The last time I had a smartwatch with "long" battery life like that was 2018 with a Polar M600. I got tired of charging it all the time and upgraded to a Garmin with a week of battery life.

It really annoys me to have to charge my Apple Watch every day, especially because I want/need it for both sleep tracking and exercise tracking. If I use it for sleeping it invariably runs out of bettery during the night, then in the morning when I want to work out I have to charge it before the gym, it's just frustrating. I would LOVE three days of charge.

This is one of the main reasons I keep a Garmin for running (that, and real buttons on the Garmin, which Apple Watch Ultra might fix). I wear the Apple Watch at night, and if I didn't remember to throw it on the charger for a bit after waking up, well, no run for you because there's not enough battery. I mean, between those two activities (sleep tracking and running), I was constantly managing the battery charging because the damned thing won't last through a day.

That, and I was really doubtful that the Apple product would 100%-for-sure-no-excuses make it through a marathon, and I'm fast enough to qualify for Boston. No way it would have made it through the five hour trail marathon I ran a few weeks ago.

So I really, really want the Apple Watch Ultra just so I can pare down to one watch. But the Garmin 945 isn't even a year old, so we'll see what Apple has to offer next year.

Some settings might help.

I have a Series 4. I stick it on the charger in the evening when I've settled down on the couch to do the NYT crossword puzzle, watch TV, and read. I inevitably fall asleep sometime during that. Sometime in the next two hours I'll wake up to go pee, see that the watch is charged, and put it on, go pee, maybe go get a drink of water, and head to bed.

When I'm in bed I have the watch in theater mode and with notifications silenced.

When I'm awake, but not exercising, I generally have it in theater mode with notifications not silenced. I'll toggle it out of theater mode if I'm doing something where I'll want to look at the watch more than sporadically.

When I'm exercising I turn off theater mode. That's typically about 40 minutes every morning.

Most evenings when I stick it on the charger it is above 50%. A fair number of days it is above 66%.

My tactic is to drop in on the charger before I start getting ready for bed, then put it back on when I’m ready to go to sleep. Because it charges quickly, that’s enough to give me power through the night and the next day.

I’d still like a month of battery life though!

I just don’t track sleep… I sleep fine but the couple times I’ve tried sleep tracking it has just made my sleep restless because every time my sleep got shallow I woke up thinking about “I wonder how my sleep tracking is going… man I’m gonna get the best sleep score!”

"18 hours is all day" has been funny argument from Apple, despite it supports sleep tracking.