You might be right.To me, the Ultra and the Hermes are completely separate devices and I don’t think they really belong in the same conversation (despite occupying spaces at the top of the Apple Watch lineup). The Hermes line is about elegance and fashion, which is why we all rave about how much better the Hermes faces look than the Apple designed faces. The Ultra is the opposite- it’s all about function. The watch is chunky and larger than would be considered tasteful on most people’s wrists. But it’s designed to be that way. Several of the new Ultra bands are designed to fit over clothing.
The Ultra just isn’t targeted at the Hermes customer and I personally don’t think putting Hermes bands on it looks very good. I really wish Apple had named the Ultra something else like Extreme or Explorer. Ultra makes it sound like it’s “the best” watch. But it’s not really. It’s just a version that is targeted at a specific group of customers.
So many of the nice mechanical watches out there started life as tool watches. Today, we don't really have anyone climbing Everest with a Rolex Explorer, flying a plane with the aid of a Navitimer, or people diving with a Panerai Submersible, not really even a Rolex Deep Sea Dweller. The last two are chonkers too! Speaking of chunky watches, I saw a Breitling Emergency today... Never seen that before.
So while there may also be a case to be made that tool watches can also be luxury watches, I think I'm starting to form the opinion that the Ultra is more g-shock than GMT Master.