The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra has been a pretty polarizing watch since it first started leaking, ahead of Unpacked. Even after it was officially announced, it was still quite polarizing in the tech community. Many believed that Samsung straight up copied this watch from Apple, including yours truly. But the more time I spend with it, the less I think they straight up copied it entirely, and just copied a few aspects. Though, it is quite obvious who Samsung is marketing this watch towards.
After Unpacked ended, I picked up my review units from Samsung, and I’ve been wearing the Galaxy Watch Ultra ever since. It’s actually one of the two products I was most excited for – the other being the Galaxy Ring, which I don’t yet have, as Samsung is having issues keeping it in stock. Why? Well, I’ve grown bored of the Apple Watch Ultra, specifically its fitness tracking. And wanted to switch back over to Wear OS, but OnePlus’ OHealth isn’t quite as robust as Apple’s Fitness features. The Pixel Watch is more robust with Fitbit being included, but the battery life is not great. That leaves Samsung, who does have pretty good battery life on its watches.
And I have to say, my complaints on the Galaxy Watch Ultra are pretty few and far between after two weeks. So let’s talk about the good, bad and the ugly in this full review of the Galaxy Watch Ultra.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: Design and Bands
While it seemed like Samsung decided to take the square shape of the Apple Watch and put it underneath its round display, that’s not quite the deal here. Samsung used this squircle casing to include cushions around the outside. This helps to make the watch more durable, as this is being marketed towards the more outdoorsy type of user. That’s also why it has the Sapphire Crystal Display and a much brighter screen.
Honestly, I really dig this design of the Galaxy Watch Ultra. All of your buttons are on the right side (unless you decided to wear it the other way), including the Home and Back buttons, but in the middle is now a new Quick Button. This can be customized, but by default, it opens up the workouts menu, so you can start a workout. But it can also be used to open the stopwatch, flashlight or turn on water lock. Unfortunately, its not anymore customizable than that. I would have liked to see Google Wallet as an option here, or Samsung Wallet. As an Apple Watch user for the past few years, I’ve gotten really used to being able to double tap a button to open Apple Pay. I can map Google or Samsung Wallet to the Home button for a double press, however, so it’s not all bad.
The entire watch is in a titanium casing, which looks great, and is far better than the sort of shiny case that the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic was available in – specifically that silver one. Underneath the watch is the new BioActive Sensor, which does a really good job at measuring everything more accurately. The Apple Watch is incredibly accurate with heart rate tracking, and the Galaxy Watch Ultra is about as accurate now thanks to this new sensor.
Galaxy Watch Ultra is more rugged than other Galaxy Watches, and that’s evident by the MIL-STD-810H certification. So if you’re bike riding and fall, the Galaxy Watch Ultra should hold up just fine. Samsung did specifically test the Galaxy Watch Ultra for “high/low temperatures, altitude, humidity, immersion, salt, fog, dust, vibration and drops”.
The new band connector is not good
Samsung changed how bands connect to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, which means traditional bands won’t work with this. It’s kind of similar to how the Pixel Watch works, with the exception of, it’s worse. It’s tougher to remove bands, versus the regular Watch 7 and earlier models. Thankfully, I only have one band, so I’m not removing them all that often. And there’s only three bands available from Samsung right now. I do wish Samsung had kept the old mechanism, but this is likely to make it look more seamless.
I do have the orange Marine band here, which at first, I didn’t like. I’m not a big fan of orange, but I like the design; this has also grown on me. I do prefer this more silicone-style band because it means I don’t need to change it when I’m working out or jumping in the pool. While I do like leather bands, those really can’t get wet. So I have to be more careful about taking off my watch then. It’s fairly comfortable, and it’s easy to sleep with for sleep tracking too.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: Display
Despite being a 47-mm watch, the Galaxy Watch Ultra has the exact same display size as the 44-mm Galaxy Watch 7: a 1.5-inch 480×480 display. The difference is that the Galaxy Watch Ultra can reach 3,000 nits.
Now, while wearing this watch, I can say that this never really hit 3,000 nits. As that is going to be under the most extreme circumstances, but I can say that I had no problems viewing this outdoors in direct sunlight. It was plenty bright, and I do keep it on auto-brightness, which allowed it to adjust pretty quickly.
I do wish the Samsung had made the display larger, especially since this is a pretty large 47mm case. But that also would have used up more battery than the current 1.5-inch display does.
As far as the actual display goes, it looks great. Color reproduction is on par with what you’d expect from a Samsung AMOLED display – which this is. Of course, you won’t be using this to watch videos on YouTube, but for the usual stuff it looks great.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: Performance
With the Galaxy Watch Ultra, Samsung is debuting its new wearable chipset – Exynos W1000, which is clocked at 1.6GHz and actually powers the Galaxy Watch 7 as well. While I did review the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic last year but didn’t use it all year long, it’s hard to measure how much better this new processor is compared to the old one. But I can say there have been no hiccups or lag whatsoever with this chipset. Of course, having 2GB of RAM and now double the storage at 32GB definitely helps in that regard.
The vibration motor inside this watch is quite good as well. I typically keep everything on mute or vibrate, so having a good vibration motor is important for me, so I know when I’m getting notifications, even when I’m not near my phone. It’s also been good at auto-starting workouts, tracking my heart rate, and everything else you’d want from a smartwatch.
Then there’s the gestures. Samsung has a few gestures which include a double tap of your index finger and thumb, and another that is a knock-knock motion. The double pinch is not customizable and is used to answer calls, dismiss alerts, launch apps, control your music, and also take photos as a remote shutter. To be honest, I haven’t used this one all that much. I did use it to dismiss a few notifications, but that’s pretty much it.
The knock knock gesture I have used a lot more. For a few days, I did have it set to the Google Wallet app, which makes it super simple to open it up and tap to pay, especially if you only have one hand free. With this gesture, Samsung lets you pick from a few features like opening recent apps, Doing exercises, turning on the flashlight, or adding a reminder, but you can also select apps to use here. A good one here is to open Spotify or whatever music streaming service you use. My only complaint with this is, that it is a little too easy to trigger this gesture. I’ve been sitting at my desk typing away, like writing this review, and it triggers the gesture to open Google Wallet.
All in all, performance on this Galaxy Watch Ultra is quite good, while not destroying the battery, which is also good.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: Battery life and Charging
Battery life on Samsung smartwatches have been pretty decent for quite some time now. But much like with the Galaxy Z Fold 6, they’ve kind stagnated here. Samsung equipped the Galaxy Watch Ultra with the same 590mAh capacity battery as the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, despite being a larger watch. Samsung claims that you’ll get about 48 hours of usage with Always-On Display turned on, and up to 100 hours in power saving mode. Which seems pretty accurate in my testing.
With AOD turned on, I was normally getting between two full days and two and a half days. So that’s about 48-60 hours. That depends on how many notifications I’ve gotten, how many workouts its tracked, etc.
Now with AOD turned off, I was generally able to get past 72 hours, but not quite to 96 hours – which would be four full days. This was all without using Power Saving Mode, which I’m pretty positive would get you well above the 100 hour mark. So battery life is good here, though I was expecting a bit more given the large watch case here.
When it comes to charging, watches are still pretty slow at charging. A full charge here is about an hour, maybe a little longer depending on some variables that are out of your hands. Though one issue I do have with charging comes down to the BioActive sensor. Because of this new sensor, the charging mechanism had to move a bit. So older Galaxy Watch chargers won’t work, and reverse wireless charging doesn’t work. So you couldn’t charge this on the back of your Samsung phone, unfortunately. Not a huge deal, unless you had multiple chargers at home and at work already. But at least there is still a charger in the box – just not a wall adapter.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: Software, Fitness and Health tracking
Now for the meat and potatoes of this review, the software. That’s truly what makes or breaks a smartwatch, especially on the health and fitness side of things. This is the first watch to launch with Wear OS 5, which Samsung is a huge partner with Google for, and has been for a few years now. I don’t notice a lot of differences here compared to Wear OS 4, other than the new Watch Face Format, which means a lot of third-party watch faces do not work. But that’s fine for me, because I really like the ‘Ultra Info Board’ watch face that Samsung has used in most of its marketing.
You see, for me, I like having lots of complications on my watch face. To check my steps, how many calories I’ve burned, active minutes, and of course the weather. And if I can do all of this by just raising my wrist, that makes things so much easier. Which is possible with this watch face. Obviously, having this many complications is going to drain your battery life, but I haven’t noticed a huge difference between this and a watch face with only a couple of complications.
Samsung has tripled the number of LEDs on the Galaxy Watch Ultra which is going to allow it to improve accuracy during an intense workout, and I’ve found that to be pretty true. The Apple Watch is known for being extremely accurate for recording your heart rate, and wearing both for a workout, the numbers were very similar. The addition of dual-band GPS is also a huge upgrade, especially for runners, hikers and cyclists.
With the Galaxy Watch 7 and Ultra this year, Samsung brought Galaxy AI over to its wearables. It’s Health Assist, and honestly it’s pretty useful. It’s not overbearing like some AI features on phones these days. Essentially it gives you tips and insights on how you’ve been performing. So if your goal is to lose weight, Galaxy AI will tell you that you need to be more active, get more sleep, and eat less calories. Samsung stresses that this is for wellness only and not to diagnose anything.
This is also used for the Energy Score, which is new this year. This is similar to what others like Garmin and WHOOP have been providing for a while. This is a daily measurement of your physical and mental readiness for the day. It uses analysis of your sleep, activity, and heart rate to calculate your score out of 100. I’m typically in the upper 80s and had a few days in the 90s. However, when I was flying back from New York City after Unpacked my flight was delayed – I didn’t get home til 4 AM – my energy score was much lower, around 51, likely due to the lack of sleep. It’s not the end all be all, but if you’re feeling tired in the morning, this can help you understand why.
Finally, there’s the Sleep Apnea feature. The FDA has authorized the use of this feature in the US, so it is going to be pretty accurate. Basically, to test for this, you need to wear your watch pretty snugly on your wrist for two nights. The app will then tell you if you have sleep apnea or not. Now, I knew I didn’t have it, since I generally sleep very well and have no problems going to sleep, so the results did not surprise me.
The Galaxy Watch Ultra is just such a good, well-rounded fitness tracking device for your wrist, and it really does a lot more than some of the competition out there these days. And without a subscription, I’mlooking at you, Fitbit.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra?
Now the million dollar question, or more accurately the six-hundred-fourty-nine dollar question, should you buy it? It depends on what watch you have now, and what you use your watch for. For most people, I’d say no you don’t need the Galaxy Watch Ultra. Unless you’re into the more hardcore sports and workouts like hiking, running and cycling, where you likely need the more rugged build of the Galaxy Watch Ultra and the added screen brightness, I’d say get the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic.
The reason for this is, there’s not much difference besides the new BioActive Sensor, MIL-STD-810H certification and the brighter display on the Galaxy Watch Ultra. The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic is also much cheaper, even with LTE. Since they both have the same size display and battery, and of course the Classic also has that rotating bezel that everyone loves.
You should buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra if:
- You are a hiker, cyclist or runner.
- You need a more rugged smartwatch.
- You like the design of the Galaxy Watch Ultra.
You should not buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra if:
- You want a rotating bezel.
- You don’t like big watches.
