Transcription
In this video, I'm going to detail every single one of the differences between the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Apple Watch Series 10, including all the real-world differences as well. This is based on both myself and my wife putting these watches through their paces over the last little while.
There are more than 30 differences that I can account for between these two watches, and some of them are really big differences, and some of them are tiny little things that you may or may not notice. And then towards the end, I'll also outline all the key features of the same, just so there's no misunderstandings there.
So, first up is the pricing. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is priced at $799 versus the Series 10 is priced at $399 for the 42mm or $429 for the 46mm. Both of the watch designs actually include a number of different watch bands at their base price point. In the case of the Ultra Series, you've got three core styles you can choose from at that base included price point, with each of those styles having a couple different color options. And then in the case of the Series 10, you've got both different materials as well as different colors offered again at those base price points. And of course, you can buy more expensive bands beyond that from Apple and other companies.
Now, as you probably picked up on on the first item, there are three different case sizes at play here. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is a 49mm case size, versus a Series 10 comes in both a 42mm and a 46mm case size. You're seeing some of these case sizes right now on my wrist as well as my wife's wrists. I don't have a 42mm handy right now to be able to show you that, but I think if you're comparing between the Apple Ultra 2 and the Series 10, you're probably looking at that bigger case size. That's my my guess, anyways.
Now, all additions of the Ultra 2 include cellular built into the watch. You can't buy without cellular, versus the Series 10, the base price at $399 does not include cellular. You pay more for that. Uh, however, the titanium edition of the Series 10 does include cellular built-in. There's no option to get it without cellular, which then is a good time we talk about some of the case components.
In the case of the Ultra, both editions of the Ultra 2 are titanium. Uh, there's the original edition, which is that kind of grayish color, the original titanium, and then there's a new black color, the color that I'm wearing right now. Notably, the new black titanium on the Ultra 2 actually has DLC finish on the outside, making it substantially stronger and more resistant to scratches. Of course, it's still early days on my wrist in terms of scratches, but I'm really good at scratching watches like that's sort of what I do. Not on purpose. I'm I'm not like Jerry rig everything, but I just happen to accidentally scratch watches really, really well. In fact, yesterday I actually slipped and dragged this thing on like a concrete pool edge and no scratches so far, so that's positive.
Meanwhile, in the Series 10, the default is an aluminum case, but you can pay for the titanium case, which costs a boatload more.
So, let's look a little more closely at the exterior aspects of these watches because there are some, well, pretty obvious differences there. Starting off with the Ultra 2 on the left-hand side, there is the action button. We'll get into that in just a second. Instead of when you look at the right-hand side, you'll notice that the button layout is a bit different there in terms of the size of the buttons and how they're protected. In the case of the Ultra 2, it has button guards around both the main button as well as a digital crown that protects it from things like coat and jackets and stuff like that, pressing buttons accidentally. And then you'll notice the Ultra 2 has a much bigger digital crown, which is useful for glove interaction. So if you're underwater with scuba gloves or just, you know, winter skiing and stuff like that with bigger gloves, it does make it a little bit easier to kind of navigate through the menus with that bigger digital crown.
Meanwhile, comparing the thinness of the two watches, the Series 10 is the thinnest Apple Watch that Apple has ever made. It's 9.7mm versus 14.4mm for the Ultra 2. Certainly, that's a big difference. That's 50% bigger for the Ultra 2. Um, and that's really going to come down to whether or not you want a bigger watch on your wrist. Likewise, I'll put all the weights on the screen right now. You don't want me to read off all those weights. Uh, there you go. All on the screen now.
On the back of the watch, the Ultra Watch 2 has a ceramic and sapphire crystal back case, versus the Series 10 has a metal and sapphire crystal back case. Meanwhile, the Ultra 2 has M-spec standards that it's been validated against, versus the Series 10 does not.
Now, then you get to the display itself. In the case of the Ultra 2, it has a sapphire crystal display, and the same is actually true for the titanium edition of the Series 10. But if you go step down to the regular edition, you're probably comparing against that has an Ion-X display on the Series 10, the same as it did in the past. In terms of durability, let's be clear, this is a very durable watch. Yet, as I say that, just yesterday, while I filmed my Apple Watch Series 10 review, I dropped my Apple Watch Series 9, which has the exact same glass as a Series 10, directly on the concrete. Like it landed straight down. To the moment my wife looked over and she was like, "Oh no, that wasn't good." And indeed, it was not good. Not horrific, but you can see basically that little chunk taken out of it, like a divot, like you get in a car window, taken out of it. It's the first time I've managed to scratch or otherwise impact or hurt an Apple Watch display in, well, 10 years now. So take that for what you want, but I would not overthink the display side of it. And I, people that know me, note that I treat my watches like crap. Uh, and if this is the first one I've ever managed to injure, that's actually pretty impressive.
Now, speaking of things that would be impressive, it would be if you could just watch this video to the end. That's the main thing YouTube cares about these days. It really does help out the video and the channel. You can, of course, hit like and subscribe, but really, just just watch the whole video.
Now, talking a little bit more about those displays. Uh, in the case of the Ultra 2, it has a 3000 nit display in terms of the maximum brightness that you can get out of that display, versus the Series 10 has a 2000 nit display. Let's be honest, both of those nit brightnesses are well beyond overkill for even the brightest days out there on the beaches, on the top of mountains. I've done all those things over the last couple of years, and they are both totally overkill. Many of their competitors have 1000 nit displays, which are perfectly fine, uh, for viewing and all those same conditions. Both the Ultra 2 and the Series 10 have a minimum display brightness of one nit. So that's mainly used at night to kind of reduce that display brightness. However, the Series 10 does have a nifty little trick, and it'll show the second hand on your watch faces, uh, even in the dim state. So right now, it's in the dim state like this. I raise it up, it goes to the full brightness state. In the case of this Ultra 2 right here, the seconds disappear when I go to the dim state, versus over here, the seconds show, both dimmed as well as the full brightness state.
Now, from a screen standpoint, the Ultra 2 has a slightly older LTPO 2.0 display, versus the Series 10 has a new LTPO 3.0 series display. The main difference there is theoretically the off-angle axis viewing. So something like this, where you're viewing an off-angle. Here's the two side by side. Apple talked a lot about how this new display is 40% brighter, but that's only 40% brighter compared to their older displays, not compared to like these two side by side. Side by side, you frankly can't tell the difference. Like I can't tell the difference, uh, in brightness levels. If you're coming from an Apple Watch Series 4, 5, 6, compared to the new Series 10 display, absolutely, it's very clear in that case, but not between the Ultra 2 displays and the Series 10 displays.
Now, likewise, another fun fact is that the Apple Watch Series 10 actually has a slightly larger display area, particularly an active display area, than the Apple Watch Ultra 2. It's just 3% though, which you won't notice that 3%, I promise you. You can't notice it. What you will notice, what your eye will notice, though, is that in the case of the Series 10, it's got that curved glass edges around it that the display kind of like folds into, versus in the case of the Ultra 2, it's totally flat across the top, and the titanium bezels around the outside edge protect that display case. Again, very different style there, but in terms of the display area itself, what you see in the display, uh, is basically a wash.
Okay, so enough about the materialistic bits. Let's talk about some of the goodies internally. Uh, the most obvious one on the Apple Watch Ultra Series is that action button. That action button on the left-hand side there allows you to tap that and open up various, well, actions that are basically quick select options directly to certain things. By default, for example, it opens up the workout app, but you can customize it to other Apple actions or other third-party apps. Likewise, the Apple Ultra has what's called Precision Start in workout mode, which means you can tap a given sport mode and then wait until you start the sport itself. That's useful for like races and stuff like that where you want to validate that you've got GPS locked on, your heart rate locked before you start. For reasons that defy any logic whatsoever, Apple is somehow unable to add that feature to the base Apple Watch. It's a feature on every other watch on this planet except for the Apple Watch base units. Maybe someday we'll get it, but for now, for now, we we don't get that, unfortunately.
In fact, speaking of that workout mode, in the case of the Apple Watch Ultra 2, uh, it gets up to 7 data fields in a custom data field layout for those workout modes, versus the Series 10 gets up to six data fields, of which five are customizable. Again, kind of silly, given that the display is technically bigger on the Series 10 compared to the Ultra 2, but Apple's got to find a reason for you to for you to buy the Ultra instead.
And then, of course, continuing down that trend to sporty stuff, the Ultra Series that has multiband or dual-frequency GPS, which basically means they'll do better in harder GPS conditions. So things up against a mountain or stuff like that, or high buildings, etc. That said, in my testing side by side between these two, in the vast majority of scenarios, there is no difference whatsoever. On Monday, for example, I went out for a run, kind of around some really tall high-rise hotels, and there was no difference between these two side by side from a GPS track standpoint. And I haven't seen any meaningful differences as well in, again, the vast majority of cases between these two watches.
Now, rounding out some display stuff here, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has a couple extra watch faces that are unique. Notably, the modular watch face. That's something that the Series 10 does not. And then with that, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 also has a night mode for the watch face as well, that the Series 10 does not.
Okay, so then let's talk about some of the battery bits. And now, from a practical standpoint, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is going to get you two days of battery life, and the Series 10 is going to get one day of battery life. Officially speaking, from a spec standpoint, that is 36 hours and 18 hours of all-day battery life between those two models, but again, real world says two days and one day. That's usually including, for me anyways, 1 to 2 hours of GPS workout time per day.
There's also a low power mode on both watches, getting you 72 hours for the Ultra or 36 hours for the Series 10 in low power mode. That basically just shuts off a bunch of stuff, background things behind the scenes, but the core of the watch is still what you'd expect. For GPS workout time, the Apple Ultra 2 gets 12 hours, and then the Series 10 gets 7 hours. In my testing of both of them, they actually exceed those specs. Right now, in my testing of the Series 10, it's getting about 8 hours of GPS battery time. In the case of the Ultra 2, I've had that upwards of 14 hours of battery time, and that's before we even account for low power mode. You can enable low power mode on both of these watches, but Apple only publishes the specs for the Ultra side of that, and for that, at 17 hours in low power GPS or 35 hours for low power GPS plus fewer readings. So plenty of battery life for most scenarios.
Lastly, on the battery aspect, we get to charging. And again, this is an area where the Series 10 actually wins as well. In the case of the Series 10, it can charge up to 80% in a mere 30 minutes. It's super impressive over the last week or so, versus the Apple Watch Ultra takes about an hour to get that same 80%. But, but on the bright side, it does last twice as long. So, you know, take that for what you want.
Now, we've got a whole bunch of other like random hardware bits, and some of these are big ticket items, and some of these are just, it's the random bucket of things. Okay, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 has its 86-decibel emergency siren. The Series 10 does not. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 has water protection down to 100 meters versus the Series 10 has it to 50 meters. Which then gets into the dive bits. So both of these watches have a depth gauge, but they are quite different in, well, their specs and implementation and things like that. The Apple Ultra 2 has a depth gauge that's good down to 40 meters or 131 feet, versus the Series 10 has one that's good down to, uh, 6 meters or 20 feet. Essentially, the Ultra 2 one is designed for diving, as you probably know, versus the Series 10 one is designed for snorkeling. In the case of the Ultra 2, that depth gauge is actually certified to standards to ensure the safety of all the things around it, versus the Series 10 one being only to 6 meters or 20 feet, they haven't certified that to anything. I've used both the Ultra 2 for diving over the last couple of years, as well as used the, uh, Series 10 this past week for snorkeling. Both myself and my wife. In the case of the Ultra 2 for diving, you're realistically going to need that Oceanic Plus app that's so often talked about. I'll probably do a separate video on that down the road. Versus snorkeling with the Series 10, you can use the base depth gauge app that comes with it just to see how deep you are, but it doesn't really do a good job of tracking that snorkeling session like any other sport would. It's just simply showing you how deep you are at that current moment in time. So you probably also want the Oceanic app for that. Again, I've got a separate video that I'll dive into. Nope, pun intended. All those differences between the different things, uh, over the next week or two.
Next, in that hardware bucket of randomness, the Ultra 2 has the S9 chipset, uh, versus the Series 10 has the S10 chipset. Now, Apple can't really describe any practical differences to consumers between those two, with the exception of one, uh, which I'll get to in just a second. Obviously, we've seen over time the way this works in Apple land, uh, in terms of software updates. Uh, right now, there's no practical difference between the Ultra 2 and the Series 10 when it comes to the usage of those chipsets. However, if we fast forward to next year, 2025, and we've got new software versions of watchOS 12, etc., my bet would be there'll probably be some sort of things that are leveraged in that newer S10 chipset that may not be available in the S9 chipset. Again, that's just based on Apple's long history of doing exactly that every single year, where basically things that are a certain cutoff date might get them, but not older stuff. But again, don't ever buy watches on future software update promises, and certainly don't buy them on things that aren't even promised at this point in time. Like there's no official hints or unofficial hints from Apple on what that might look like a year from now. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't overthink that. Buy the watch you need today for what you want today.
Still back to that S10 chipset, there is one thing that it does uniquely on the Series 10, which is around the audio bits. You see, the Ultra 2 actually has three microphones in it, and it uses those three microphones to essentially cancel out background noise and give you a clearer, kind of voice isolation. The Series 10, though, doesn't have three microphones. It has one microphone, and instead, it uses the neural engine in that S10 chipset to do all that voice isolation in the watch itself, as opposed to using the microphone. It's just like countless other software suites do today, uh, on the web or desktop or things like that. From a functional standpoint, they sound effectively the same, just two different ways of accomplishing that goal.
Meanwhile, the Ultra 2 has two speakers in it, uh, versus the Series 10 has one speaker. A redesigned speaker, nonetheless, but one speaker. Both of them can play music, and playing them side by side with the decibel meter, they both hit the exact same maximum volume. They sound the same to me in my ears, so I think they're essentially a wash between the two of them. Maybe there's some tiny minutia technical difference there, but real world, both myself and my wife sitting there, we can't tell the difference. They're the same.
Which then gets us to all the things that are the same, because the vast majority of things are the same on these two watches. It's only that 30-plus things that are different. But if you think about all the features in the Apple Watch, we're talking literally thousands of different little features, uh, and most of them are identical.
So, first up, we're just going to run through these like super fast. They both run watchOS 11, the most current version of watchOS. They both have the new Vitals app. They both have the new Training Load app. They both have the new Tides app. Uh, they both have features like Double Tap. They both have offline Siri, introduced in the S9 chipset. They both have the same optical heart rate sensor. They both have the blood oxygen sensor enabled if you buy it outside the US, and they both have the blood oxygen sensor disabled if you buy it within the US due to that entire patent dispute going on there. But physically speaking, about whether you buy it inside the US or outside the US, the exact same sensors and internals are identical there. It's just the feature's been disabled via software.
Meanwhile, they both have ECG functionality. They both have the brand new sleep apnea functionality that was introduced this past week. They've also got risk temperature on both of them, and they have all the other same health and kind of like general fitness metrics across the board. They have all the same sport modes across the board, keeping in mind that diving is technically not a sport in Apple's world. That's part of the depth gauge app. Uh, and that depth gauge app is technically on both watches, just to different maximum depths. Thus, they both can do snorkeling via that depth app or via the Oceanic Plus app, but again, only the Ultra does actual legit diving. They both have the compass. They both have Backtrack. They both have offline maps, which is new in watchOS 11. They both have the ability to plan routes, which is also new in watchOS 11. They both can play music back on their speakers, and they both have 64 gigs of internal storage across the board. They both have four core neural engines. In the case of the Series 10, that is with the S10 chipset, and in the case of the Ultra 2, that's with the S9 chipset. They both have water temperature sensors now, uh, introduced in the Series 10 as well as already there in the Ultra 2. And they both are designed by a company named Apple.
Which is essentially everything you could possibly want to know about the differences between those two watches, except for perhaps which one I prefer. And my preference is the Ultra, mainly for the battery life, just so I don't feel like I'm charging it every day. That's really like the core difference there. Uh, I never use, I've never had to use the emergency siren. That's probably a good thing, to be honest. I've never had to use that. Uh, I do like the action button, merely for just starting a sport mode, uh, but it's not a big deal to me to have that three-second countdown. As annoying as it is, that's not really the deal breaker for me. It's mainly just that battery life that gets me to two days, uh, versus the one day on the regular Series 10.
Oh, and of course, if I somehow missed something out of the gazillion items I looked at, definitely just drop it in a comment down below, and I'll try to highlight them or pin them or collect them all into something into a top comment. With that, hope you found this video interesting or useful. And again, I've got my written post that mirrors all the same information, linked down at the bottom. Have a good one.