Apple Watch Ultra 4 drastically undercounting elliptical workouts - calories, exercice minutes & steps
I recently upgraded to an Apple Watch Ultra 4 after using my previous Apple Watch Series 5 for 5-6 years, and the fitness tracking has been extremely disappointing.
I own an elliptical machine, which is my main source of cardio. My old Watch S5 consistently recorded 450-500 active calories and 4500-5000 steps during a 60 minute workout. My elliptical machine also has my age and weight programmed into it to provide more personalized calorie estimates.
With my Ultra 4, similar workouts now record only 114-163 active calories, barely any steps, and sometimes just ONE Exercise minute for an entire 60 minute workout! My hear rate readings are accurate and consistent with the elliptical machine.
I've already reset the calibration, completed a 63 minute outdoor walk to recalibrate (which tracked perfectly), and updated to watchOS 27.0.1, but nothing had improved.
What's most frustrating is that the apple Health app now shows declining exercise minutes, steps, and distance compared to previous months, even though my actual activity level hasn't changed! Since the elliptical is my primary cardio workout, I haven't been able to accurately tract my fitness goals for days. I upgraded specifically for better fitness tracking, and now I can't even rely on my activity trends.
I've reported the issue to Apple. Is anyone else experiencing this with the Ultra 4 or watchOS 27? Has anyone found a fix?