Apple unveils Apple Watch Ultra 4

Apple today introduced Apple Watch Ultra 4 — the ultimate sports and adventure watch — now including new, advanced health and fitness features, and longer battery life.

Engineered with the new Health Sensing System and S11 chip, Apple Watch Ultra 4 delivers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable,1 higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, and a new readiness score to support athletes of all kinds. Apple Watch Ultra 4 also offers extended battery life to track outdoor workouts for up to 45 hours and the most accurate on-device GPS in a sports watch.2 In addition to powering the Health Sensing System, the new S11 chip — Apple’s most powerful wearable chip — also enables new features arriving later this year to help deaf or hard of hearing users stay alert to important sounds, with privacy, security, and accessibility innovations at the core. 

These features add to the many ways Apple Watch Ultra already supports users with advanced workout tracking across activities, sleep tracking, powerful health features like heart health notifications and the ECG app,3 and game-changing safety capabilities like satellite communications.4 Apple Watch Ultra 4 is the most comprehensive wearable across health, fitness, and safety.5,6

Apple Watch Ultra 4 comes in sleek and durable natural and black titanium options. It is available to pre-order today, with availability beginning Friday, September 18.

“The new Health Sensing System and S11 chip take Apple Watch Ultra 4 — our most rugged and capable Apple Watch — to the next level, delivering longer battery life, faster charging, and the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable,” said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Apple Watch Product Marketing. “With powerful health and fitness insights including readiness and its large, bright display, Apple Watch Ultra 4 is designed to support you wherever you go, from your workouts, to adventures, to everything you tackle in a day.”

The Most Accurate Heart Rate Sensing in a Wearable

Apple Watch Ultra 4 is re-architected to provide continuous high-fidelity health monitoring using the Health Sensing System, featuring new optical and electrical heart sensors. Using this system and the S11 chip, Apple Watch Ultra 4 offers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. A scientifically rigorous study on a diverse population of over 1,000 participants compared the new heart rate sensing accuracy on Apple Watch against leading wearables, with Apple Watch showing the highest accuracy across devices.

With larger, power-efficient green LEDs on the optical heart sensor, Apple Watch Ultra 4 now measures heart rate every five seconds, all day long. This continuous passive measurement delivers deeper insight into a user’s fitness and physiological state while making Exercise and Move Activity rings even more accurate. Users can view their real-time heart rate at a glance throughout their day on a new heart rate watch face complication.

HRV, a key indicator of stress and recovery, is now measured up to 24 times more often and available to view in a new section of the Heart Rate app. Apple Watch provides two separate variants of HRV for better understanding of a user’s health status. Recovery HRV is best for identifying daily signals of stress and recovery, while overall HRV is best for insights into a user’s broader health, including cardiovascular health. Higher variability is generally associated with better overall recovery, while a lower variability value is an indicator of stress.

Overnight vitals now includes recovery HRV measurements analyzed against a user’s personal baseline, providing a more complete view of their health status.7 A new daytime vitals view lets users toggle between overnight and daytime metrics, and can potentially spot shifts in their metrics before they show up overnight.

Readiness: A Daily Read on the Body’s Capacity

Apple Watch Ultra 4 introduces readiness, a new feature that analyzes a user’s recent activity, training load, vitals, and sleep score to offer insight into their capacity for the day ahead. Readiness provides a single 0-10 score each day with a clear, actionable recommendation: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. This helps a user decide how to take on their day, whether they’re headed into a workday or tackling their training plan.

Readiness updates throughout the day as new data comes in, to reflect, for example, an intense workout or a shift in daytime vitals. Readiness clearly highlights which factors are driving the score and allows users to tap into more details. The scoring algorithm was developed using data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study, in collaboration with exercise scientists and physicians at Apple.

Longer Battery Life and Faster Charging

For everyday use, Apple Watch Ultra 4 now offers more than two days of battery life, up to 50 hours. In Low Power Mode, it offers up to 84 hours of battery life.8 Charging is now faster than ever: Just 15 minutes adds up to 18 hours of additional battery life.9

For outdoor workout tracking, the new Extended Workout mode delivers up to 25 hours of battery life for tracking workouts with full GPS and heart rate readings — a 25 percent increase from the previous model. For even longer workouts, the Max Extended Workout mode allows Apple Watch Ultra 4 to track outdoor runs, walks, and hikes for up to 45 hours, typically enough to finish a 100-mile race, while still taking GPS readings every second.10

More Accurate Step Counts

The pedometer model has been completely redesigned with new machine learning algorithms and the S11 chip to provide more accurate distance measurements during indoor walk or run workouts, and more accurate step counts all day. As a result, Apple Watch Ultra 4 now offers the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch.11 The S11 chip also enables the brand-new Steps complication, so users can track their steps in real time, right from their watch face.

Sound Recognition and Shazam Using the S11 Chip

Since Apple Watch is always on a user’s wrist, it is the perfect device to help users stay alert to important sounds. With the built-in microphone and the power of the S11 chip, Apple Watch Ultra 4 offers new features to help users stay aware of the world around them — with user control, privacy, security, and accessibility at the center of its design.

Features include:

•     Sound Recognition, which comes to Apple Watch to alert users who are deaf or hard of hearing of important sounds, even when their iPhone isn’t with them. This feature listens for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a baby crying, and uses on-device intelligence to notify users when they’re detected.
•     Shazam, which instantly detects the music playing around the user and automatically displays the song title and artist’s name on the Music Recognition widget in the Smart Stack, easily glanceable on the wrist.

These features are private by design, combining hardware, software, and services to protect user privacy in a way that only Apple can. These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. This is because the S11 chip on Apple Watch Ultra 4 includes Secure Exclave, a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it.

Users are in control and can choose whether to opt in to each feature. Read more about how Apple protects privacy.

Featuring watchOS 27

watchOS 27 brings a range of additional updates to Apple Watch Ultra 4, including:

•     A dynamic app grid featuring the icons for five Siri-suggested apps, which are a user’s most-used and recently used Apple Watch apps.
•     A new single-handed tap gesture, which lets users conveniently open a widget in the Smart Stack by tapping their index finger and thumb. Now users can use the double tap gesture to scroll through the Smart Stack and single tap to select an individual widget — all using only one hand.12
•     Smart Stack widget suggestions, which surface when they are most relevant, like a Parked Car suggestion from Maps or a Birthday Message suggestion on a close contact’s birthday.
•     Support for perimenopause and menopause in Cycle Tracking on Apple Watch and in the Health app on iPhone.13
•     Support for Workout Buddy on Apple Watch when users don’t have their iPhone nearby. Workout Buddy also now incorporates even more fitness data when delivering motivational insights, and is now available in Spanish in addition to English.14

Lineup and Bands

Apple Watch Ultra 4 is available in natural and black titanium.

This fall’s band lineup features new colors across the range. Trail Loop now comes in dark umber, sand, and burgundy, while Alpine Loop comes in desert, dark olive, and burgundy.

Ocean Bands are now made from a unique translucent silicone, which comes in three new colors: translucent gray, translucent kelp, and translucent black.

Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 4

In addition to Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 4 available in natural titanium, the Apple Watch Hermès collection introduces a bold new Grand H titanium band featuring a built-in extension mechanism to conveniently adjust the band to fit over a wet suit. Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 4 also features the new Fathom and Wonder watch face, which allows users to explore an illustration of the ocean’s depths. Rotate the Digital Crown to select one of four watch face options, from the surface to the seabed. Each option features a unique shade of blue and distinct animations.

Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the Environment

The new Apple Watch Ultra 4 was built with the environment in mind and drives progress toward Apple’s ambitious plan to be carbon neutral across its entire footprint by 2030. It is made with 45 percent recycled material overall,15 including 100 percent recycled titanium in the 3D-printed titanium case and 100 percent recycled cobalt in the battery. All of the electricity used to manufacture Apple Watch Ultra 4 is sourced from renewable energy, like wind and solar, across the supply chain, and Apple has also invested in enough renewable energy around the world to match the electricity customers use to charge their Apple Watch. Like all Apple products, its paper packaging is 100 percent fiber-based16 and can be easily recycled at home.

Pricing and Availability

•     Customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UAE, the UK, the U.S., and more than 50 other countries and regions can pre-order Apple Watch Ultra 4 today, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
•     Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at SAR 3,599.
•     New Apple Watch bands will be available to order today from apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
•     watchOS 27 will be available for Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch SE 3, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later on Monday, September 14, and requires iPhone 11 or later or iPhone SE (2nd generation or later) with iOS 27. Not all features are available on all devices or in all regions. For more information about availability, visit apple.com.
•     Apple Intelligence will be available with watchOS 27 on Monday, September 14, for users with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device set to a supported language. Apple Intelligence is available with support for these languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Japanese, and Korean. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages. For feature and language availability and system requirements, see apple.com/apple-intelligence.
•     Siri AI is rolling out with watchOS 27 as a beta on Monday, September 14, for users with a supported device set to English, with support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish coming in October. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages.
•     New subscribers may get three months of Apple Fitness+ and Apple Music with the purchase of Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch SE 3, or Apple Watch Ultra 4. Offer and service availability varies by region. See apple.com/promo for details.17
•     AppleCare delivers exceptional service and support, with flexible options for Apple users. Customers can choose AppleCare+ to cover their new Apple Watch or, in the U.S., AppleCare One to protect multiple products in one simple plan. Both plans include coverage for accidents like drops and spills, theft and loss protection on eligible products, battery replacement service, and 24/7 support from Apple Experts. For more information, visit apple.com/applecare.
•     For more information on Apple 2030, visit apple.com/2030.

About Apple 

Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV. Apple’s more than 150,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth and to leaving the world better than we found it.

1.     Based on data from an Apple-conducted study of heart rate accuracy, during July and August 2026, utilizing commercially available best-selling wearables available as of June 2026. For more information, visit apple.com/hraccuracy.
2.     GPS performance was evaluated based on route map accuracy in challenging urban environments for outdoor running and walking workouts, processed securely on device. Comparison made against industry-leading dual-frequency GPS sports watches commercially available at the time of testing in August 2026.
3.     The ECG app is available on Apple Watch Series 4 and later (excluding Apple Watch SE models) and all Apple Watch Ultra models, and can generate an ECG similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram. Intended for use by people 22 years old or older.
4.     Emergency SOS, Find My, and Messages via satellite are included for free for two years with the activation of Apple Watch Ultra 3 or later. Connection and response times vary based on location, site conditions, and other factors. Find My and Messages via satellite require a carrier plan. To send and receive SMS from cellular models of Apple Watch over satellite, a paired iPhone must be powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or an active cellular network, but iPhone doesn’t need to be nearby. SMS message rates may apply. Satellite connectivity provided by Globalstar and its affiliates. See support.apple.com/123924 for more information.
5.     Based on an analysis of health, fitness, and safety features in commercially available bestselling wearables as of August 2026.
6.     Hypertension Notifications will not be initially available in KSA on Apple Watch Series 12 or Ultra 4, as additional regulatory clearances for the feature for these models is in process. Availability is expected next year. Please see feature availability status for more information support.apple.com/en-sa
7.     The Vitals app is for wellness purposes only and not for medical use.
8.     Multiday battery life testing includes 630 time checks, 190 notifications, 30 minutes of app use, two 60-minute workouts with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, and 12 hours of sleep tracking over the course of 50 hours; Apple Watch Ultra 4 usage includes a total of 10 hours of cellular connection and 40 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 50 hours. Battery life testing in Low Power Mode includes 1,100 time checks, 330 notifications, 55 minutes of app use, two 60-minute workouts with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth, and 18 hours of sleep tracking over the course of 84 hours; Apple Watch Ultra 4 usage includes on-demand cellular connection and 68 hours of connection to iPhone via Bluetooth over the course of 84 hours. Testing conducted by Apple in July and August 2026 using preproduction Apple Watch Ultra 4 paired with iPhone; all devices tested with prerelease software. Battery life varies by use, configuration, cellular network, signal strength, and many other factors; actual results will vary.
9.     Testing conducted by Apple in July and August 2026 using preproduction Apple Watch Ultra 4 paired with iPhone; all devices tested with prerelease software, preproduction Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger to USB-C Cable (Model A3277), and Apple 20W USB-C Power Adapter (Model A2305). Charge time varies with adapter, region, settings, initial battery levels, usage, and environmental factors; actual results will vary.
10.     Workout tested without iPhone and with heart rate sensor on during Outdoor Run workout sessions. Extended Workout turns on Low Power Mode during the workout; running form metrics will be unavailable. Max Extended Workout turns on Low Power Mode during the workout, and turns off alerts and splits; certain metrics will be unavailable. Testing conducted by Apple in July and August 2026 using preproduction Apple Watch Ultra 4; all devices tested with prerelease software. Battery life varies by use, configuration, cellular network, signal strength, and many other factors; actual results will vary.
11.     Step-tracking accuracy testing was conducted by Apple using a 1,000-step accuracy test validated with video step counting. Comparison made against industry-leading smartwatches commercially available as of July 2026.
12.     The Cycle Tracking app should not be used for birth control or to diagnose a health condition. Cycle deviation notifications inclusive of perimenopause are for people 40 years old or older.
13.     Requires a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone and Bluetooth headphones with device and Siri language set to English or Spanish. Using Workout Buddy without iPhone nearby requires a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages. For feature and language availability and system requirements, see support.apple.com/121115.
14.     Product recycled or renewable content is the mass of certified recycled material relative to the overall mass of the device, not including packaging or in-box accessories.
15.     Applies to Apple Watch Series 12 with aluminum and titanium cases.
16.     Breakdown of U.S. retail packaging by weight. Adhesives, inks, and coatings are excluded from calculations of plastic content and packaging weight.
17.     Apple Music requires a subscription. Apple Fitness+ requires a subscription and compatible hardware and software. See support.apple.com/en-us/118210 for compatibility details.