Apple Watch Ultra 4

The Apple Watch Ultra 4 was unveiled on 9 September 2026 and went on sale on 18 September. Apple calls it the ultimate sports and adventure watch, and this generation is defined by three things: the new Health Sensing System, a much longer battery life and the S11 chip. The information below comes from Apple's product press release and its health announcement. Everything described as best, most accurate or longest is Apple's claim, based on tests it lists in its own footnotes.

Heart sensing borrowed from the Series 12

The Ultra 4 shares the new sensor architecture of the Apple Watch Series 12. New optical and electrical heart sensors, larger and more power-efficient green LEDs and the S11 chip allow a heart rate reading every five seconds all day. Apple says a study with over 1,000 participants found its heart rate accuracy to be the highest among leading wearables, a result it presents as the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. A new complication shows the live value on the watch face.

Heart rate variability is measured up to 24 times more often and appears in a new section of the Heart Rate app in two forms, recovery HRV and overall HRV. Overnight vitals include recovery HRV against a personal baseline, and a daytime vitals view lets athletes compare day and night. On top of this, the new readiness feature combines recent activity, training load, vitals and sleep score into a single 0 to 10 number with one of four recommendations: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready or Go For It. Apple developed the scoring with data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study.

Battery: the main change

For an expedition watch the battery figures matter most. Apple lists up to 50 hours of everyday use, described as more than two days, and up to 84 hours in Low Power Mode. Charging is faster too: 15 minutes adds up to 18 hours. For outdoor workouts, the Extended Workout mode reaches up to 25 hours with full GPS and heart rate, 25 percent more than the previous model, and the new Max Extended Workout mode allows outdoor runs, walks and hikes of up to 45 hours while still taking a GPS reading every second, which Apple says is typically enough to finish a 100-mile race. The footnotes explain the trade-offs: both modes switch on Low Power Mode, running form metrics are unavailable in Extended Workout, and Max Extended Workout also turns off alerts and splits and limits certain metrics. Tests were run by Apple in July and August 2026 on pre-production watches.

Apple also says the Ultra 4 has the most accurate on-device GPS in a sports watch, judged on route map accuracy in difficult urban settings for outdoor runs and walks and processed on the device, compared with leading dual-frequency GPS sports watches available in August 2026.

Steps, audio and the new Health app

The pedometer model was rebuilt with machine learning and the S11 to improve indoor distance and all-day step counts, and Apple calls it the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch, backed by a 1,000-step test compared against leading watches. A Steps complication is new. The S11 also enables Audio Intelligence: Sound Recognition for deaf or hard-of-hearing users, Live Rewind showing the previous 15 seconds of conversation as text, Siri Recap summaries in the new Siri app and Shazam in the Smart Stack. Apple says these features create no audio recordings and that the S11's Secure Exclave processes and deletes audio in isolation. Live Rewind and Siri Recap arrive in beta later in 2026, require a recent Apple Intelligence iPhone, start in English and are not initially in the EU.

The redesigned Health app on iPhone follows later in the year, in U.S. English first, with Insights and Longevity tabs, a Health Age feature, movement evaluations and laboratory tests with over 50 biomarkers for 119 dollars in the U.S.

Cases, bands and Hermès

The Ultra 4 comes in natural and black titanium, and Apple says the 3D-printed case uses 100 percent recycled titanium and the battery 100 percent recycled cobalt; the watch is made with 45 percent recycled material overall. New Trail Loop colours are dark umber, sand and burgundy, Alpine Loop comes in desert, dark olive and burgundy, and Ocean Bands are now made from a translucent silicone in translucent gray, kelp and black. Apple Watch Hermès Ultra 4 comes in natural titanium with a new Grand H titanium band that has a built-in extension mechanism to fit over a wet suit, and a Fathom and Wonder watch face that lets the wearer explore an illustration of the ocean depths, from the surface to the seabed, by turning the Digital Crown.

Safety and software

Satellite communication remains a signature feature: Apple's footnote says Emergency SOS, Find My and Messages via satellite are free for two years with the activation of an Ultra 3 or later, with Find My and Messages requiring a carrier plan. watchOS 27 adds Siri AI and a Siri Modular face, a dynamic app grid, one-handed tap gesture, widget suggestions, cycle tracking for perimenopause and menopause, and Workout Buddy without an iPhone nearby. watchOS 27 was released on 14 September for Series 9 or later, SE 3 and Ultra 2 or later.

Launch day

Apple marked the arrival of the Series 12, the Ultra 4, the iPhone 18 Pro models and AirPods 5 in stores on 18 September with a photo report: Apple leaders greeted customers at Apple Fifth Avenue in New York, and stores in Shanghai, London, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur were shown as well. Apple Specialists offered hands-on demos, trade-in of old devices, financing with Apple Card, annual upgrades and personal setup, according to the report.

Price, availability and gaps

The Ultra 4 starts at 799 dollars in the U.S., with pre-orders on 9 September in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UAE, the UK, the U.S. and more than 50 other countries, and stores selling it from 18 September. The press release states no case size, display size or brightness, water resistance or depth rating, or weight, so this page does not list them. Note also that several features arrive only later in the year.

How to weigh it

The step up from the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is mostly battery and sensors. Outdoor athletes who live in the Garmin ecosystem can compare it with the Garmin fenix 8, and people who want the sensors in a lighter watch should read the Series 12 page. The page Ultra 4 versus Ultra 3 lines up the two generations, and the full list is under smartwatches.