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The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the most impressive Apple watch yet for runners, offering longer battery life than the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and a slightly larger display, as well as features like dual-band GPS and a lap button that you don’t get on the smaller Apple Watch Series 11.
It also has satellite connectivity, and for us the Ultra 3 is well ahead of other smartwatches in terms of its running performance. It does still fall short of the best running watches in terms of battery life and training analysis, but if you want a true smartwatch with great running features, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is your best bet.
Design & Key Stats
- Price: £749/$799
- Size: 49 x 44 x 12mm
- Weight: 61.8g
- Display: 1.93in 422×514 pixels
- Case material: Titanium
- Screen material: Sapphire crystal
- Water resistance: 10 ATM
- Battery life (watch): 42 hours
- Battery life (dual-band GPS): 14 hours
- Storage: 64GB
Apple Watch Ultra 3 Review
What’s New?
The main new features for runners on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 compared with the Apple Watch Ultra 2 are satellite connectivity, which can help you get in touch with people when outside cellular coverage, longer battery life, and a slightly larger display.
Other new additions to the watch, which have also come to some older Apple Watch models, include hypertension notifications, a sleep score (rated out of 100) and workout buddy — an AI assistant that chirps at you on runs.
The Run Test: Likes
Throughout our testing the GPS accuracy of the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has been impressive, and the all-round sports tracking through the native app has improved in recent years to make it the match of dedicated sports watches in terms of the customisation and stats available.
The design is also impressive, with the case being rugged but still streamlined and stylish. It’s not the lightest watch, but feels a little less bulky on the wrist than rival sports watches like the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro.
It’s also a true smartwatch, with a huge app store and loads of features that make it useful in day to day like, like Apple Pay and the Apple Wallet app. If you find that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 doesn’t have a feature you want, there’s always a good chance that someone has made an app to cover it.
If you’re not happy with the native sports tracking in particular you can choose from a variety of excellent running apps, with our standout being WorkOutDoors, which has maps and navigation tools, plus endless customisation options for your data screens for runs. Footpath is also a good mapping app, while YouRace is an app that allows to adjust the distance on yours run on the fly, which is handy for accurate pacing in races.
The jump in battery life on the Apple Watch Ultra doesn’t sound like much, going from 36 hours to 42 hours, but we’ve found it far surpasses these estimates. Nick used it for a marathon weekend and didn’t have to charge it until he got home on the Monday.
The Run Test: Dislikes
While it’s a fairly svelte watch compared to the biggest sports watches, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is bigger and heavier than most smartwatches, including the Apple Watch Series 11 which is much more comfortable on the wrist.
Despite the improvements made on this front, the battery life on the watch is still only two or three days, which is well short of what you can get from sports watches. Even those with AMOLED screens will last four or five days generally, and some go weeks without a charge.
We also found the heart rate tracking on the watch was a little hit and miss. It’s not terrible, but we had enough errors during runs that it’s worth linking a chest or arm strap for more reliable readings if you use heart rate to guide your training.
There is also minimal training analysis on the Apple Watch compared to what you get from dedicated sport watches. Some third-party apps offer a bit more, but are limited by the hardware on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and you don’t get the depth and variety of analysis available from the likes of Garmin, Suunto and Coros, or any suggested workouts to follow.
Finally, you still have to use third-party apps like WorkOutDoors if you want to see maps and follow routes during an activity, because the native tracking doesn’t have a map screen — you have to swap to another app for that. This is something that’s implemented far better in sports watches.
Verdict And Alternatives
It still has some shortcomings compared with sports watches, but the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is the best smartwatch for runners available. As long as you don’t mind some extra charging, even very serious runners will find they get enough support from the Apple Watch Ultra 3 for their training and racing.
We’ve run two marathons with the watch between us already, and it will likely stay in place for more in the future.
While we prefer the lighter, slimmer design of the Apple Watch Series 11, the fact it lacks a lap button and doesn’t have the dual-band GPS of the Ultra 3 makes the bigger watch a better bet for running. The Series 11 is still a good running smartwatch though, and considerably cheaper.
You might get better value by looking at the Apple Watch Ultra 2 as well, if you’re not bothered by the satellite features on the Ultra 3 in particular. The battery bump on the new watch is handy, but not essential, and the increased screen size is barely noticeable.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is only available on iOS unfortunately, and we’ve yet to be really impressed by an Android smartwatch for running. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, but if you’re on Android we’d probably recommend getting a semi-smartwatch like the Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro or Garmin Venu 4 as a more capable sports option, even if they don’t have the smarts of the Samsung.
Garmin provides the best rivals to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 on the sporty side of things. With most of the best Garmin running watches you now get some useful smart features like music storage, NFC payments and access to the small Connect IQ App Store, and those watches offer better sports tracking, training analysis and navigation tools than the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and longer battery life.
Three Garmins to consider in particular would be the Garmin Forerunner 970, the best overall running watch available in our view, which is light, durable and packed with useful features. Then there’s the ultra-thin Garmin Venu X1, which doesn’t have much more battery life than the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and lacks dual-band GPS, but is lighter and slimmer.
Lastly, the mighty (and mighty expensive) Garmin Fenix 8 Pro is worth a look if you need satellite and cellular connectivity. As Garmin’s flagship it has more features than you could ever need, all in an attractive and durable design.