Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 vs Apple Watch Ultra 3: Now that's a proper Ultra smartwatch

Samsung has developed a thinner watch band that has been slimmed from 2.9 mm thick all the way to 1.9 mm without sacrificing its qualities. This results in a further 25% weight reduction of the band, which makes the wearable even more comfortable to wear. 

Other than that, Samsung hasn't changed the band change mechanism, thankfully. The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 arrives with three bands. There's Marine, made of breathable silicone that is perfect for intense all-day sports and activities, as well as diving. Next, we have Peakform, a more casual and elegant band that mimics leather. Finally, we have Trail, a fabric band suitable for sleeping and comfort.

In terms of bands, Apple has fortunately not made any changes to the already well-established Apple Watch band attachment mechanism with the Ultra 3. This lets you use any old Apple Watch band  released in the past decade, as long as it has been intended for any of Apple's previously released 44 mm, 45 mm, or 49 mm smartwatches.

Apple has a number of new color options for its base Apple Watch Ultra bands, the Trail Loop, the Ocean Band, and the Alpine Loop. They all match the new watch perfectly,

Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 features improved performance, responsiveness and much faster app launch times. With the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, Samsung improves pretty much all the health-tracking features of the device.

Of course, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, just like the Apple Watch Ultra 3, is a proper smartwatches, running real operating system with apps, deeper customization, and more features instead of a proprietary platforms. 

Samsung introduces a new Vitals app, which sounds––and functions––much like Apple's own Vitals app. It acts as an early-warning panel for any health-related issues or problems, but most users will use it as a dashboard for their fitness insights. While the app has the same name and does the same thing as Apple's app, it does that by monitoring different metrics.

Apple's Vitals app tracks your heart rate, respiratory rate, wrist temp, blood oxygen and sleep duration, Samsung's Vitals measures your heart rate and heart rate variability, respiratory rate, skin temp, and blood oxygen. 

It drops the sleep times for HRV, which could be a bit more accurate for most people. Just like Apple's features, this one requires a established baseline of at least seven days before it gives you a proper reading. The data will be available in a new widget that you can put as a tile or on your watch screen, but it won't pester you with daily notifications, which is a user-friendly approach. 

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 also gets a new Heart Health Score that gives you approximate information about your heart's health status. The wearable will also monitor your daily cardio load, which could be helpful to runners. The same applies to Fitness Index, another metric that uses your VO2Max, heart rate, step count, and activity time to tell you whether to push or rest.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 supports diving and acts as a diving computer, showing depth, dive time and water temperature. Speaking of water, the smartwatch will show you a hydration notification when it detects you might be sweating too much. The latter is an estimation, as the watch doesn't have a sweat sensor. 

Among the new software features that came with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is a wrist flick gesture that allows you to dismiss notifications, get back to your homescreen, and so on, similarly to the iPhone's shake-to-undo feature. It works well, and it quickly becomes a second nature to flick away your wrist in order to dismiss whatever's on the Apple Watch without having to actually touch it with your free hand. In the same vein, the superb double-pinch feature that lets you answer calls, advance the interface, open your widget stack, and so much more.

The heart rate accuracy seems to be just about right from what I can tell. Comparing the Apple Watch Ultra 3 against two other non-Apple smartwatches shows way more logical results, with fewer deviations and irregular readings. If anything, I'm poised to believe the heart rate readings from the Apple Watch Ultra 3 a bit more.

And just like previous Apple Watch Ultra devices, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 allows recreational diving up to 40 meters and has a diving computer functionality built in. Thanks to the water temperature and depth sensors, you get to see important details about your dive, including depth and water temperature.

In terms of health tracking, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 supports all the features its predecessors did, including heart rate monitoring, ECG, irregular rhythm notifications, high and low heart rate, respiratory rate, and new this year, hypertension alerts. The latter will inform you if it detects higher than usual blood pressure, though you'd need to wear the device for at least 30 days so that a baseline could be established.

Menstrual cycle tracking and ovulation estimation are also part of the feature set.

Blood oxygen tracking is also back on the Apple Watch. The latter was removed after a patent dispute with Masimo, but the feature seems to be back on the Apple Watch Ultra and the rest of the company's smartwatches, but the legal battle with Masimo appears to be still ongoing, so there's no saying what the future for the blood oxygen feature will bring.

Samsung has successfully put a massive 800 mAh battery inside the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, a truly remarkable achievement given that it's also much thinner and lighter in comparison. That's a solid 35% battery increase versus the older Galaxy Watch Ultra, a rarity these days. 

With such a large battery and more efficient chipset, the watch will likely achieve at least three days of mixed use, and probably more! 

In the meantime, the Apple Watch Ultra 3 has a 599 mAh battery that can last you between one and three days based on your usage. If you're actively using GPS and navigating the trails under the glaring sun, the battery life will lean towards the shorter time, but if you're wearing the watch while replying to emails at the office, you might hit those coveted three days of sparser usage.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 will be available for $699, a $50 increase over the first Ultra. 

The Apple Watch Ultra 3 remains the more expensive choice starting at $799. 

It's worth noting that both models have LTE in the base versions.