All beginnings are hard…

After a period of intensive chilling for the purpose of home remodelling and intensive projects in business, the first run was a bit difficult for me. Unlike the new watch on the wrist. Titanium and sapphire and less than half the weight of a Rolex GMT Master II. The Ultra is super comfortable to wear, and with the optional strap it is also suitable for sweat and swimming.

So what is there to report now:

The Fenix 5 was a thoroughbred sports car, more or less the Wiesmann Roadster. Reduced to the essentials: Collecting data. Of course, the Ultra 2 is also moving more and more in the direction of sportiness here. The Ultra 2 as successor of the Ultra can now connect Bluetooth sensors (Apple: add Ant+!). For the first run, however, I opted for the typical Hippster setup:
Watch + BT InEars for entertainment during the run and motivation to overcome the first pain of getting going.

The watch has a GSM handset and an eSIM and can thus independently request data from the provider: So Spotify? Yeah works! BT Anker Soundcore Liberty Pro? Yeah works! So I called up the list of favourite songs and off we went.

Advantages of the Ultra 2

The watch offered me 3 training pages, current values and average values of the segment (standard 1km). Values such as mileage in watts and values outside of time and pace eluded me. But hey, the focus was on music, fresh air and exercise to switch off. And that was AWESOME! No smartphone that bounces around in your jacket pocket at 220 grams and causes knee damage to the corresponding side. This kind of thing makes me furious: not in terms of pace, but rather in my mind.

In addition, it is possible to take a call in an emergency. With two wonderful boys aged between 3 and 6, quick accessibility can be an advantage. So she did a great job with that, too.

In addition, it offers fall detection and automatically calls the emergency service if I simply fall asleep when I fall or if I am seriously injured admiring the stars.

After the run, however, I missed “logging in on the PC” to a portal like Garmin Connect. Here, everything runs on the iPhone. Okay, mostly I used that with Garmin too, but it felt lacking.

The watch had plotted an extremely clean GPS course, offered me ground contact time and vertical movement. RunningPower was also appreciated. The pulse values felt right.

Of course, this was only a first impression. Next, I’ll use a chest strap and Garmin to pit the watch against 2-3 external Garmin sensors and see how accurate Apple can be here.

However, I did notice the extremely good display, mega strong 3000 nits and extremely fast and snappy navigation through the new SIP. Shopping and paying by watch, taking short calls on the go, checking the weather, asking Siri something… that was already extremely practical and beyond the Garmin of 5 years ago.

Disadvantages: Where there is light…

However, I immediately noticed the negative battery life: don’t get me wrong, Apple has already managed a good runtime here. But the Fenix could also last 10 days on a trip to the North Sea without a charging cable. I still have to get used to it, but when I shower and get dressed in the morning, the charger pushes in enough to get me through the day.

I can hardly draw a first conclusion, there are still so many other tests and activities to come. But what can be said is that the workmanship, the look and feel of the watch is extremely good and everything is round and does not cause any stress.