I tested the Apple Watch Ultra 2 vs the Garmin Instinct 2 by hiking 1,500 feet up the Columbia River Gorge — here's what I learned

Tom's Guide

14-05-2025

The Columbia River Gorge is an 80-mile-long river canyon that cuts through the U.S. Pacific Northwest's Cascade Mountain Range, splitting the states of Washington and Oregon before reaching the mighty Pacific Ocean.
Truly a natural wonder to behold, particularly with spring flowers blooming, I had the chance to hike a portion of the Gorge while wearing the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Instinct 3. These happen to be two of the best rugged-built smartwatch models you can buy today.
Outdoor apparel brand Timberland arranged the opportunity, inviting me along to test out the new Timberland Motion Access Hiking Sneakers (full review coming soon) and other gear.
With bright blue skies and perfect temperatures, we began our trek up Washington's Dog Mountain, an appropriately named trail with no lack of furry four-legged friends to greet us along the way.
With the Apple Watch Ultra 2 on my left wrist and the Garmin Instinct 3 on my right, I also fired up Strava for the duration of the hike as an additional source of data. Scroll down to see how results from the three methods compare, along with five takeaways from the hike.
The Ultra 2 is one of my favorite full-featured smartwatches thanks to its super-bright and immersive AMOLED touchscreen, rugged design, programmable action button, helpful wellness and fitness training tools, and an enormous selection of apps. It's also Apple's longest-lasting wearable.
The Garmin Instinct 3 is a tough-as-nails outdoor adventure smartwatch with epic battery life and cool onboard features, like a 'torch' LED flashlight built into the case. It also has some of Garmin's best workout training tools, impressive sleep and recovery insights, and supports an enormous range of exercise types.
But first, how do these two popular wearables stack up spec-wise and feature-wise? Here's a full breakdown of the Apple Watch Ultra 2 versus Garmin Instinct 3 across six categories, including price (Garmin wins), build-quality and design (draw), battery life (Garmin), fitness tracking (Garmin), smart features (Apple), and safety tools (draw).
Ultimately, the Garmin Instinct 3 is better for folks who want a dedicated fitness and wellness tracking wearable, especially one that's going to last a long time and survive hard knocks. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 is more ideal for folks who want a tough-built, do-it-all smartwatch with solid workout tools and the best apps and smart features.
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Now, on to the hike!
Apple Watch Ultra 2
Garmin Instinct 3
Strava
Distance
3.67 miles
3.48 miles
3.56 miles
Elevation gain
1,578 feet
1,518 feet
1,477 feet
Steps
no data
9,816 steps
9,280 steps
Average heart rate
124 bpm
115 bpm
n/a
Max heart rate
164 bpm
156 bpm
n/a
Calories burned
895 calories
694 calories
n/a
The Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Instinct 3 have both proven to be competent fitness trackers in my testing. However, the data generated on this hike isn't quite as cohesive as I've come to expect, particularly elevation gain metrics.
This was a steep hike right from the start, with loads of switchbacks and nothing but incline. In just under two miles, we made our way from the canyon floor to soaring mountain meadows bursting with yellow flowers. And given our efforts, I was more than a little curious to find out just how much elevation we'd conquered.
Unfortunately, my climb data is all over the place, with the Apple Watch reporting 60 more feet of climb than the Garmin and a whopping 101 more feet than Strava. Which device should I trust?
While it's tempting to go with Apple, my gut tells me that the Ultra 2 likely inflated my efforts. Still, with 41 feet separating the Strava and Garmin tallies, I'll likely never know whether I cracked the 1,500 feet mark or just came oh-so close.
Distance data is a little more consistent, thankfully, with less than 0.2 miles separating the results between Apple, Garmin and Strava.
As of this writing, Apple doesn't provide step-count data for individual workouts, only a total for the day, something I'm hopeful will be addressed when watchOS 12 launches.
Garmin and Strava, meanwhile, do provide step count totals for hikes and walks, but similar to my climb data for this particular outing, the tallies are annoyingly inconsistent. In roughly 3.5 miles, Garmin calculated 536 more steps taken than Strava.
Which one is more accurate? Again, it's nearly impossible to tell, but I am seriously surprised by how off these measures are.
Given the device's greater distance and climb data, I'm not surprised that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 noted 201 more calories burned than the Garmin Instinct 3.
Apple also calculated my average and max heart rate as roughly 10 bpm faster than Garmin. As noted above, this was a fairly steep trail, and I got the blood pumping and the lungs working overtime on more than one occasion.
With that in mind, I suspect Apple's max heart rate of 164 bpm and average heart rate of 124 bpm more accurately reflect my actual cardiovascular efforts than Garmin's 156 bpm max and 115 bpm average.
Blame it on Apple Watch fatigue — a square piece of glass on a strap is old hat at this point — or Garmin's sporty yet playful design ethos (and brightly colored cases), but the Instinct 3 drew far more curiosity from onlookers than the Ultra 2 during this trek.
On roughly half a dozen occasions, I was asked by someone in our group of journalists and outdoor industry folks about the chunky, "retro" teal smartwatch on my right wrist.
Of course, once they found out the Instinct 3 is an outdoor adventure beast that costs half as much as the Ultra 2 on my other wrist, with five times (or more) battery life, better durability and similar safety features, they just had to know more.
Smartwatch nerdery and hiking metrics aside, hiking Dog Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge was nothing short of a magical experience. If you have the chance to take on the excursion yourself, I definitely recommend shooting for early May when the Balsamroot flowers are in full-on glorious bloom, as seen in the photos here.
As for the Apple Watch Ultra 2 versus Garmin Instinct, the metrics for this hike are less consistent than I've come to expect, particularly the climb data. However, rather than stressing about it, I look forward to pitting these two wearables against one another in a future walk-test showdown, either on Dog Mountain or somewhere equally as scenic. Stay tuned.