The Apple Watch Ultra 4 is set to be one of the new products launched at Apple’s upcoming Surprise and Shine event on 9 September, and it will follow hot on the heels of Garmin’s new flagship sports watches, the Fenix 9 and Fenix 9 Pro.
These were announced on 25 August, and I’ve been testing out the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro 51mm watch for the past week. I’ve tested every Fenix model since the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus, and I’ve also tested every Apple Watch Ultra launched to date, and both are consistently among the best sports watchesavailable.
Apple has also made great strides in closing the sports tracking gap between its devices and the best Garmin watches, with accuracy, battery life and training analysis features all improving with each generation of the Ultra.
However, there are certainly still areas where the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro outperforms the Apple Watch Ultra, and even after just a week of using the new Fenix, there are two features I’d love to see on the Apple Watch Ultra 4.
Maps within activity screens
I feel like this should be a pretty simple update to effect, and it’s something that’s standard across any sports watch with offline maps.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 does offer maps and navigation tools, but you can’t have the map as one of your data screens in an activity, so if you want to check your route during a run, for example, you have to exit the Workout app to see it, then switch back to the Workout app afterward.
With the Garmin Fenix 9, you just scroll down to your map screen, which can even show activity stats overlaid on the top, so you can follow a route while also checking the activity duration or pace.
You can actually do this already with third-party sports tracking apps on the Apple Watch, like WorkOutDoors, so hopefully it’s something that shows up as a software update during Apple’s September event and then rolls back to older Apple Watch models.
A built-in flashlight
This is an ambitious hope, but most of Garmin’s top watches now feature a built-in flashlight, and it’s just so useful that I have to hope it’s something that eventually pops up on the Apple Watch Ultra.
When Garmin first launched a watch with a built-in flashlight, I didn’t think it was all that big a deal, but I constantly use the flashlight on my watch, either to navigate around the house at night, find children’s toys that have rolled under sofas, or as an extra light when running after sunset.
The Garmin Fenix 9 Pro has an upgraded flashlight compared to past watches, with a new green option alongside the red light and several levels of white.
I don’t think the Apple Watch Ultra 4 has to go green, though it’s apparently useful for certain sports and for reading maps at night, but any kind of built-in flashlight would be a great addition to the watch.
At the moment, you can use the screen on the Apple Watch Ultra 3as a torch, but it’s not as bright as a built-in LED light, nor as easy to direct light, and you can’t use the flashlight at the same time as using the screen.
This major design change is the kind of thing that would probably have shown up in leaks if it were going to arrive on the Apple Watch Ultra 4, but I live in hope it makes an unexpected appearance, especially as it would fit perfectly with the “surprise and shine” theme of the September event.
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