If you thought that last year's Apple Watch Ultra was a pretty impressive adventure wearable, there was clearly room for improvement as the second generation launches – with a much brighter display, double-tap control and on-watch Siri.
The latest rugged smartwatch from Apple has a very similar outward appearance to the first Ultra, but the 49-mm display's brightness gets a 50% bump to 3,000 nits for improved readability in direct sunlight.
Inside, the new smart wearable gains custom silicon in the shape of the S9 SiP (system in a package), which is home to a 2nd-gen ultra-wideband chip for "precision finding" of a misplaced iPhone and a four-core neural engine that's reported able to "process machine learning tasks up to twice as fast as the original Apple Watch Ultra."
This allows for on-device Siri voice queries and supports the new double-tap feature, where a machine-learning algorithm uses data from onboard sensors to register wrist movements and blood-flow changes when the user quickly taps together the thumb and index finger on the watch hand.
This gesture control can be used to access common features such as answering calls or pausing music, but won't be available straight away – folks will need to wait for a software update in October.
The Ultra 2 runs watchOS 10 "which delivers redesigned apps, the new Smart Stack, new cycling experiences, features to help explore the outdoors, and a new watch face." It retains the same 36-hour battery performance as before, though switching to low power mode could eke out up to 72 hours of per-charge use.
Apple also boasts that the new Watch Ultra has been put through its paces across a range of altitudes – from 500 meters below sea level to 9,000 meters above – and can be taken scuba diving to a depth of 40 meters (130 ft) or on freedives with the Oceanic+ app for company.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 launched with the iPhone 15 and Apple Watch Series 9, and is up for order now at US$799, with availability in stores from September 22. And Apple boasts that a number of case and band combos could see customers stepping out with the company's first carbon neutral products.
Product page: Apple Watch Ultra 2