause with Apple Watch Ultra by pushing any 2 buttons. So Action button and digital crown or Action button and other button. Love my Apple Watch. Just hoping they add training readiness or something like that this year
After using my Garmin Fenix 7X PRO (51mm), and just charge it once a MONTH, is just liberating from my prior experience with an Apple Watch and that’s with the dual-band GPS turned on, always on and with Smartwatch notifications coming through onto my iPhone. If the Ultra version offered say charging even once a WEEK, that’d be a BIG deal for me. As it stands, the battery needing to be charged every other day or thereabouts (with dual band GPS and always on etc) makes this a non-starter.
Love my Ultra. Like you I haven’t seen them around. I suppose over the years there will be more of them out there. I’m a short distance guy. 5 to 10 km most days. So battery is no issue for me.
Really well summarised. I think the Apple Watch is a great smartwatch that can track fitness activities. I would disagree though on Apple developing apps out of the box though - they create smart devices and allow other developers to create apps. I’ve found that 3rd party apps are often better than Apple apps, which is fine with me. If there was a big development community for Garmin IQ apps, then Garmin would do the same but there isn’t so Garmin have to do the app development also.
What can you say about one thing ? You have to tap the display every 70 second to keep it turned on. In the race I don’t want to tap it or move my wrist. I want to just look at display and see my pace, my HR, and time. It’s the only thing that stop me from buying AWU
The gesture sensing is pretty good on the apple watch and you'll need to raise your wrist anyways to see the watch. For me it's not a huge deal but I suppose you may be more sensitive to it.
Apple also has an Auto Pause feature I just don't like using them in a race environment since they can falsely pause your watch while you're at an aid station or climbing up a steep hill which throws off the timer.
One of the reasons I dropped AW for Garmin was the touch screen issue. Too much sweat or rain made it very hard to use. The action button is an improvement but not perfect. Sorry, but Garmin’s 5 button system is hard to beat.
I wear lots of watches for the sake of testing them on this channel. So take what I’m wearing with a grain of salt! In this video I was wearing the Forerunner 965z
You can press action button + side button at the same time to pause the activity. I found that really convinient rather than pressing side button + crown button, which require a bit unnatural hand position to do so 😅
For sure, I should have mentioned that. I guess I just wish we could use a single button for pause/resume rather than a double press. But I’m just being picky!
I absolutely hate that the other two buttons are on the side and not the top or bottom. I constantly mash them when riding mountain bikes or doing pushups. I have no clue how buttons exactly where your wrist bends to touch them mde it past the prototype stage. Other than that, I love the Ultra.
@@ChaseTheSummit I wanted to be a single click as well but I just got used to grab the watch from the side button so that I press both at the same time (feels nice tho)
I run a 60 KM Ultra and I need 8:40 h with deactivated LTE ok? Start 98%, End 15% I used Workoutdoors and looked at the screen from time to time. I think that was not a good battery Time?
I ran a marathon with a se2 . It barely made it on low power mode, using Bluetooth and playing only downloaded music on spotify. I’m going to be running a 50 mile race in September. Would a serious 8 make it through a 50 mile marathon?
There are a lot of factors. How long will the 50 miler take you? What settings are you using on the watch? It can be done with a Series 8 but it all depends.
I've run 2 50K with the AWS6 and two with the AWS8 without issues of battery at all.. and still had about 35% battery life left. Pretty sure it would make 50miles... but you could also fast charge it/top it off during aid station break. I use the Strava app for all my runs. Most of the issues w/battery life have to deal with using other services like spotify or music in general on it. I also turned off always on screen on the 8 just to save power too as i really didnt need it always on. I have a 100k coming up in Feb 2024.. will prob upgrade to Ultra 2 for that. :)
Haven’t done an ultra yet with the AWU but curious how it would do on low power mode throughout a race like a 100 miler. Otherwise it’s a very capable watch for pretty much most running scenarios
No matter how you slice it I highly doubt it would survive a 100 miler without a recharge unless you use reduced accuracy low power mode. Unless… you’re extremely fast!
If Apple does a sports watch instead of a premium watch, I’d likely buy it. Garmin is great and a likely purchase if I ever do an ultra marathon, but I would prefer an Apple Watch for other features.
Of course, there’s no way to turn it off. However this race took place in a heavily wooded forest so it didn’t play a significant role in the battery life.
You can also pause an activity by holding the main button and the action button. Still annoying it’s two buttons, but much easier than pressing two buttons on the same side
For sure, I should have mentioned that. The fact is I’d rather a single button press and wish they had a setting for that… that’s just me being picky! 😬
The other issue is that the built in heart rate monitor loses the connection during the workout. You really have to use an external heart rate monitor. I use the verity sense.
I’ve only lost heart rate on my treadmill with the watch. I got it back by quickly pausing the workout and resuming. Ive never had the issue on outdoor runs and walks
4 years ago i tried using an apple watch series 4 to record an everesting attempt cycling with no sensors attached and it died about 4 hours in and would not work when my sweaty hands tried to press lap. Right before it died I crashed into a pylon going 15kph uphill while furiously tapping the watch trying to get it to work. I bought a cycling specific computer on my way home and never used the watch to record cycling again until recently when i broke the HRM and apple came up while looking into a replacement. Apple still sucks for exercise. Ultra flop to me. Only thing I’m not sure about is if the hardware or software is worse. Anyone with Apple reading this looking for an improvement in software should try the app “cyclemeter” witch works on both iphone and apple watch and allows someone to pair sensors. It also tracks running witch i do not do. Although basic it works and is very affordable. Thanks for the vid.
Cellular / Wifi doesn't take a HUGE hit unless it's actively being used. If you have your phone nearby the watch will use your phones data to preserve it's own battery. Without your phone the watch will drink up the battery much quicker. Lots of variables!
I remember being excited about the action button last year when I got mine lol. my dad laughed and said "look at this" and he simply had a pre selected exercise on his galaxy watchface that he just tapped and the exercise started. I think us apple users forget how far ahead samsung is over Apple.
I've just worn mine in the shower every now and then and its though to keep it from getting to gross. I've considered getting another trail band to have one for "work" and one for "play" but they aint cheap!
@@ChaseTheSummit I ended doing that and biught a third party band, I was lucky to find pretty good one for cheap. I keep this one only for “fashion” use, but man it is a €@&# magnet…
Nice review. It would be nice if you didn't have to turn everything off on the Apple watch in order to make the battery last. That's why Garmin is king, no need to do anything, just use it and know that your battery will outlast your event. Maybe some day Apple will get there. If they do with ANT+ support maybe I would switch. If Garmin could incorporate cellular service for calls on my Fenix watch, they can just take my money! 😜
To be fair, there's nothing to actually turn off on the Garmin since it doesn't have cellular lol. But yeah, it's nice that you don't have to worry about it. Apple does make it pretty easy by offering a "low power mode" toggle that essentially turns off all the stuff you don't need with one click.
I wear two watches on my marathon/ultras because I don’t trust any of them 😂. As mostly a Garmin user for years, my AWU did in fact CRASH during a long training run. I was using stryd app on it and the whole watch rebooted 15 miles in. I just don't trust it. So I will keep my Garmin (or Coros or Polar) and use my AWU to text my wife on long runs 😜
I don’t see the appeal of this watch. I’ve had an Apple Watch 5 (I know it’s not the same) and i hoped this one would replace my Garmin. But, the “bad” battery life, lack of offline maps, inability of updating settings during the activity, the stubbornness of Apple of adding proper buttons…
The battery life has gotten much better with the Ultra and most of your other gripes can be solved with third party apps like Work Outdoors... but it's still not quite the same as a dedicated sport watch.
So durimg Run it was just a watch with heart rate measuring. With Garmin you can at least Turn everything on an get more battery life. If you Do Sports - > Garmin if you want to have a smartwatch - > Apple
It was collecting all of the metrics including the GPS track, heart rate, cadence, running power and dynamics but yes… no internet connection or Bluetooth.
That was a very good summary! Thank You! I hesitated a lot whether to buy an ultra or a garmin, but I didn't regret it. I would be happy if I could compete in races where the ultra battery is weak. :D Which I think is very important and I didn't hear in the video (I'm not native) that every year apple updates the software with new functions and I'm sure it will overcome many shortcomings in the coming years. I love ultra, the best choice for all hobby athletes. (from my geek perspective :) )
A small issue is that Apple tries to be cleaver in sorting your workouts based on your previous usage patterns. This is sometimes ok, but I had had the issue of starting the wrong workout by mistake. I ran a half marathon as a walk! I think that it was because I had it setup ready for the race. Then I realized that I had forgotten to connect my heart rate monitor. So i stopped the workout, connected the HRM, then restarted the workout. In the meantime, the workouts were resorted - so I started the wrong one…
