Here’s everything you’ll get with these high-end smartwatches.
This year has brought a well-timed pair of updates to some of the high-end smartwatch lines on the market. Both the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 debuted this summer, and the premium wearables have a fair bit in common. Beyond the obvious personal preference for one product ecosystem over the other, here’s a breakdown of what features and specs these two smartwatches bring to your wrist.
Materials and durability
These devices are aligned in terms of materials, both made with titanium bodies. Samsung offers gray or silver options while Apple comes in black or natural hues. Both offer an array of neutral and colorful band options in different material options, so you can pick something that matches your aesthetic and fitness requirements. The fashionistas might appreciate Apple’s ongoing collab with Hermés, which brings a titanium band and a pair of unique, ocean-themed watch faces to the Ultra 4.
As you would expect for a high-end, activity-focused smartwatch, they’re also both rated well in terms of durability. The Apple model has an IP6X dust resistance rating, can be submerged up to 100 meters, and has an EN13319 depth gauge rating. Samsung has the same EN13319 rating and 100 meter submersion, plus IP69K dust and water resistance. Either one is a valid option for serious swimmers and divers.
Chips and storage
As you’d expect from devices in separate hardware silos, the innards of these watches are completely different. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 has a Snapdragon Wear Elite chip and it is packaged with Google Gemini AI assistant. It has 64GB of storage and 2GB of memory.
Apple has the new Siri and the company’s S11 chip, which means it will support the controversial Audio Intelligence features that are also coming to its new Watch Series 12. It includes 64GB of storage.
Dimensions and display
The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is 10.7mm thick and the display is 1.52 inches wide. The display is fractionally larger than the prior Galaxy Watch Ultra, but it has slimmed down more notably in depth over its predecessor. Its design is similar to the original Ultra, with a circular Super AMOLED screen set in a rounded-off square frame.
Apple’s offering is a little larger all around. It has a depth of 12mm while the rectangular display is 49mm tall and 44mm wide (~1.9 inches by 1.7 inches). The company has stuck with its Retina tech on a wide-angle OLED LTPO3 screen.
One of the more notable distinctions between the displays is max brightness, with the Galaxy option topping out at 5,000 nits compared with a peak of 3,000 for Apple’s watch. If you’ve struggled to read a smartwatch display in bright sunlight, the higher cap on the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 could help alleviate the issue.
Battery life
Apple says that its Watch Ultra 4 can deliver up to 50 hours of battery, or as many as 84 hours in Low Power Mode. This wearable also has some flexibility when it comes to how it can be more efficient when using location data thanks to the Extended Workout Mode, which offers 25 hours of battery during continual GPS and heart rate readings.
On the side of the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, the company has been emphasizing the size of the smartwatch battery rather than its performance in most of its messaging. An 800mAh battery is massive, but it’s an odd stat to focus on since it doesn’t necessarily equate to a longer life. But it should deliver well on that front too, with Samsung promising up to 60 hours of use.
Fast charging can be a big factor in how a wearable factors into daily use, and the official line from Samsung is that the watch can get to 40 percent battery in about half an hour. The Apple tech promises up to 18 hours of extra battery life on 15 minutes of fast charging.
Health and safety features
Here’s where we get into the meat and potatoes of what these devices can do and what makes each of them unique.
Apple has updated the Watch Ultra 4 with a new sensor system that brings more tracking options and to the wearable. The highlight here is more accurate heart rate sensing with measurements taken every five seconds. There’s also a new pedometer that Apple said should bring more accuracy to step tracking. The Ultra 4 can use Apple’s new Readiness app, which aggregates health stats like recent activity and sleep score to gauge how prepared the wearer is for that day’s actions. This smartwatch generation is also accompanied by a new Health app from Apple that is slated for release later this year.
Samsung has also recently overhauled the data available in its Samsung Health app. The Vitals menu offers daily reads on key biomarkers to better alert the wearer to deviations from their baseline. There are several options for monitoring heart health, including daily blood pressure estimates and a Heart Health Score. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 also has a few more unique offerings among wearables, such as antioxidant readings (although our review found those to be a mixed bag in terms of effectiveness) and a Trail Run mode that includes very useful hydration guidance.
On the safety side, both devices are capable of Emergency SOS calls in the appropriate situations. They also have alert sirens and fall detection, and Apple’s watch also has crash detection.
Here’s the full list of health and wellness tools offered by each model:
- Energy Score
- Sleep Apnea
- Bedtime Guidance
- High Stress Alert
- Fitness Index
- Trail run
- Daily Cardio Load
- Running Coach
- Vitals
- Heart Health Score
- Personalized Heart Rate Zone
- Personalized Functional Threshold Power
- AGEs Index
- Blood Pressure
- ECG
- Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification
- Antioxidant
- Body Composition
- Cycle Tracking
- Hearing Protection
- Readiness app
- Vitals app with heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temperature, sleep duration, and heart rate variability (HRV)
- Blood Oxygen app
- ECG app
- Heart Rate app
- High and low heart rate notifications
- Recovery HRV
- High‑frequency background heart rate tracking
- Irregular rhythm notifications
- Advanced Cycle Tracking app
- Medications app
- Mindfulness app with state of mind tracking
- Noise app
- Sleep app including sleep stages
- Sleep score
- Sleep apnea notifications
- Hypertension notifications
Finally, there’s the financial side. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 starts at $700, but you might be able to bring the price down through a trade-in or just by waiting for a deal; just a month after it hit the market, Samsung was offering $100 off the device.
The Apple Watch Ultra 4, on the other hand, is $799. The device is still in pre-order at the time of writing, so it’s unlikely that you’ll see any discounts for a while. But like for Samsung, you can save a little by taking the trade-in route with an older Apple smartwatch.
Unlike many fitness trackers, these smartwatches do not require an ongoing monthly subscription to use most of their features. There is an option for smartwatch owners to integrate personal training subscriptions, like Apple Fitness+ or iFIT for Samsung, but these are additive rather than a required extra cost. Both products also have options to run specialized apps, such as dive computers for scuba or snorkeling excursions, that might require a separate fee.
