Ferrari Scuderia XX Ultraveloce Smartwatch vs. Apple Watch: Beauty and the Beast

More specifically, Apple is estimated to have sold nearly 31 million Apple Watch units in 2019, while the Swiss watch industry shipped a little over 21 million units last year. In other words, Apple sold nearly 50 percent more devices than all Swiss watch makers combined, and there’s a good chance the company won’t just stop here, with a further growth expected in 2020 as well.

Meanwhile, there are companies out there that continue to invest in smartwatches despite Apple’s total domination. Samsung, Fitbit, and Garmin are some of the tech firms hoping that at one point they’ll be able to surpass the Apple Watch and secure the leading spot in the smartwatch market.

And last but not least, a handful of smaller firms that aren’t full-time tech players launch special-edition smartwatches, not necessarily to compete with Apple and the Apple Watch, but to provide fans with a gadget they wouldn’t otherwise be able to purchase.

Ferrari is one of these brands, as the company’s Scuderia XX Ultraveloce Smartwatch brings modern features like notifications and activity tracking to the wrist of fans from all over the world.

At first glance, the Ferrari smartwatch and the Apple Watch appear to be fierce rivals, especially as they’re based on the same approach. More often than not, smartwatches come with a similar feature package and include capabilities like notifications, heart-rate monitoring, activity and sleep tracking, water resistance, and customizations like watch faces.

Because Ferrari doesn’t have the know-how to build a smartwatch, it reached out to HP to make the Ultraveloce happen. The result, however, isn’t necessarily something to die for, but it’s not disappointing either.

Available for just $85 on Amazon, the Ferrari Ultraveloce smartwatch is a lot cheaper than the Apple Watch, which starts at $399 in the United States for the base model.

Ferrari’s model has a 48mm case, so technically, it’s larger than the Apple Watch, which is available in two different versions with 44mm and 40mm cases.

It doesn’t run wearOS or watchOS, so it’s powered by HP’s proprietary operating system. However, the Ferrari smartwatch can connect to both Android and iOS using dedicated mobile apps, and it offers notifications for incoming calls, text messages, email and calendar.

Ferrari Ultraveloce is a hybrid watch, which means it mixes smart capabilities with typical analog watch features. In other words, the aforementioned notifications are all displayed in a small panel in the lower part of the screen. But at the same time, this hybrid approach allows also for impressive battery life: 2 years in analog mode and up to 5 days in “digital” mode with the smart features.

The Apple Watch Series 5 is an entirely different beast. The smartwatch comes with a full touch-capable display boasting all kinds of gimmicks, including Force Touch, meaning that the device vibrates on input and allows you to access certain features faster with a harder long-press on the screen. The Apple Watch display is also one of the best ever used on a smartwatch in terms of brightness, as the latest-generation model reaches 1000 nits.

As compared to Ferrari’s smartwatch, the Apple Watch can connect only to iPhones and comes with a more limited battery life, as it can last between 3 and 4 days per charge, depending on usage. There’s no analog mode, albeit it does feature a power saving feature that increases battery life but also disables certain capabilities.

Ferrari’s smartwatch features various cosmetic touches whose purpose is to remind of a Ferrari, including a black dial sports “skeletonized” white hour and minute hands, red seconds hands with Scudetto counterbalance, and a yellow logo on the screen.

Apple Watch comes with the typical innovations in today’s modern tech world, including a ceramic and sapphire crystal back on the top-of-the-range models.

As far as its capabilities are concerned, there’s so much more the Apple Watch can do as compared to Ferrari’s smartwatch. While the Ultraveloce is mostly an analog watch with a handful of smart powers, the Apple Watch is mostly a mini-computer that sits on your wrist.

Thanks to a full army of sensors, which includes GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS, a compass, a barometric altimeter, an electrical heart sensor, an optical heart sensor, a gyroscope, an ambient light sensor, a speaker, and a microphone, the Apple Watch sports a feature lineup that Ferrari’s Ultraveloce can only dream about.

In addition to notifications and activity tracking, something that’s also possible on the Ferrari watch, the Apple Watch also lets owners check their heart rhythm with the ECG app, get warnings when the sound around them is too loud and can impact their hearing, pay with Apple Pay, and run a plethora of apps that further enhance its capabilities.

Furthermore, the latest-generation Apple Watch now comes with built-in LTE, so it can work without an iPhone just fine, which comes in handy to those who want to work out without having to keep their iPhones around to pick up a call or reply to a text.

While Apple’s watch can also be used for swimming, and it even includes swimming monitoring, Ferrari’s Ultraveloce is only water resistant, and the parent company says you shouldn’t wear it when swimming. It should be able to withstand brief immersion in water just fine though.

At the end of the day, while the Apple Watch and the Ferrari Ultraveloce might seem to be two competing products, they certainly aren’t. The Apple Watch is a device that’s specifically aimed at those who’re looking for the best of the best in tech, while Ferrari’s model is more or less targeting people who fell in love with the brand and just want to have the Prancing Horse on their wrist all the time.

This is also the reason there’s such a huge difference in terms of pricing, as the technology bundled with the Apple Watch obviously doesn’t come cheap. So if you’re in the market looking for a smartwatch, choosing between the two really shouldn’t be too hard, especially given the huge differences in terms of features and specifications.