Yeah I don't like the ultra - I had the regular one until I got me the new garmin 965 but I know at some point I will go back to apple.

I'm your atypical triathlete. I don't want to talk about it and I don't need a big watch that scream look at me LOL

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

I had the Ultra 2 for awhile. Cons:

1. having to use 2 mobile apps - Apple Health (for the data), Apple Watch (to manage the watch)
2. Apple Health app - I found it generally lacking
3. having to eject water(from speaker) after every pool swim - small item but pain in the ass.
4. battery life - sure, better but still charging every 2 days - another small pain in the ass.

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tinman

I’ll add a few annoyances with the Apple Watch Ultra:

• Workout app requires screen swipe to end an activity (very annoying, since in theory they have enough buttons or combinations of presses to make touching the screen unnecessary during workouts)
• Screen does not respond well to sweat or water
• Limited number of metrics on workout screens


• WorkOutDoors app allows more metrics fields, but has the aesthetics of 90s linux, and until mid 2023 display “always on” was not supported.
• There are some data issues with bike power in this app versus what you get from “workout,” like left/right balance appears to be missing, and it may take several sync or manual attempts to get power to export to healthkit.
• Limited BLE connections: only two at a time per apple’s limitation. (I can’t, for example, run runscribe’s 3-piece kit with it)
• I find it more on the ugly side than Garmin alternatives, although the latter can look like tacticool-bro style (epix, fenix) or otherwise not nice enough (forerunner)

The battery life hasn’t bothered me, perhaps because it charges fairly quickly and I don’t normally wear any watches to sleep.

Its HRM is OK but I’ll get some obvious dropouts in most activities.

Overall it is marginally acceptable. Compared to Garmin I’d say it is about 70% there for someone who is a power user, but you’ll suffer the above shortcomings.

Being able to “find my” phone or other items, or make/receive texts and live stream apple music or spotify make it just barely better than Garmin watches, for me. In particular, I like the safety of redundant phones should one or another fail or break during a long ride or crash.