Apple Watch Ultra 2

Announced September 12 and released September 22, 2023, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 kept the exact same $799 price, 49mm titanium case and outdoor-focused hardware as the original Ultra, with no new colours or materials. The headline change was a new S9 chip, Apple's most powerful watch chip at the time, which enabled Siri to process voice requests entirely on the watch itself rather than needing an internet connection, and doubled the speed of on-device machine learning tasks like Double Tap.

The display got noticeably brighter too, jumping from 2,000 to 3,000 nits, a 50% increase that Apple pitched as making it easier to read in direct sunlight. A new Modular Ultra watch face was designed specifically to take advantage of the display's outer edge, showing live data like seconds, altitude or dive depth running around the rim. An upgraded Ultra Wideband chip also improved how precisely the watch could point you toward a misplaced iPhone.

The most talked-about new feature was Double Tap, tapping your index finger and thumb together twice on the same hand to answer a call, dismiss an alarm or scroll through widgets, without touching the screen at all. It wasn't quite ready at launch though, arriving as a free software update the following month. 

Battery life stayed exactly the same as the original Ultra, up to 36 hours of normal use or 72 hours in low power mode.