Hands-On With the New Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 Models

Apple today gave members of the media that were at Apple Park for the "Wonderlust" event a chance to take a look at the new Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models ahead of their release. MacRumors videographer Dan attended, getting a first look at the new color options, Double Tap, and more.

The major new feature for both the Series 9 and the Ultra 2 is the updated S9 chip, a welcome update because prior to this, the chip in the Apple Watch hadn't been updated since the Series 6 even though Apple was changing the S-name with each generation. The S9 chip has 60 percent more transistors than the S8 chip in the Series 8, and it processes machine learning tasks up to 2x faster.

With the S9 chip, there's a new Double Tap gesture (coming in October). Double Tap lets you double tap your index finger and thumb together to answer a call, play and pause music, open a notification, and more. It uses the various sensors in the Apple Watch and it works surprisingly well.

Both the Series 9 and Ultra 2 have brighter displays (2,000 nits and 3,000 nits maximum, respectively) for better performance in the sun, and they can drop down to 1 nit at night or when you're in a movie theater. Siri requests are also now processed on device, and ‌Siri‌ can answer health questions like how well you slept or what your heart rate is at.

There's also a new U2 chip that can be used for finding your iPhone with Precision Finding, and dictation is 25 percent more accurate. All of the new models come with an increased 64GB of storage space, up from 32GB.

Apple added a new pink aluminum color for the ‌Apple Watch Series 9‌, which is an attractive shade, plus the watch comes in starlight, midnight, and PRODUCT(RED). The stainless steel models are available in graphite, gold, and silver.

The Series 9 and Ultra 2 Apple Watch models can be preordered starting today, and will launch on September 22 alongside the new iPhone 15 models.