• No matter where you go, this Apple Watch will keep you connected. Honestly, I get a little giddy holding out my arm and connecting to a satellite to send a message. It just feels insanely futuristic.

Beyond that, this year’s Ultra has gotten a better screen that’s brighter and easier to see at odd angles. It can refresh at 1Hz per second, showing second hands on the Always-on display (AOD). This came to the Series 10 last year, so it’s nice to finally have the Ultra on par. That said, the Ultra 3’s display is the largest of the trio, and reaches the highest peak brightness of 3,000 nits.

The biggest Apple Watch battery lives inside the Ultra 3.

The other substantial upgrade to the watch is an expanded battery life, which Apple says will hit 42 hours. Compared to my older Apple Watch Ultra 1, the new model outlasted it by about 12 hours. Next to the Ultra 2 from last year, things were within just a couple of hours in my test. However, I will say I’ve only had these watches for a few days, and since they take so long to die, I’ve only been able to run a single battery test on each model. My older watches are also running the watchOS 26 beta.

When you compare Apple’s testing methodologies for the Ultra 2 and Ultra 3, the only thing that’s added is six hours of sleep tracking, which is pretty low-impact on battery life, so depending on your day and how many workouts you’ve done, this battery estimation can vary. Notably, all three generations of Ultra have the same 72-hour rating in low-power mode. The one area where the Ultra 3 pulls ahead of its predecessors is that it will charge roughly 15 minutes faster.

You can use the extremely cool satellite connection to call emergency services, text friends, or share your location with someone. However, to do the latter two things, you need to pay your carrier for a cellular watch connection. In Canada, these are typically around $15 extra on top of your existing plan. This is technically the same way it works on iPhone, but with iPhone, it’s assumed everyone has a carrier plan; on the watch, most people don’t. It makes sense to limit messaging since that needs to be tied to a phone number, but I’d be happier with this feature if location sharing wasn’t behind this paywall. Calling and texting emergency services is still, thankfully, free.

It’s best to add a Satellite complication to your watchface since there is no app icon for the feature.

There are a few instances where I could see people out of cell range and without their phones, but I’d have to imagine that since all iPhones have satellite connectivity, anyone going to a remote location would bring their phone as a precaution. However, people doing ocean water sports or long-distance cross-country races could easily find themselves in a situation where the watch’s emergency SOS via satellite could save a life.

Like the other Apple Watches from this year, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has been outfitted to support 5G, but no Canadian carriers offer 5G watch plans, so we can’t use it yet. I was hoping all these network upgrades would include a Wi-Fi upgrade as well, but the Ultra is still using a Wi-Fi 4 antenna. This is still capable of fast enough speeds for a watch, but I wish I could download music faster since I often try to do that just before I go out for a bike ride.

While this won’t affect the end user, Apple’s engineering team has found a new way to 3D print the Ultra’s titanium shell, which saves a lot of time and energy while creating less waste metal than the previous forging processes. The company showed us a few different samples from various points, and it was shocking to see how much less material the Ultra 3 body uses with this new manufacturing process. To my eyes it looks like the new model uses around half as much titanium, while resulting in the same end product as before, it’s some impressive engineering.

WatchOS 11 features

Many of these features are coming to Apple Watches as old as the Series 6, as well as the three new ones. This starts with the beautiful new Liquid Glass, but also adds a few new tools to the Apple Watch utility belt. While I wish there was more Liquid Glass usage around the OS, I am happy with how committed Apple is to unifying all of its operating systems with design. It might not matter to some, but the unified clean design language is a big reason I like Apple products.

A surprise new watchOS 26 feature shown off at the iPhone event was the Sleep Score. Apple has simplified its sleep tracking with a score that evaluates how deep you sleep, how consistent your bedtime is and how long you sleep for. This is a nice way to make the sleep data a little more digestible by breaking it up into three areas to focus on. However, all watches that track sleep stages in the same way as Apple will also generate a sleep score once they offload their data to the Apple Health app.

Like all of my other watch and AirPods reviews this week, all the photos have been shot on an iPhone 16 Pro.

If you work out a lot Apple has a new feature called Workout Buddy that will only apply if you also have a phone that supports Apple Intelligence. If you do, it will notify you of milestones during your workout and give you a little bit of motivation. This is pretty cool and a fun feature for people who work out in one of the supported activity types. It will also work on your phone for some workouts if you don’t have an Apple Watch.

In addition to the double pinch gesture from last year, now Apple Watch Series 9 and newer can also ‘wrist flick.’ This dismisses notifications by twisting your watch away from you and it’s super handy. I’d argue that I use it even more than Double Tap, but I still use both pretty frequently.

Like the new AirPods feature, watches connected to phones with Apple Intelligence will be able to use live translation. This is one area where the speakers on the watches are useful since they allow you to play the translations out loud.

There is finally a Notes app on Apple Watch, which is bad news for the voice memos app that will probably never get used on my watch again.

Finally, I just want to mention Liquid Glass. While it’s the least noticeable on the watch compared to Apple’s other operating systems, I’m happy that Apple unified all the systems without leaving the watch out.

Who is this watch for?

There are now three watch faces that are exclusive to the Ultra line. (not counting the Hermés faces)

Like previous Apple Watch Ultras, this is for athletes who’re pushing themselves to their limits. Especially if you’re a distance athlete, the larger battery and enhanced GPS can help tune your workouts just as you’d like them. That said, the regular Apple Watch Series 11 can run a workout with GPS for eight hours, so in theory, you’d need to be competing or training longer than that to really start pushing the Ultra to its limits. The Ultra can do full workouts for 14 hours and low-power workouts with fewer metrics tracked for 35 hours.

With the addition of satellite connectivity, this watch has become even better for campers and people who spend some time off the grid. While it doesn’t have the same battery life as a Garmin Fenix 8, which also has sat connectivity, I will say that you don’t need a very large portable battery to keep an Apple Watch charged up while in the woods.

Finally, there’s an argument to be made that this is still the most stylish Apple Watch. While I’m still partial to the Titanium Series watches, the bold design of the Ultra line is pretty cool, and I love how it looks in Natural Titanium. The Black version is also nice, but I find it a little more plain since I’m not a fan of black watches. I would have rathered a silver version this year that matched the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 costs $1,099 in Canada. When you choose your band at checkout, I recommend that most people get the Alpine or Trail loops since I find them the most comfortable. The Ocean band is nice if you swim a lot since it’s more secure than Apple’s normal Silicone bands. I haven’t tested the Titanian Milanese loop for an extended period of time, but in my brief experience with it at the Apple campus, it felt extremely premium.