Yup! So my team and I were stuck in the jungle during the Borneo Safari for 4 days with very limited water and food! And thankfully, I came out safely and while it was totally unplanned; I got to use all the capabilities of the Apple Watch Ultra to its fullest, both in the jungle and of course, outside of the jungle. So here is my full review after using this for a month.

 

Hardware

So, is the Apple Watch Ultra too big? And does it feel like you are wearing a computer on your wrist? My short answer to that is no, because when both my buddy Theebaan and I saw the watch in real life, our first reaction was: “Hmm, it is not as big as we thought it was” And to be honest, I kind of prefer it to be a bit more bigger as I’ve always personally liked a bigger-sized watch.

But yes, coming from the Apple Watch Series 7, which was the 45mm variant, this larger 49mm was indeed pretty big in terms of the change. Now, I have spoken to many people who have bought and used the Apple Watch Ultra daily and they all came back with the same answer, which is that they loved it, and I couldn’t agree more.

So how is it better, you may ask? Well, firstly, I love how there is a sense of friction to the digital crown of the watch compared to the previous Series 7. This felt more premium and felt more sturdy, like a real high-quality crown, which meant that the haptics also felt nicer when scrolling down the menu.

Then the raised body that housed both the digital crown and the side button was also a great touch to easily find those buttons without having any sort of muscle memory.

And even when I was wearing gloves, winching away on a 4 x 4 vehicle in the jungle, I still could kind of feel where the buttons were. Speaking of winching, there were times when I knocked the watch against the front bumper of the Isuzu D-Max X-Terrain when I was trying to unlock the winching mechanism, and it did not scratch the Titanium case and also the Sapphire glass at all.

And yes, the IP6X rating did get tested during a very heavy downpour, and there was a time where the whole entire watch was covered by mud, and I was a bit worried more on staining the Ocean Band than worrying about the watch being damaged.

Now, speaking of this Ocean White Band, why did I go with this compared to the Alpine Loop then? Well, the simple answer is that I have never been a huge fan of the Starlight color, and this was the only new watch band which was in White, and if y’all know me well enough, that’s always been my favorite color on any tech item.

And no, I am not a diver, in fact, I can’t even swim, but I have to say that besides this amazing color, I love how this particular watch band feels and wears like a traditional watch, and the buckle adjustments were really nice and solid, and comfortable to a point whereby I can wear it to sleep without any issues on my wrist.

So another new hardware introduction to the Apple Watch Ultra is the new Action Button, which you can remap it to several actions, like for an immediate workout, stopwatch, waypoint, backtrack, dive, torch, Siri Shortcuts, and just do nothing. Now why would you map it to do nothing, I do not know. 

As for me, since I was in the jungle and had very limited to no light, I mapped the Action Button to the torch function, which was very beneficial for many situations, as it gives a super-high 2000 nits of peak brightness which really illuminated my whole entire journey, especially when there was no light at all.

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Screen

Since we are talking about the brightness of the screen, using this new flat screen, first of all, was super nice. It almost felt like I was navigating on a tiny smartphone screen.

Now the watch face that I have been rocking throughout my whole month of usage is this Wayfinder watch face, which gave me up to 8 complications, which I have added the Activity Rings, my Todoist, Workout, and Homekit in the outer area, and inside the dial area is where I have included complications of today’s date, the last waypoint, the battery level, and the compass as well.

Another reason why I use this watch face is also because since I was stuck in the jungle longer than expected, I turned the digital crown to activate the Night Mode, which emitted just a red light which gave better battery life, which I will go into how the battery life performed later on in this review.

Another useful thing that has been introduced in the Apple Watch Ultra is the Siren feature, and while I did not really need to test it but since I was in the jungle, I got to test it and trust me, it is loud!

And yes, it has a very good microphone, so if you ever need a microphone and your iPhone is just too far away, just your Apple Watch.

So besides all of those things mentioned, the screen is indeed one of the best that I have seen on a smartwatch, even beating the Samsung’s new Watch5 Pro as well.

The colors and sharpness made the screen look very pleasant to look at during a super bright situation because of its high brightness value. And it was so bright to the point that I kind of put it down to level 2 instead of level 3, which was way enough for me to use it during the day and also during at night as well.

 

Software

As of the making of this video, the software on the Apple Watch Ultra was updated to the version watchOS 9.1, and I have done a video highlighting on what’s cool and new about this new watchOS 9, so be sure to check out that video. But now I am going to talk about how exactly that it has benefited me when it comes to using this watch daily.

Firstly, there is the Workout Enhancements, which was extremely useful for knowing which heart rate zones that I was at since I love running outdoors besides the gym.

I have also been using the Medications reminder a lot for my daily supplementation of my Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and L-Carnitine during my workout days at different times of the day.

And as mentioned, since I wear the watch to sleep, the additional Sleep stages were also very handy for me to know how long I was awake between my sleeping time and how much Deep or REM sleep.

And going back to the jungle situation, the Retrace Steps came in extremely handy when I was hiking about 1km away from the camp heading to another camp when I wanted to help deliver some water and speaking of which, during that time, I even used the Hike workout to measure the distance and elevation too, which came in extremely handy to know how much that I have traveled back and forth.

 

Battery 

Ah, so we have come to the most important part, which is the battery.

Firstly, from a typical daily usage of using the watch for working out and sleep tracking, out of the jungle, I found that the battery drain on this was quite shocking, as it only drained about 2% battery in about 2 and a half hours.

And when I went to bed on the same day at around 12:30 am, I was still at 65% battery, and it lasted all the way to 3 and half days of battery life at about 1:10 pm in the afternoon when I was at 2% battery.

And when I was in the jungle though, with turning on the Night Mode (red light only) on the new Wayfinder watch face during at night, which gave me a total battery life of 4 days which means that during the whole time that I was stuck in the jungle, the Apple Watch Ultra was always with me, which I am extremely thankful for.

 

Conclusion

So, what’s my verdict then? Well, since the Apple Watch Ultra was my true companion in the jungle, and of course using it daily, and as a new Apple Watch user since the Series 6, I only can say good things about this watch.

And yes, I am no mountain climber, I am no diver, and I don’t really do some extreme sports, but this watch was super reliable both daily and when I was stuck in a thick-ass jungle in Sabah as well.

And yes, with that, I fully recommend any iPhone user to get this watch because it is the best Apple Watch to date, and I love it to the point that I tell people, and since it is almost the end of the year, that this is currently my favorite tech item in the year 2022.