The Ultra is the most bizarre in the lineup. It's marketed at extreme adventurers, mountaineers, extreme hikers, etc. For that demographic, battery life of less than at least a week is a non-starter, not to mention 100% button navigation as opposed to touchscreen + dial. Those are really hard to operate whilst wearing thick gloves.
I know several people who own the Ultra, and while they are all 'outdoorsy' sort of people, none of them are even close to 'extreme'.
The market more likely is people that see themselves as "extreme adventurers, mountaineers, extreme hikers, etc", despite mostly doing half day rides at the nearest mountain biking trail, national park hikes where they spend one night in a cabin, and a weekend snow boarding at a ski resort.
I'm hardly extreme, and the Ultra is bad enough for me. If I'm out in the cold trying to navigate, I don't want to take my gloves off. When I retire to my tent, I don't want to worry about recharging my watch.
> spend one night in a cabin, and a weekend snow boarding at a ski resort
This should be enough to get people away from any watch without the features I mentioned - long battery life and button-operated.
This is a bit silly. I was gifted an Ultra, and as a climber/skiier/trail runner, it serves my purposes extremely well. The maps using WorkOutdoors are far superior to what I've seen from Garmin devices (although I haven't tried) and I can always get all-day battery and charge within 30-40 min before bed. Yes, I wish the battery lasted longer but it's a tradeoff I'd always take for a more responsive and usable interface.
One gripe is that the functionality with gloves is a little annoying since you can get false positive screen taps from sleeves/cuffs. A second is that the main button is pressed when doing a pushup or in some situations while climbing, which triggers the emergency alarm mode by default (but is configurable to turn off).
Most adventures are not many days long without sleeping (for me) and this watch works pretty well.
I know the Ultra has an extra button, but I wonder if you can start a run on it in the rain (ie without using touch). That was what finally pushed me away from Apple Watch, and the marketing of the Ultra is quite funny if it doesn't solve it.
ANT+ is still very much present in the cycling world and likely won't go anywhere. While most sensors and devices will also support bluetooth it seems to be a much more fragile and problematic connection. From my own experience I'd always opt for ANT+.
Garmin makes solar powered watches for adventures types in the back country. The Ultra is probably good for scuba diving since you aren’t doing it for so long.
