Apple has refreshed the Apple Watch Ultra 2 with a new “satin black” color option and sleep apnea detection feature, the company announced at its September event today. It’s the first time Apple has offered the Watch Ultra in more than one color since it launched two years ago.
The Watch Ultra 2 will use the watch’s accelerometer and measurements over time to detect when a sleeper’s motion is consistent with sleep apnea. The feature is coming to the new Apple Watch Series 10, as well as the Series 9. Apple also announced a new titanium Milanese Loop. It’s $799 and available for preorder today ahead of a September 20th release.
The Watch Ultra will get watchOS 11, which brings with it updates to Smart Stack — the widgets that pop up when you rotate the Digital Crown and which will now show Live Activities, just like the iPhone — and a set of features to track health over time. Those include Training Load, which can tell you how hard you’ve been pushing yourself relative to your typical exertion, and the debut of a Vitals app that will let you know if key metrics like respiratory rate or your sleep duration are typical for you or if some measurements are considered outliers.
The Apple Watch Ultra was introduced in 2022 as arguably the first significant update to the wearable’s design. It stood out from the normal “Series” watches with a bigger screen and chunkier body as well as a customizable Action Button — a concept Apple later brought to the iPhone 15 Pro. The company released the Ultra 2 last year with a brighter screen and a new S9 chip that enabled on-device Siri processing.
The Watch Ultra may not have changed much this year, but it’s still the battery champ of Apple’s smartwatch lineup. It’s also the priciest of the Apple Watches and is aimed squarely at the most athletic smartwatch wearers, who spend more time outside and in motion and for whom a brighter screen and long-lasting battery might be important.
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