Speaker 1: The Apple Watch Ultra two is official. It costs $799 and on the outside it looks fairly similar to last year's Ultra, but it's on the inside where most of the significant changes have occurred. I got some hands-on time with it here at Apple Park and I can tell you there are definitely a lot of changes to be excited about, but the big one for me is that bright screen. The display now hits a maximum brightness of 3000 knits that is 50% brighter than the original ultra [00:00:30] from last year that only hit 2000 knits and that by no means was a dimm display. It was incredibly bright, but at 3000 knits it's going to be super easy to see in bright outdoor situations. Say like you're at the snow fields or even if you're just outside like me walking your dog on a regular day in the sunlight, the flashlight is also going to be a little bit brighter, specifically when you turn the digital crown, which is a big plus for me.
Speaker 1: It was one of my wishlist items. On the outside though, the casing is still that 49 [00:01:00] millimeter case size, like on the original Ultra. What is new is it is now made of 95% recycled titanium, so that is a boon for sustainability. The original ultra was virgin titanium. Now the other big changes are on the inside. They come in the form of the SS nine chip. This is shared with the Apple Watch series nine and it does pretty much the same things as on the series nine. Just on the ultra form factor. A couple of key things to note is improvements to series, [00:01:30] so it will be now on device processing, so it doesn't need to be connected to any kind of wifi or anything like that in order to process commands. It's supposed to be pretty fast as well, faster than before. Voice to text dictation is also going to be improved and you'll also be able to do things with Siri like say log certain health aspects.
Speaker 1: Say you want to say, ask Siri how much sleep did I get last night? You'll be able to talk to your watch and it will be able to tell you really quickly, which is something neat over the previous generation Apple watches [00:02:00] that you weren't really able to do. The other big feature I am most excited about after having some hands on time with it in the demo room is double tap. You might remember that the Apple Watch has had assistive touch for a while, which is accessibility gestures to be able to control your watch, but this takes it to another level because it's kind of separate from assistive touch. It is actually just active by default, so you pinch your four finger and your thumb together twice as the name suggests, and you'll be able to control a whole bunch of different apps depending on context. So say you raise [00:02:30] your wrist up to see the time and you do a double tap, you can bring up those smart stack of widgets that is now part of watch OSS 10. You'll also be able to do things like say start and stop timers. You'll be able to answer and reject calls as well as send quick messages with that action, and it does change dynamically depending on what's on screen. And yeah, it's using things like the accelerometer, the gyroscope, and the heart rate sensor as well to actually support double tap. I
Speaker 2: Really enjoyed using it in [00:03:00] my time, really quick time in the demo room with it, but I think it's going to be something I use all the time, especially because I walk my dog a lot. I have one hand that's dedicated to the leash and one hand for the watch, but I can't exactly use this hand to control the watch that easily, so I'm going to be using this a lot. I think there's a brand new modular ultra watch base, and this one is going to take up more of the screen around the edges with things like your altitude. It's also going to have your depth information and even the seconds as well, depending on what you want to customize your watch, and you can add [00:03:30] a whole bunch of complications to this. I'm not joking. There are so many different slots. You can customize this to your heart's content.
Speaker 2: This one's going to be another exciting addition if you are looking at an ultra. Now battery life is the question that everybody's going to ask, right? I know it's the best Apple Watch battery you can currently get on the current Ultra. It has not changed really on the Ultra two. It's the same rating for 36 hours or 72 hours in the ultra low power mode, but still, you can actually push it a little [00:04:00] bit further. If you have an original ultra, you'll know what I mean. If you have an ultra from last year, you're probably not going to be upgrading year on year to the ultra two because you're getting a lot of the same features in what show S 10. Things like Double Tap and that extra Siri functionality on device are going to be exclusive to the Ultra two because it does rely on that S nine chip, but at $799 available on September 22nd.
Speaker 2: The Ultra two is really stacking up to be a really high end watch, and it's going to compete with the likes of [00:04:30] your Garmins, your Polars and everything more in that kind of ultra outdoors watch space. And even if you just want an Apple watch with the best battery life and the biggest screen, this is also a really, really tempting option. I'll have lots more thoughts on the Ultra two to share with you. Make sure to keep it tuned here to cnet. We'll have lots of extra coverage including all the stuff that was announced today. iPhone 15, iPhone 15, pro Max, everything. So keep it locked. I'll see you later.
