A half marathon is a decent stress test for a sports watch, and Tom's Guide fitness editor Jane McGuire wore the $799 Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the $699 Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 on the same wrist for one, then compared the data afterward. Neither watch pulled away by much.
Both are built for the same kind of buyer: someone who wants a smartwatch that can also pass as a sports watch, with built-in GPS, sleep and stress tracking, and recovery metrics. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 ships with a 49mm case and Apple's new heart rate sensor paired with a daily Readiness score, and it only works with an iPhone. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 has a 47mm case and pairs exclusively with Android or Galaxy phones. That alone settles the choice for most people before specs even come into it.
GPS and distance were nearly identical
McGuire had auto-lap running on both devices through the full course. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 logged the run at 13.23 miles, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 came in at 13.21 miles, both slightly over the official 13.1-mile distance, which McGuire attributed to weaving through other runners rather than any GPS fault on either watch.
Heart rate told a similar story. McGuire used an Oura Ring 5 as a baseline, which recorded an average of 163 beats per minute with most of the effort sitting in zones four and five. The Apple Watch Ultra 4 read 159 bpm on average, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 read 160 bpm, a gap McGuire called too close to call either way.
Elevation was the one spec where a prior Tom's Guide tester, Dan Bracaglia, had flagged problems with the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 during runs and rides. McGuire didn't see the same issue this time. Against an official course elevation gain of 311 feet, her watch recorded 342 feet, a difference she put down to normal variance from altimeter sensitivity and GPS drift rather than anything specific to the Samsung device.
Design differences are minor, ecosystem is not
On the wrist, McGuire, who describes herself as a petite runner, found both watches chunky, with the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 feeling slightly wider despite its smaller case number. Both have physical buttons that work fine with sweaty hands, and both screens stayed readable in direct sunlight, though the Apple Watch Ultra 4's larger display showed a bit more information at a glance.
Neither watch is cheap, and neither is a pure fitness device, something McGuire noted in flagging battery life as the one area where these smartwatches still fall short of dedicated sports watches. The real deciding factor isn't GPS accuracy or a few beats per minute of difference. It's the phone already in your pocket. IPhone owners cannot pair a Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 at all, and Android owners get the same wall in reverse, which makes this less a performance contest and more a reminder that ecosystem lock-in still does most of the choosing for you.
RRFiled by The Reviews Roundup Desk
What the reviews are saying: verdicts on new devices from the outlets that tested them, summarised and credited to each. This desk does not test products itself.
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