{"id":96025,"date":"2025-08-27T09:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96025\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T09:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:41:09","slug":"a-data-scientist-found-the-apple-watch-ultra-2-is-more-accurate-than-garmin-samsung-and-even-whoop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96025\/","title":{"rendered":"A data scientist found the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is more accurate than Garmin, Samsung and even Whoop"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best fitness trackers<\/a> are all vying for our love and money, but it\u2019s not often we see a whole host of them pitted against one another in what is essentially a lab setting.<\/p>\n

Rob ter Horst, a data scientist at the University of Vienna and YouTube<\/a> creator, has taken a look at Apple<\/a>\u2019s upcoming watchOS 26 update via the public beta, running it on an Apple Watch Ultra 2<\/a>. He’s pitted the Ultra 2 against a series of historic heart rate data he’s collected from fitness tracker rivals like the Whoop MG<\/a> and various Garmin watches, pitting them against his gold standard, the Polar H10 chest strap<\/a>, to determine accuracy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And, in a surprise twist, it\u2019s Apple\u2019s premium rugged watch that comes out on top, beating almost every other modern fitness tracker for heart rate accuracy.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Apple Watch Ultra 2\u2019s health tracking dominates the competition for accuracy<\/p>\n

Apple Watch Ultra 2 + WatchOS 26 – Scientific Review (Still The Best On iOS!) – YouTube
\n\"Apple<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

For testing, ter Horst used a Polar H10 to track heart rate data for an indoor running workout, using it as his control measurement for the purposes of comparison.<\/p>\n

Despite some small deviations, the Apple Watch<\/a> Ultra 2\u2019s heart rate sensor did a great job of matching up to the control device. Perhaps most surprisingly, it was more accurate than the Whoop MG, a device literally named \u2018Medical Grade\u2019, which deviated around 6% from the H10.<\/p>\n

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 7<\/a> deviated just 3%, while the Garmin<\/a> Forerunner 570 and Fenix 7 deviated 7% and 9% respectively.<\/p>\n

When it comes to other workouts, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 matches up almost entirely to the Polar H10 for both cycling and outdoor runs, while rivals like the Whoop MG deviated 15%. That\u2019s more than the Garmin Forerunner 570\u2019s data, which deviated 12%.<\/p>\n

Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just heart rate, either. According to ter Horst\u2019s testing, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is around 73% accurate for tracking REM and deep sleep, and 86.5% accurate for light sleep tracking when compared to a Hypnodyne ZMax as a control device.<\/p>\n

That puts it ahead of even an Oura Gen 4 ring, while Samsung<\/a>, Whoop, and Garmin\u2019s device data falls short in this regard, too.<\/p>\n

Where does the Apple Watch Ultra go from here?<\/p>\n

Rumors have been swirling for a while about an upgraded Ultra 3<\/a> at Apple’s next big device launch in a little over a week at the time of writing, with suggestions that it will offer an improved display and 5G connectivity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also reportedly going to add detection for high blood pressure, adding to its toolkit of health and fitness features.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest issues with Apple Watch (Ultra or otherwise) remains battery life, though. We\u2019re hopeful Apple can find a way to make the sensors included more energy efficient, especially since much cheaper rivals have the tech giant beat in terms of running for weeks on a single charge.<\/p>\n

You might also like…<\/p>\n

TechRadar created this content as part of a paid partnership with Pure. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of TechRadar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best fitness trackers are all vying for our love and money, but it\u2019s not often we see…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[786,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-96025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-gadgets","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}