Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 Have Increased RAM Without Price Increase - MacRumors
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Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 Have Increased RAM Without Price Increase

MacRumors has confirmed that the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 have increased RAM compared to the previous-generation models.

apple watch s12 ultra 4
Both new models are equipped with 4GB of RAM, according to Apple's developer tool Xcode 27.

Apple Watch Series 11 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 models are equipped with 2GB of RAM, so the Series 12 and Ultra 4 have twice as much memory.

Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 models are equipped with a new S11 chip that powers new Apple Intelligence features when the watches are paired to an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. The increased RAM will help to enable these new functions, such as Live Rewind text snippets and Siri Recap summaries, and give a boost to Siri AI.

Despite a severe memory chip shortage that has driven up the price of RAM and resulted in Apple raising prices on iPhones, iPads, Macs, and more in recent months, the Series 12 and Ultra 4 start at $399 and $799 respectively in the U.S., meaning the devices have the same starting prices as the Series 11 and Ultra 3 even with more RAM.

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Top Rated Comments

Leobreaker Avatar
4 hours ago at 06:17 am
Don't worry, that extra 2GB of RAM will be reserved for Siri AI even if disabled, so your performance won't be improved.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
4 hours ago at 06:19 am
Assumption regarding price is that 4 GB of RAM is essentially the minimum they can get now so thats why there isn't a price increase, and the general sales we see on Apple watches means they know a price increase wouldn't be accepted by consumers.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Joe Rossignol Avatar
3 hours ago at 07:00 am

J

Just checked and for Ultra 4/S12 I get "memoryClass" > 3
memClass 3 actually means 4GB of RAM.

This quirk is the result of Apple releasing an iPad Pro with 4GB of RAM before it eventually offered an iPhone or iPad with 3GB of RAM.

memClass 4 = 3GB of RAM.

After this quirk, all memClass values directly correspond with RAM, i.e. 6 = 6 GB and 8 = 8 GB and 12 = 12GB.

(There is another quirk. I believe 15 is used for 1.5GB, but not 100% sure on this.)

memClass trivia one day?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Joe Rossignol Avatar
3 hours ago at 06:47 am

@Joe Rossignol

can you please provide source of this information? According to the Wiki (link below) those only have 1GB of RAM. and afaik RAM didn't increase between S9/10/11 and U2/3.
Please enlighten us, Thank You


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Watch
Apple's developer tool Xcode lists a "memClass" for each device that corresponds with an amount of RAM.

There has been 2GB of RAM since the Apple Watch Series 9.

Here's more proof ('https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/17oag3r/comment/k7zw8tm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button') beyond Xcode.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BorisDG Avatar
3 hours ago at 06:47 am

Holy cow, this is a 4x RAM increase. The Ultra 3 has 1GB RAM.

Hopefully this means my Music app stops crashing due to low memory on standalone Watch mode during workouts.
Not true. The Ultra 3 has 2GB, just like all the watches based on the S9/S10, which were pretty much the same SKU.

Here is another (favorite) source ('https://hubweb.cn/apple-silicon/chip-s/').
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
4 hours ago at 06:17 am
Apple grabbed their RAM price increase from elsewhere. At least they didn’t touch the price on these.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)