Apple Watch Ultra Open water GPS tracking

Yes same problem. Garmin shows 1437m in open water, Apple Ultra shows 78m.

Map shows the watch is picking up on land, but as soon as it's in the water it fails to register except for a tiny portion of the swim.

I seem to remember my old Apple watch had the same issue. Seems nothing has been done about it on this new version of the watch.

Unacceptable for a supposed "ultra" device at this price point.

Atrocious, in fact.

Just found this article which explains why this is happening: https://blog.swim.com/swim-com-turning-your-apple-watch-into-a-great-open-water-swim-tracker/

I have the same issue, I raised a case with Apple support and they collected the swim logs since December.

The case has been escalated to advanced engineers and the last update is that it might take weeks even months to get an answer or to resolve the issue!

Totally unacceptable given the price paid for this ULTRA watch and the advertised capabilities!

I have been using the Apple Watch Ultra for two months. I swim 2km open water daily and Ultra was performing perfectly in terms of GPS accuracy for over 2 months. However, for the last 5 days it's gone nuts and measuring at least 500 meters more every swim session. This is such a let down and disappointment. I bought this device just for the purpose of tracking my OWS accurately. It worked well for the last two months but now not anymore and I have no idea how to get this thing fixed. I suppose it's not hardware but a software problem? Maybe it happened after the latest Watch OS software update. I don't know. Apple we need your support asap!

I'm having the same problem. I've been wearing both my Apple 7 and Ultra during swims and uploading examples like this to the Apple techs.

It's terrible! I just did 3 laps of 75 meters each way open water breaststroke, so 450 meters total. Got 83 meters on the watch. The last leg I paused for about 30 seconds at start and finish with watch above my head - still the last lap added less than 10 meters to total. It's pathetic.

I’m in Madeira and have had guided swims for the past 4 days. My AWU has consistently under reported distance by as much as 50% compared to the other watches in the group.

Also, once I imported the workout into strava, it showed the correct distance! But moving time was only 5 minutes, which was incorrect. The workout map in Apple health shows me stationary the whole time at the place where my phone was. Strava showed nearly correct location.

I could not agree more. I too was swimming freestyle, swam 3.5km and Apple Watch Ultra said I only swam 0.78km with no GPS track. I hope Apple will address this soon.

I switched from the regular Apple Watch to the ultra for better gps for swimming. I get a very poor recording of the gps tracking. Most of the time it just shows a dotted line.

Are you swimming with a freestyle stroke?.