Introducing Apple Watch Ultra 3
Apple today introduced Apple Watch Ultra 3 — the most advanced Apple Watch — delivering expanded health, fitness, safety, and connectivity features, and seamlessly shifting between a powerful sports watch, an elegant smartwatch, and a comprehensive health companion.
The ultimate sports and adventure watch now features the largest screen of any Apple Watch, a display with a 1Hz Always-On refresh rate, the most accurate GPS in a sports watch, and up to 42 hours of battery life — with up to 72 hours in Low Power Mode. Notifications for signs of chronic high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, offer a groundbreaking new health insight, and sleep score helps users understand the quality of their sleep. Updates to the Workout app, including Workout Buddy — a first-of-its-kind fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence — add to a robust suite of advanced fitness features.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 can be pre-ordered today, with availability beginning Friday, September 19.
“Apple Watch Ultra is our most advanced Apple Watch, designed to take users from sports and adventure to the rest of their life, and help them stay active, healthy, connected, and safe, wherever they are,” said Eugene Kim, Apple’s vice president of Apple Watch Hardware Engineering. “Apple Watch Ultra 3 debuts longer battery life, powerful health insights, and all the advanced fitness features our users love.”
A Larger Screen and 42 Hours of Battery Life
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 display incorporates Apple’s most advanced display technology with LTPO3 and wide-angle OLEDs, making it the largest screen of any Apple Watch ever, and brighter when viewed from an angle. LTPO3 is a high-performance, low-power display technology that enables the display borders to be 24 percent thinner, increasing the active screen area without any changes to the case size. The wide-angle OLED display optimizes each pixel to emit more light at wider angles, making it easier to read at a glance.1
LTPO3 is also more power efficient, enabling a faster refresh rate when Apple Watch Ultra 3 is in always-on mode, going from once a minute to once a second, so it’s possible to see a ticking seconds hand without raising the wrist. Stopwatch, Timer, and over 20 watch faces are updated with support for this refresh rate. In addition, a new Waypoint watch face can help users navigate with a live compass, and quickly turn on Night Mode to help preserve night vision.
The power efficiency of the LTPO3-enhanced display and larger battery deliver longer battery life.2 For daily use, Apple Watch Ultra 3 features up to 42 hours to support users while they are training, racing, or going about their day. In Low Power Mode, it continues to offer up to 72 hours of battery life. For continuous outdoor workout tracking, Apple Watch Ultra 3 now gets 20 hours of battery life in Low Power Mode with full GPS and heart rate readings. With fast charging, 15 minutes provides up to 12 hours of battery life.
With a cellular plan, Apple Watch users can take calls, send messages, and even get help with emergency services when their iPhone isn’t with them.3 To boost reception in areas with weak coverage, Apple Watch Ultra 3 also uses an advanced algorithm that simultaneously engages the two system antennas when needed, significantly increasing the signal strength.
Sleep Score
Sleep is fundamental to a person’s health and critical to daily restoration. Apple Watch allows users to track sleep; measure important health metrics during sleep like heart rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and respiratory rate; and even discover possible sleep apnea. Now, with watchOS 26, Apple Watch can help users understand the quality of their sleep and how to make it more restorative with a new sleep score feature.4
Sleep quality is influenced by several factors, such as duration, bedtime consistency, how often a person wakes up, and how much time is spent in each sleep stage. With sleep score, Apple Watch helps track each of these categories to assign transparent and easy-to-understand metrics for a user’s overall sleep quality. After each night, sleep score provides an overall score and classification in the Sleep app on Apple Watch, plus a clear breakdown of the most critical components, so users know what to prioritize to improve their sleep. Users can also choose to easily access their sleep score in a watch face complication or in the Smart Stack, and they can track their sleep scores over time in the Health app on iPhone.
The scoring approach and prioritization algorithm of sleep score is informed by the latest guidance published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, and World Sleep Society. Over 5 million nights of sleep data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study were used to develop and test the scoring algorithms.
Advanced Fitness Features
With watchOS 26, Apple Watch Ultra 3 features Workout Buddy, a first-of-its-kind fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence that analyzes a user’s workout data and fitness history to deliver personalized, spoken motivation throughout their session, based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness milestones, and more.5 Workout Buddy will be available starting in English across some of the most popular workout types, and is available on Apple Watch with Bluetooth headphones, with an Apple Intelligence-supported iPhone nearby.
Additionally, the new layout of the Workout app makes it easier to customize workouts with Workout Views, custom workouts, Pacer, Race Route, and more. Apple Watch users can now conveniently view and create workouts in the Fitness app on iPhone, including custom workouts, and then easily access them in the Workout app on Apple Watch.
To add inspiration, users can set up music and podcasts right in the Workout app to automatically play when they start a workout. For convenience, Apple Music can now select the best music for a user’s workout based on the workout type and their personal tastes, or users can see suggestions for music or podcasts based on what they’ve recently listened to during that particular workout type.6
Apple Watch Ultra 3 supports athletes and adventurers of all kinds as the ultimate sports watch:
- Runners get the most accurate GPS in a sports watch;7 a customizable Action button that can be used for Precision Start or to mark segments; advanced metrics including vertical oscillation, ground contact time, and stride length; customizable Workout Views including Heart Rate Zones; Race Route; Pacer; an industry-first automatic track-running detection feature; custom workouts; training load; and more for workouts and races. Users can also benefit from third-party experiences like Nike Run Club; the updated Strava app that includes Live Segments; and custom workouts from apps like Runna and TrainingPeaks.
- Cyclists can easily view a workout started on Apple Watch as a Live Activity on iPhone and see metrics on the full screen — or connect a Bluetooth-enabled power meter or other cycling accessories to Apple Watch Ultra 3 — giving them more metrics and experiences, including cadence, an automatic estimate of functional threshold power, and Power Zones. Users can also track distance, speed, elevation, and heart rate.
- Swimmers can make use of automatic stroke detection, lap count, and a SWOLF score — a stroke count combined with the time it takes to swim one length of the pool, displayed in seconds — plus take advantage of custom workouts and view water temperature directly within the Workout app. Apple Watch Ultra 3 is certified to WR100.8
- Hikers can enjoy offline maps on the trail — complete with turn-by-turn directions — as well as features like Waypoints and Backtrack GPS data in the Compass app.9
- Divers can take advantage of the Oceanic+ app — developed in partnership with Huish Outdoors — which turns Apple Watch Ultra 3 into a dive computer for recreational scuba diving.10
- Golfers benefit from the bright display and long battery life of Apple Watch Ultra 3. With a suite of third-party apps, including Golfshot, Arccos, and 18Birdies, users can access course information or tools and insights utilizing the high-frequency motion API to help improve their game.
Additional watchOS 26 Features
watchOS 26 features a new design and fresh look with Liquid Glass; makes everyday interactions even more convenient with Smart Stack hints and updates to Messages, including Live Translation and intelligent suggestions based on the conversation; and introduces a new one-handed wrist flick gesture to easily dismiss notifications.11
Lineup and Bands
Apple Watch Ultra 3 is available in natural or black titanium.
A new collection of bands includes a Trail Loop design with reflective yarn along the edges, in addition to new colors for the Ocean Band and Alpine Loop. The Hermès collection also gets two new colors for the En Mer band and a new Scub’H Diving band in rubber with a titanium buckle — perfect for an active lifestyle.
Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Environment
Apple 2030 is the company’s ambitious plan to be carbon neutral across its entire footprint by the end of this decade by reducing product emissions from their three biggest sources: materials, electricity, and transportation. Apple Watch Ultra 3 is made with 40 percent recycled content, including 100 percent recycled cobalt in the battery and 100 percent recycled titanium in the case, and the case is made using an innovative 3D printing process that uses just half the raw material as previous generations. It is manufactured with 100 percent renewable electricity, like wind and solar, across the supply chain. Apple Watch Ultra 3 is designed to be durable and repairable, and also offers industry-leading software support, while meeting Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency and safe chemistry. The paper packaging is 100 percent fiber-based and can be easily recycled.
Apple 2030 goes beyond products — today, Apple is carbon neutral for its global corporate operations, and all Apple facilities run on 100 percent renewable electricity, including the data centers that power Apple Intelligence. Collectively, these efforts have reduced Apple’s global greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent since 2015.
