Anyone getting an Apple Watch Ultra?

I think that's fair enough. I don't know those worlds, so I'll take your word for it.

One interesting thing though is that the actual market size of those people looking for marathon, dive and hike watches has to be tiny compared to the number of units Apple will shift. I think those features are really there for their halo effect, to basically dress up a nicer, higher spec tier of watch.

Will be interesting to see how it does.

Mine is out for delivery, which is nice. Wasn't meant to turn up until Monday but it looks like it'll arrive this morning.

And it arrived. I like it. It's big but not stupidly big. I think this is about as big as you'd want to go in a watch, or at least as big as I'd like to go.

It also looks like it should be heavy but it's not. I presume the titanium case allows the metal to be thinner and hence allow for more space inside for batteries etc. I got the one with the orange alpine strap, and actually it feels a bit cheap to me. It's got a titanium clasp, which is cool, but the actual material feels a bit nylon-y and insubstantial.

Anyway, there you go.

And actually, the two percent of battery I mentioned in the last post lasted until 9:50am. So that means the full cycle was 58 hours and 50 minutes. It's on the charger now.

No, two hour long workouts - me going for two walks. That's it. So it's a low use case result.

So I've had the Ultra for a month and thought I'd post a few thoughts. I’m a casual user, not someone this device was particularly aimed at. I had the money and I like tech so I bought it, as I’m sure a lot of other people did. 

So I’m basically just a consumer with notions. From that point of view, as a device it’s really excellent. Apple has underpromised and overdelivered here. In particular the battery is an absolute beast. In fact, as someone who has previously worn apple watches, the battery is the big feature here for me. 

I’m not a deep sea diver, ultra marathon runner etc, so all those features are merely nice to have. But the battery is the day to day difference maker over previous watches. I charge this now, I’d say, roughly every three to four days. 

That actually took some getting used to, as I was in the habit of charging my series 7 every night. It was rarely ever actually empty, and usually had about 40 to 45 per cent battery left. I didn’t use sleep tracking because it was too much of a hassle to make sure it had enough charge etc last thing at night and to then charge it again in the morning. 

However the Ultra just goes and goes. A difference with it as well is that when you notice the battery is getting low, say at 6 or 7 per cent, you still have LOADS of time to remember to charge it. With my previous Apple Watches, when it got to that point, you were about an hour away from a dead watch. 

With an Ultra, you’re half a day away. So you rarely feel any urgency about it. It’s like the opposite of ‘range anxiety’ with an electric car. So if battery is a thing for you, this is an absolute unit. 

However, is it worth the big price, particularly in Ireland where’ it’s €1,000? I’m not sure. It’s a big premium to pay unless you think you’re going to get the other outer adventure uses out of it.

Yes it’s titanium and looks nice, but the design hasn’t grown on me and I wonder how long it’ll last for. The Series 8 and previous designs were genuinely classic and will age really well. This one, hmmm. I suppose time will tell. Design is subjective.

On the other hand, the software experience is now extremely mature and highly iterated, so it works really well.

Anyway, there you go. 

So for anyone interested, I switched my Ultra to low power mode earlier this week and decided to see how long the battery would work. I took it off the charger at 100 per cent at 2:45pm on Tuesday, and it died this morning at more or less 10:30am. 91 and three quarter hours later.

I wore it 24 hours a day, other than to take a shower or two, but otherwise because I was sick this week, it didn't do any workouts or anything. So this is probably as good as it gets. Pretty impressive though.

I had some glass screen protector on it but I took it off a week or so ago. I wanted to just see how durable the screen is and to be honest, it seems like it's pretty tough. No scratches and the watch looks as good as when it was new.

It's completely unmarked. Been wearing it for two months and it still looks like it did on day one. I can't see any marks or scratches on it at all.