Last Updated on February 2, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
After our long term review about scientific papers about sports watch accuracy we want to criticize Rob ter Horsts Scientific Long-term Review about the Apple Watch Ultra. Rob ter Horst delivers no numerical and statistical data, but only an accuracy comparison plot on YouTube. He publishes some numbers, but non of those in a scientific document.
The group of the cardiologist Dr. Desai from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio published an accuracy study paper with the Apple watch 1:
and the Apple watch 3:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/
The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio has a yearly research grant of about 200 million USD, and a very large research institute which many scientists working there:
Rob ter Horst claims, that the Apple watch Ultra is one of the most accurate watches he tested. He showed that from Apple watch 6 on, the sensor has changed.
But did this cause as significant increase of the accuracy of the watch? We strongly doubt about this. If newer Apple watches would be significantly more accurate than older watches, a research institute which a budget which is that high could publish tomorrow a paper about this, if there would be a change in accuracy of the Apple watches which is interesting for cardiologists and physiologists. But the Cleveland Clinic did not publish any new sports watch accuracy studies since they tested the Apple watch 3. We suppose that they did some tests similar to the tests which Rob ter Horst does, did not find a big change in accuracy, and decided against a new study.