Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic Official, Available Starting August 11 for $299 and $399

The new Samsung Galaxy Watch series is official as the Galaxy Watch 6. Samsung announced two variants of its Watch 6 at an Unpacked event in South Korea today, giving us all of the details, including specs, price, features, and release date.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic.

The big pitch here is going to focus on advanced health tracking, with new sleep metrics and modes, as well as plenty of upgrades in fitness tracking (like Personalized Heart Rate Zone). Samsung is also pushing new features in the electrocardiogram, menstrual cycle tracking, and Fall Detection.

But if you move beyond the health stuff, you still get solid upgrades throughout. Samsung is using bigger and brighter displays with less bezel, a brand new processor, more memory, larger batteries, and faster charging. By bringing back the Classic line, they are also bringing back the physical rotating bezel that disappeared with last year’s Galaxy Watch 5 series.

For each watch, you get small (Watch 6 – 40mm; Watch 6 Classic – 43mm) and large (Watch 6 – 44mm; Watch 6 Classic – 47mm) sizes where their specs essentially match-up from one model to the next. In other words, you’ll find the same 1.5″ AMOLED display on the biggest Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. The smaller models have 1.3″ displays. For batteries, the big boys have 425mAh cells, while the smallest models top out at 300mAh.

After those couple of items, everything pretty much sticks together. We get Samsung’s new Exynos W930 dual-core chipset clocked at 1.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage,”fast” wireless charging that’ll give you 8 hours of use in 8 minutes, sapphire crystal on displays, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, GPS, WiFi, 5ATM water and dust resistance, and Wear OS 4 with One UI 5 Watch.

How are these upgrades over the Galaxy Watch 5 line? Samsung says that the displays are 20% larger than previous models, with 30% slimmer bezels and a 15% thinner rotating bezel (on Classic). Brightness for each display hits 2,000 nits. The rest probably comes down to performance with the new W930 chip and more RAM, as well as longer battery life.

As for the health stuff I mentioned earlier, here are just a few things Samsung plans to introduce with the Galaxy Watch 6 line:

• Sleep: You’ll get Sleep Score Factors that show your total time, sleep cycle, wake time, and physical/mental recovery. You’ll find Sleep Messages that provide you feedback on sleep, Sleep Consistency to show sleep and wake times, and a cute Sleep Animal Symbol that represents your sleep type. You’ll even get Sleep Coaching and a Sleep Mode that can trigger your smart home to shutdown for the night.
• Health: In health, you’ll find Body Composition measurements, a Personalized Heart Rate Zone, an option to track Custom Workouts, Track Run mode, and a new Irregular Heart Rhythm Notification feature. The new Watch 6 line will also track skin temperature during sleep to give insights on menstrual cycle tracking. There’s Fall Detection here too.

Pricing, Availability

If that all sounds great, know that you can buy the Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic on August 11. You can pre-order before that, though, and doing so will get you deals and freebies.

The Galaxy Watch 6 starts at $299.99 for the 40mm model and jumps to $329.99 for the 44mm version. The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic starts at $399.99 for the 43mm version and then jumps to $429.99 for the 47mm model. Those are Bluetooth/WiFi prices – if you want LTE, you’ll need to add another $50 onto each price.

Should you pre-order, you can save up to $250 off with select trade-ins. Samsung is also tossing in a free Fabric Band, which looks pretty great.

Pre-order

• Galaxy Watch 6
• Galaxy Watch 6 Classic

Specs