Apple has introduced Apple Watch Ultra 3, the most advanced Apple Watch — delivering expanded health, fitness, safety, and connectivity features, and seamlessly shifting between a powerful sports watch, an elegant smartwatch, and a comprehensive health companion.

Designed to keep users more connected and safer wherever they are with built-in satellite communications, Apple Watch Ultra 3 allows users to text emergency services, message friends and family, and share their location, all while they’re off the grid. The ultimate sports and adventure watch now features the largest screen of any Apple Watch, a display with a 1Hz always-on refresh rate, 5G cellular capabilities, the most accurate GPS in a sports watch, and up to 42 hours of battery life — with up to 72 hours in Low Power Mode. Notifications for signs of chronic high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, offer a groundbreaking new health insight, and sleep score helps users understand the quality of their sleep. Updates to the Workout app, including Workout Buddy — a first-of-its-kind fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence — add to a robust suite of advanced fitness features.

Apple Watch Ultra 3 can be pre-ordered from today, online and in C&C stores, with availability beginning Friday, September 19.

A Larger Screen, 42 hours of battery life, and 5G Cellular

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 display incorporates Apple’s most advanced display technology with LTPO3 and wide-angle OLEDs, making it the largest screen of any Apple Watch ever, and brighter when viewed from an angle. LTPO3 is a high-performance, low-power display technology that enables the display borders to be 24 percent thinner, increasing the active screen area without any changes to the case size. The wide-angle OLED display optimizes each pixel to emit more light at wider angles, making it easier to read at a glance.

LTPO3 is also more power efficient, enabling a faster refresh rate when Apple Watch Ultra 3 is in always-on mode, going from once a minute to once a second, so it’s possible to see a ticking seconds hand without raising the wrist. Stopwatch, Timer, and over 20 watch faces are updated with support for this refresh rate. In addition, a new Waypoint watch face can help users navigate with a live compass, easily access satellite communications with a new complication, and quickly turn on Night Mode to help preserve night vision.

Satellite communications

Apple Watch Ultra 3 features built-in, two-way satellite communications, so users can feel safer and more connected when they are off the grid, whether they’re backcountry skiing, trail running, or camping in the wilderness.

When users do not have cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, they can now text emergency services, message friends and family, and share their location.5 Apple Watch Ultra 3 offers Emergency SOS via satellite to text emergency services and notify emergency contacts with a few simple taps. If Apple Watch Ultra 3 detects a severe car crash or a hard fall, and the user is unresponsive while off the grid, it can automatically send situation and location information to emergency services and emergency contacts, when in line of sight of a satellite.

With Find My via satellite, users can send their location once every 15 minutes to contacts previously added to Find My.

When the user has no coverage, the option for satellite connection will automatically be displayed, and Connection Assistant will provide on-screen instructions to access satellite features if necessary.

Sleep score

Sleep is fundamental to a person’s health and critical to daily restoration. Apple Watch allows users to track sleep; measure important health metrics during sleep like heart rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen, and respiratory rate; and even discover possible sleep apnea. Now, with watchOS 26, Apple Watch can help users understand the quality of their sleep and how to make it more restorative with a new sleep score feature.

Advanced fitness features

With watchOS 26, Apple Watch Ultra 3 features Workout Buddy, a first-of-its-kind fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence that analyzes a user’s workout data and fitness history to deliver personalized, spoken motivation throughout their session, based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness milestones, and more.

Apple Watch Ultra 3 can be pre-ordered from today, online and in C&C stores, and will be available starting Friday, 19 September 2025.