Apple Watch Ultra 4 gets smarter with special Siri AI features

Apple just gave its most rugged smartwatch a pretty major intelligence upgrade. The new Apple Watch Ultra 4 not only improves health tracking and battery life; it’s also becoming one of the more interesting places to use Apple’s new Siri AI.

With watchOS 27, Ultra 4 gains access to a much smarter Siri that can understand personal context and tap into broader global knowledge. There’s even a special modular Siri watch face designed to make the assistant easier to access. Siri AI will be released in beta with English support on September 14, with more languages ​​coming in October. But that’s only part of what Apple is doing with artificial intelligence on your wrist.

Your Apple Watch can now listen to information you might miss

Apple is introducing a collection of features called Audio Intelligence, powered by the new S11 Ultra 4 chip, its microphone, Apple Intelligence models that work with iPhone, and private cloud computing. One of the most interesting additions is Live Rewind. If you miss something during a call, double-tapping the Digital Crown can bring up a snippet of text covering the previous 15 seconds. You can then ask Siri what was said or save the information for later.

Siri Recap takes this idea further. With this feature enabled, after a conversation you can create a short summary with a title and key points that you can return to later. Apple also introduced audio recognition into the Ultra 4, allowing the watch to alert you to things like sirens, alarms, doorbells, or a crying baby. Shazam can automatically identify nearby music and add it to the Smart Stack. Given that some of these features involve your watch listening to the world around you, privacy is an obvious concern. Apple says Audio Intelligence does not create or store audio recordings, and processing is isolated using hardware built into the S11 chip. Live Rewind also makes a sound and displays visual indicators when activated, so people nearby know it’s in use.

There’s a lot going on here even if you don’t care about the AI

Ultra 4 is still an adventure and fitness watch. Apple has upgraded its health-measuring hardware, with heart rate now measured every five seconds throughout the day and HRV readings occurring much more frequently. It also adds a new 0-10 readiness score that takes into account activity, training load, sleep and health data to help you decide how hard to work that day.

Battery life has also improved. Apple expects the Ultra 4 to last up to 50 hours in normal mode or 84 hours in low power mode. A 15-minute charge can provide up to 18 additional hours. For especially long outdoor activities, Max Extended Workout mode can track runs, walks and hikes for up to 45 hours. Apple Watch Ultra 4 is available in Natural and Black Titanium, with pre-orders now open and general availability beginning on September 18th. In the US, their price starts at $799.