Apple today debuted its Apple Watch Ultra 4, which brings new advanced health and fitness features, a new Health Sensing System, longer battery life, and more.
The new model brings higher-frequency heart rate and HRV sensing, a readiness score, and Audio Intelligence features.
The Apple Watch Ultra 4’s new Health Sensing System and S11 chip delivers higher-frequency heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) measurements, which will power an enhanced suite of health and fitness features including a new readiness score in a redesigned Health app that will be available on iPhone later this year. The new app will offer a new Longevity tab with a Health Age feature.
Apple says the S11 chip is its most powerful wearable chipever. It enables new Audio Intelligence features arriving later this year, which will help users remember key moments from their conversations and stay alert to important sounds. watchOS 27 brings Apple Intelligence and Siri AI to the Apple Watch Ultra 4.
“The new Health Sensing System and S11 chip take Apple Watch Ultra 4 — our most rugged and capable Apple Watch — to the next level, delivering longer battery life, faster charging, and the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable,” said Kaiann Drance, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Apple Watch Product Marketing. “With powerful health and fitness insights including readiness, new intelligent features, and its large, bright display, Apple Watch Ultra 4 is designed to support you wherever you go, from your workouts, to adventures, to everything you tackle in a day.”
Heart Rate Sensing
Apple Watch Ultra 4 provides continuous high-fidelity health monitoring using the Health Sensing System, featuring new optical and electrical heart sensors. Apple says the Apple Watch Series 12 offers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable.
The new Watch boasts larger, power-efficient green LEDs on the optical heart sensor, measuring heart rate every five seconds, all day long. This provides a deeper insight into a user’s fitness and physiological state, and makes Exercise and Move Activity rings even more accurate. Users can view their real-time heart rate at a glance throughout their day on a new heart rate watch face complication.
HRV, a key indicator of stress and recovery, is now measured up to 24 times more often and available to view in a new section of the Heart Rate app.
Readiness
Apple Watch Ultra 4 also introduces readiness, a new feature that analyzes a user’s recent activity, training load, vitals, and sleep score to offer insight into their capacity for the day ahead, providing a single 0-10 score with a clear, actionable recommendation: Recover, Pace Yourself, Ready, or Go For It. Readiness updates throughout the day as new data comes in.
Improved Workout Battery Life and Faster Charging
Apple Watch Ultra 4 now offers more than two days of battery life in every day use, up to 50 hours. Low Power Mode offers up to 84 hours of battery life. Charging is now faster than ever: Just 15 minutes adds up to 18 hours of additional battery life.
A new Extended Workout mode delivers up to 25 hours of battery life for tracking workouts with full GPS and heart rate readings — a 25% increase from the previous model. The Max Extended Workout mode allows Apple Watch Ultra 4 to track outdoor runs, walks, and hikes for up to 45 hours.
Redesigned Health App
The Health app on the iPhone has been redesigned to dynamically respond to a user’s data using Apple Intelligence. A new Insights tab provides timely health information and a new Longevity tab analyzes a user’s longitudinal health data for deeper insights. The Longevity tab also includes Health Age, an Apple Watch feature that shows users how certain metrics are tracking relative to their actual age.
Audio Intelligence
Audio Intelligence helps users stay aware of the world around them, catch what they missed, and remember key moments — with user control, privacy, security, and accessibility at the center of its design.
Audio Intelligence features include:
- Sound Recognition, alerts users who are deaf or hard of hearing of important sounds, even when their iPhone isn’t with them. This feature listens for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a baby crying, and uses on-device intelligence to notify users when they’re detected.
- Live Rewind, which can help users recall what was just said in conversation. A double press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet, so the user can catch something they may have missed or are less familiar with. Users can ask Siri about the content of the text or save it to the Siri app to revisit later.
- Siri Recap, which can create high-level summaries of conversations that users can review later to jog their memory. When Siri Recap is turned on, after a conversation, Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title and key points in the new Siri app, allowing users to be more present and engaged in the moment.
- Shazam, which instantly detects the music playing around the user and automatically displays the song title and artist’s name on the Music Recognition widget in the Smart Stack, easily glanceable on the wrist.
All Audio Intelligence features are private by design, combining hardware, software, and services to protect user privacy. These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple.
More Accurate Step Tracking
Apple says the Apple Watch Ultra 4’s pedometer model has been completely redesigned with new machine learning algorithms and the S11 chip to provide more accurate distance measurements during indoor walk or run workouts, and more accurate step counts all day, offering the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch.
Pricing and Availability
- Apple Watch Ultra 4 comes in natural and black titanium color options. It is available to pre-order today, with availability beginning Friday, September 18.
- Customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UAE, the UK, the U.S., and more than 50 other countries and regions can pre-order Apple Watch Ultra 4 today, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
- Apple Watch Ultra 4 starts at $799 (U.S.).
- New Apple Watch bands will be available to order today from apple.com/store and in the Apple Store app, with availability in stores beginning Friday, September 18.
- watchOS 27 will be available for Apple Watch Series 9 or later, Apple Watch SE 3, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later on Monday, September 14, and requires iPhone 11 or later or iPhone SE (2nd generation or later) with iOS 27. Not all features are available on all devices or in all regions. For more information about availability, visit apple.com.
