Apple Watch Ultra exclusively features a depth gauge with a water temperature sensor for underwater activities. Integrated with the new Depth app, the Apple Watch Ultra can measure max depth (up to 130 feet or 40 meters), water temperature, and duration underwater.
YouTuber, DC Rainmaker put the Depth app to test to see how well it holds up to 40 meters and more importantly, beyond the maximum depth. For the experiment, he used an underwater test chamber design to test diving watches.
With a 49mm largest and up to 2000 nits brightness display, and up to 60 hours of battery life, the Apple Watch Ultra is designed for endurance, exploration, and adventure. For divers, the watch supports 100-meter water resistance and its Depth app can record up to 40 meters of recreational dives.
Apple Watch Ultra’s Depth app has an animated interface for increasing depth and purging
The Depth app automatically starts a dive session when the Apple Watch Ultra is submerged to a depth of 1 meter or more.
As it was an experiment in a controlled environment and not an actual dive, Rainmaker launched the app manually before placing it in the chamber. He tested the watch at 10 meters and 40 meters depth.
For both depths, the Depth app displayed the depth in feet, water temperature, time duration of the dive, and the current time. More interesting, as the depth increased the UI turned the watch from black to represent that the diver is going deeper. And when the dive was purged, the black UI rises again and has a wavy motion to show that depth is decreasing.
The animated UI shows that Apple is paying close attention to design as always.
Here is how Apple Watch Ultra’s Depth app behaves when pushed beyond 40 meters
Rainmaker also pushed the Apple Watch Ultra’s Depth app beyond its maximum limit to see how it will record depths more than 40 meters.
The test showed that the Depth app turned the UI yellow and displayed a “Beyond 130 FT” message but showed the water temperature, time duration of the dive, and the current time. However, upon concluding the session, the app notifies the user that the depth history can be reviewed in the Health app on the paired iPhone.
Rainmaker found the depth of the “Beyond 130 FT” dive was 144ft in the Health app along with other metrics like the hourly breakup of dives and more.
