Apple Watch Series 9 & Ultra 2 review: quietly the best
foreign last year was a big one for the Apple watch on top of a new series 8 2022 ushered in a second gen SE and introduced the world to the rugged Ultra but in 2023 we’ve got a new series 9 and an Ultra 2 that on the surface are pretty much identical to last year’s models for the tech savvy it probably feels like a bit of a letdown but listen iterative Apple Watch updates have more or less been the norm for a while each year we get a new watch with a nearly identical design one
maybe two Marquee features and some software updates that also get pushed to older versions of the watch at this point the bigger questions are what’s actually new is that enough to upgrade and if you’re gonna buy a new Apple watch which one makes the most sense so let’s figure that out foreign let’s start with design one of these is the original Ultra and the other is the ultra two I’m going to give you two seconds to figure out which is which and both have the new straps so good luck it’s this one but the point
is is that come on they look the same meanwhile this is a pink 41 millimeter series 9 and a 45 millimeter series 9 in stainless steel aside
in terms of how the watch or straps feel the sport and Trail Loops for example look and feel pretty much the same the most interesting watch accessory is the new fine woven material it’s meant to be Apple’s leather alternative because the company is just not going to be making leather accessories anymore fine woven doesn’t feel like leather but it’s got a soft suede like texture but I haven’t had it long enough to tell you whether it develops a patient or how it holds up long term to sweat or oil so what’s really new here is
the S9 Sip and watch OS 10. now that S9 sip is a new processor and unlike the series 7 and 8 this is meant to be a more significant update to Performance and capabilities performance wise the S9 has a 30 faster GPU and a four core neural engine that supposedly twice as fast as the series 8 at machine learning tasks but companies say stuff like this all the time what does it actually mean the more powerful S9 sip is supposed to deliver a better Siri experience specifically better accuracy for dictation and on-device serial processing means
you can theoretically do more with it even without an internet connection to test that I’m going to dictate a few long sentences and tongue twisters on the series 9 and the original Ultra which has the S8 chip then we’ll compare the results just to see if there’s a notable difference what do you want to say artificial amateurs aren’t at all amazing analytically assault animate things broken barriers bounded by the bomb beat buildings are broken basically on bombarding Betty botter bought a bit of butter but the butter Betty bought was bitter so Betty bought a better
butter but the better butter Betty bought was better than the bitter butter Betty bought before Scaramouche Scaramouche will you do the Fandango thunderbolten line very very frightening me Galileo Galileo Galileo Galileo Galileo Figaro magnifico mine make marvelous moves masses Marvel and move many more that enough it’s had enough but this is this is still going so honestly I was impressed with both versions of Siri they were pretty accurate at getting all those tongue twisters down I don’t know there wasn’t that much of a difference between the two sometimes the ultra was more accurate sometimes the
S9 was more accurate in each case I think it was pretty impressive though I will say the S9 did go for longer so it was slightly better slightly next we’re going to turn on AirPlay mode on the series 9 and the original Ultra and try to issue some basic Siri commands for everyday tasks hey Siri set a timer for five minutes there you go hey Siri set a timer for five minutes this really wasn’t a competition it was more of a demonstration I knew the ultra was going to fail it’s just to show you that
you can do more things on board with Siri and the amount that you don’t have your phone so another thing about the S9 sip is it’s supposed to be more power efficient but said Apple hasn’t prioritized taking those power savings and turning it into longer battery life instead it’s decided to make the screens brighter the series 9 now goes up to a Max brightness of 2000 nits while the ultra 2 goes up to 3 000 Nets I’ve worn every version of the Apple watch from the series 2 onwards so believe me when I say that
this isn’t something that you’re gonna notice right away another reason why it might be hard to see a difference is Apple makes ample use of the watch’s ambient light sensor meaning even if you have it on maximum brightness it still takes into account your surroundings and makes adjustments you’ll most notice the difference if you’re outside indirect lighting and happen to have an older model on hand for comparison the whole point of brighter screens is that they ought to be more readable when you’re out in direct sunlight so I wanted to see how that actually translates
when you’re Outdoors as for battery life I haven’t noticed a huge substantial difference without any of the low power modes enabled I’ve so far got a maximum of about 25 to 30 hours on the series 9 and about two and a half days on the ultra 2 I’ve had these watches for about a week and this hasn’t been my most intensive training week so take from that what you will on top of the S9 sip the series 9 and Ultra 2 also have a new U2 chip this means you can get the same Precision finding
Apple introduced with air tags while looking for your phone but in the event you’re due for a total upgrade this year we went on a little scavenger hunt in the verge’s office to show you how it works one I can only use sound the other has Precision binding let’s go find my phones beautiful day go look for some phones get it YouTube Beautiful Day I’m funny I can tell you’ve hidden them far away because there was no sound that I can hear and it says it’s not in range here so we’re gonna keep searching I
think I heard something oh oh this says I am heading closer open now we’re getting oh oh now it’s telling me it’s back in that direction okay oh we are getting closer somewhere in here oh here it is it here we go well I found it gotta find this guy oh it’s connected here that means I’m getting closer hi somewhere here that’s it yeah found both of my phones obviously the one with Precision finding was a lot faster because the range was quite large I could see which direction I had to go in the other
one you know I could hear it they both work one is just more efficient if you’re like me and you keep losing your phone and you have to do this multiple times a day it saves you a lot of time it saves you saves your friends from having to call your phone saves you from having to go can you hear that so you’re less of a burden is what I think the most novel feature on the series 9 and Ultra 2 is the new double tap gesture or as we at The Verge have been calling
it The Pinchy pinch if your hands are occupied you don’t have to do the whole tap your watch with your nose thing the tech behind this is pretty cool basically the sensors in the watch can detect changes in blood flow when you’re making these gestures but it’s not really new with watch OS 8 Apple introduced Assistive Touch which is an accessibility feature that lets people with limb differences control their apple watches double tap is more of a system-wide update and it’s turned on by default it’s a lot more contextual in that it handles the primary
action of an app let’s use a timer as an example so from my watch face unlike with Assistive touch I can’t just select the timer I have to ask Siri to do that for me but I can pause restart or end the timer once it goes off by doing a Pinchy pinch this feature won’t arrive until October the Apple gave me a series 9 with a beta version at the Double Tap software so I could try it out for this review and I quite like it though it’s not without his quirks for starters the watch
has to be awake for the gesture to work there’s also a learning curve when I first tried the demos at Apple Park I was a little too aggressive with my tension there are also little pauses baked in to prevent accidental triggers but that meant sometimes my timing was also thrown off that said you get used to it relatively quickly my main gripe is it’s just not as customizable as I’d like because it’s supposed to be contextual Apple’s mostly gone and decided what the gesture will do in each app for you sometimes that’s very intuitive with
replying to text it defaults to opening up a reply with a voice message I get why but for me I kind of wish it would let me scroll the quick replies pause on the one I want and then I don’t know triple tap to select the reply I want to send that said you can customize what the gesture does for music playback and the widget stack for example you can either pause and play or skip a track and for the widget stack you can either scroll through them or select one I just wish there was
more of that ultimately there’s a lot more that I like about double tap than dislike it’s awesome that you aren’t limited to your index finger and thumb you could use your middle finger your ring finger or even pinky fingers the pinky and ring finger aren’t as effective for me but the middle finger works pretty well it’s great that you have Alternatives in the event you lose or break a finger I also think opening up one-handed use is hugely convenient and makes the Apple watch a much more useful device overall Samsung also has gestures on its
Galaxy watches but overall this is a lot more intuitive and reliable it’s just a very powerful example of how accessible design really benefits everyone I hope Apple continues to iterate and improve on double tap and that other Smartwatch makers follow but do I think it’s worth upgrading for that depends if you have a series 4 or a series 5 and earlier I think you will notice enough of a difference that you’ll feel happy but if you have a series 7 or a series 8 there really isn’t enough of a compelling reason to spend money here
if you just bought an ultra or if you have an ultra already cool your jets this is for people who haven’t bought an ultra yet that’s who the ultra tube is for every year Apple says that this is the best Apple watch they’ve ever made and this year they are correct the series 9 and Ultra 2 are the best apple watches they’ve ever made it’s just not the best by a whole lot I liked a lot of the new features that came to both watches personally I would love Precision finding I’m just not going to
buy an iPhone 15 to get it but hey you know what there’s always next here and rumor has it next year’s Apple watch is probably going to be the best Apple watch they’ve ever made too hey guys thanks for watching but no seriously rumor has it that next year for the 10th anniversary of the Apple watch Apple has something really big planned I mean they did it for the iPhone why not for the Apple watch just saying
