Apple’s Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 are official, arriving with a new S11 chip, upgraded health sensors and, on the Ultra, longer battery life.
The S11 is the first Apple Watch chip in three years to move to a genuinely newer architecture rather than a clock-speed bump on the same design. Apple has paired it with sensor upgrades aimed at health and fitness tracking, though it hasn’t detailed which sensors changed or by how much, and with a battery-life improvement concentrated on the Ultra 4.
What’s new in the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4
Both cases keep the same shapes as their predecessors, so from across the room the Series 12 and Ultra 4 look like the watches they replace. The changes are under the glass: the S11 chip, the sensor work, and the Ultra’s extended battery life. There’s no Apple Watch SE refresh this year, and none of the three models has changed price, which stands out given that Apple has been raising prices elsewhere in its lineup.
The watches shared their launch event with the iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable phone, which teqpost covered when Apple named its first foldable iPhone Duo rather than Ultra. AirPods 5 launched at the same event. All three are now open for pre-order and ship on Friday, 18 September 2026.
The RAM upgrade Apple didn’t put on the spec sheet
Neither Apple’s keynote nor its spec pages mention it, but 9to5Mac found that both new watches carry double the RAM of the Series 11 and Ultra 3 they replace. That’s an unusual thing to give away quietly: memory prices have been climbing all year, and teqpost has already covered how Apple raised iPhone prices as DRAM costs bit into margins. The Watch line got more memory instead of a higher price, at the same moment the rest of Apple’s catalogue moved the other way.
Doubling memory isn’t the kind of change that makes a keynote slide; it shows up in benchmarks and app-switching speed rather than a headline feature, which may be why Apple left it out. That makes the real story less the S11 chip itself than what Apple chose not to say about it: a newer architecture and doubled RAM would usually be pitched as a selling point, not left for outlets to find after launch.
Pricing and availability
Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 are up for pre-order now through Apple and Amazon, shipping Friday, 18 September 2026, at the same prices as the Series 11 and Ultra 3 they replace. 9to5Mac also reports third-party retailers already discounting the new watches by up to $325 off list price, alongside pre-order deals on the new AirPods 5.
What to watch: once the watches ship on 18 September, independent battery testing will show whether the Ultra 4’s gains hold up outside Apple’s own framing, and whether Apple ever acknowledges the RAM increase officially rather than leaving it for teardowns to confirm.
Image: MIKI Yoshihito from Sapporo City,Hokkaido., JAPAN via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
