Samsung decided to try something new this year with its watch line by introducing a tough or rugged smartwatch called the Galaxy Watch Ultra. While Samsung has focused on health and fitness with the Galaxy Watch line for some time, this is their attempt at the ultimate sport and outdoor companion, similar to what Apple has done in recent years with the Apple Watch Ultra.
The price is sky high at $649.99 and that’s because Samsung spared no expense. The Galaxy Watch Ultra features a titanium case, Sapphire Crystal display, a new Biometric Sensor for health tracking, a massive battery, maximum durability for a smartwatch, and any other specification you might want to see them include. This watch has it all, so the price reflects that.
But is it good? Is it too far out of Samsung’s comfort zone, so far that it is encroaching on Apple’s Ultra territory? We’ll talk about all of that now in our Galaxy Watch Ultra review.
What’s good about the Galaxy Watch Ultra?
Display. Samsung included a really high-end display on the Galaxy Watch Ultra. This is a Super AMOLED with a resolution of 480×480, can do always-on display, and is round with a 1.5″ diameter. It’s super responsive to the touch, boasts sharp and vibrant colors, and looks incredibly smooth as you swipe around it. But maybe most importantly, it cranks to 3000 nits of brightness when outdoors and in the sun.
For an adventure watch, seeing a display when outdoors is critical and this thing excels at showing you information when the sun is the brightest. I’ve taken this watch on several sunny runs and I’m left a little speechless every time I glance at it to see my pace or other running metrics. As someone who dances between all sorts of smart and fitness watches throughout a year, this is the most impressive display I’ve ever seen on a smartwatch. You flip your wrist for a quick glance and you can see the information you need as if you were in a dimly lit room. It’s wild. The display is one of the reasons I would consider using this watch for the foreseeable future.
Oh, it also has Sapphire Crystal cover glass, so good luck scratching or damaging it. This thing looks great and should be able to take a beating.
Battery life. For battery, Samsung tossed in a 590mAh cell and included “fast charging” through the included wireless charger. This battery will last you at least 2 days on a single charge and likely much more. I wish I had more specifics on that for you, but I’ve been switching out smartwatches at the moment as we test several.
Here’s what I know from testing. I leave the always-on display active, I sleep with the watch and gather all of that data, and I workout with it, typically for 45 minutes to an hour at a time. When doing all of this for two days straight, I still have battery left. Should I turn off the always-on display, I’d imagine we’re pushing to 3 days or more.
A lot of the efficiency here comes from the new Exynos W1000 chip inside the Watch Ultra. Samsung says it’s not only much faster, but it brings a 30% improvement in power efficiency compared to their last chip. This chunky watch sips power, which is exactly what you need from a large, adventure watch that will likely see its display brightness boosted on the regular.
Performance. As I just mentioned, Samsung shipped their new 3nm Exynos W1000 chip inside of the Galaxy Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch 7. This chip is said to be 3x faster than the previous CPU from Samsung, which actually sounds pretty substantial. They also tossed in 2GB RAM, so on paper, this watch should be able to run it all.
Not that we use our watches to multi-task much or run heavy-hitter apps, but this watch certainly runs as smooth and fast as you would hope. I think the most stress I put it under was when outside with a GPS running activity active and needing to switch out of the workout interface to open Spotify or to text someone back. It did that no problem, if that helps you understand how well this thing runs. All good here, the Galaxy Watch Ultra just ran everything I needed it to. It never slowed, never skipped a beat, and tracked all the things. GPS accuracy has been solid too, although I haven’t taken it into a sea of tall buildings or anything.
Design. This might be a controversial take in tech circles (including at this here website), but I actually like the design of the Galaxy Watch Ultra. This big and chunky wrist computer does look like the rugged beast that Samsung hoped it would be, and I’m kind of a fan. I wouldn’t call the watch “pretty” or “sleek” or even “sexy,” but I like the idea of something completely different from past Samsung watches. A chunky and metallic box has sort of freshened up Samsung’s arguably stale Galaxy Watch series, that hasn’t changed much between the regular Galaxy Watch 5 to 6 to 7 models, unless you include the oddity that was the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. This thing is just so different and sometimes being different makes me happy.
This thing is huge, though, there’s no getting around that. The Galaxy Watch Ultra measures in with a case size of 47mm, which is kind of absurd. And making matters worse there, is the fact that it’s a squircle, not a rounded design that could blend into your wrist. This Watch Ultra will stick out, you’ll notice it’s there, and you have to fully adopt the absurdity of its overall wristprint. I’ve done that. I often wear big chunky sport watches (like a Garmin Forerunner 955), so I’m somewhat used to this style. It doesn’t fit nicely on my wrist and I don’t really care. It won’t fit on yours either, so you just go with it.
This watch screams, “Yo bro, I just left REI after a 10-mile trail run and am about to go kayak, wanna come?” If that’s your style (I guess it’s mine?) then this watch was made for you. Or maybe you just want to think that could be you one day and so wearing the Galaxy Watch Ultra will get you moving in that direction. Guys, this watch isn’t pretty, but it’s also pretty fun.
Hardware. Outside of the design of the watch, the hardware itself is really cool. You get a new band connector that is somewhat tricky to figure out, because you have to forcibly press bands into the case to get them to snap in. But once they do snap in, they are there, with no wiggle and feel incredibly secure.
You also get 3 buttons on the side, which you can mostly customize. The middle button is new and is not a rotating crown, so we’re clear. It’s mostly there as an action or “Quick” button to launch workouts, a stopwatch, flashlight, or the water lock feature (10ATM water resistance!). You have two other buttons above and below it that are standard for going back, opening recent apps, launching Samsung Wallet, or powering the watch off (or activating an assistant). All of the buttons are easy to press (I flip mine to the left side) and give a satisfying click.
The rest of the package is as good as it gets too. The titanium case has great weight to it, you have NFC and WiFi and Bluetooth 5.3, GPS (L1 + L5), 10ATM water resistance and an IP68 rating, and a new BioActive Sensor to help track your entire active lifestyle. The specs are included, that’s for sure.
Health tracking. Where I think the Galaxy Watch Ultra really shines is as the ultimate health and fitness tracker. As long as you can handle Samsung Health, this watch can do so much and tell you so much about your state of fitness or help you get there. And not only that, it’ll just tell you if you are overall in a healthy state.
It starts with the new BioActive Sensor that Samsung included that we talked a lot about here. Plainly speaking, it’s a much more accurate sensor for tracking your heart rate, sleep, blood pressure, blood oxygen, and stress. If you have a garbage sensor, like the WHOOP strap has, it’s hard to trust your data. Samsung went with the best of the best for this watch and it should show as you wear it.
I’m just scrolling through Samsung Health as I type this and you can choose what to track. You can go simple and simply let it monitor your heart and sleep and steps. You can also get your daily energy score that can recommend how hard you should go today in your workout. If you want, it’ll track your cycle, check your temperature for signs of changes in life, and your stress level. You can manually input your water and food intake too, just to fully round it all out.
Now, I know that almost any smartwatch can do most of this at this point. However, Samsung is trying to turn things up a notch in some areas. For example, if you are a runner, the Galaxy Watch Ultra can provide advanced metrics for contact time, flight time, vertical oscillation, stiffness, and more. If you’ve never used a dedicated running watch, like a Garmin Forerunner, you have likely never seen this info before. And this stuff is cool, especially if you are trying to improve, avoid injury, that sort of thing. The more knowledge you have about activities and your movement, the better, at least in my opinion.
Beyond running, Samsung Health and the Galaxy Watch Ultra let you dive deeper into almost anything it tracks. You can see history and charts for obscure metrics like heart rate variability (HRV) throughout a night or your snoring. Samsung has implemented the AGEs index for the first time, and I’m not about to try to explain what it is, but it’s something I’m excitedly learning about. There’s almost nothing this watch doesn’t track that involves your health. And I didn’t even touch on its tracking of irregular heart rhythms because that requires a Samsung phone, which I’m not using.
I do have some complaints, of course. The exercise options are so odd on this watch. There’s no cross training, CrossFit, HIIT, or pickleball, yet Samsung included options for High Knees, Hula Hooping, and ice dancing. I also either can’t feel the notification/vibration at mile intervals when running or Samsung just doesn’t have those. That would be odd, as that is a standard running feature that even the Pixel Watch has. Samsung Health is an overwhelming app to use too, but thankfully it can be slimmed down some with a customizable main screen.
Overall, as someone who has continued to have a weird obsession with health metrics, this Galaxy Watch Ultra really nails almost all of it. It lets me geek out in ways that most Wear OS watches don’t.
Is anything wrong with the Galaxy Watch Ultra?
Software still a mixed bag. The Galaxy Watch Ultra runs Wear OS 5 and Samsung’s newest One UI 6 Watch. I haven’t been the biggest fan of Samsung’s Wear OS skin in the past and that doesn’t change here. Me and Samsung just don’t really get along when it comes to how software should work. Don’t get me wrong, they give me enough settings to get around some issues I have, but it’s the whole setup and layout of the basic framework that I still hesitate with when trying to do the simplest things.
For example, Samsung included an app drawer that you swipe up to see when on the main screen. On almost any other Wear OS watch, it doesn’t work that way. You typically just click the main side button to do that. I can’t get used to this. For notifications, again, almost all smartwatches tuck them below the main screen, so you can swipe up to see them all and then swipe left or right to dismiss. Samsung has pushed all notifications to a panel on the left side that then takes up/down swipes to dismiss. Samsung also only shows Wear OS tiles off to the right side instead of letting you access them from both directions, in sort of a wheel style.
Notifications are a weird mess to deal with too. Like, out of the box, Samsung has notifications fully expanded with what seems to be 300 automated shortcut responses and emoji (I turned them all off). This makes your notifications, especially if they are an email, insanely long. And the action buttons with them are buried at the bottom, so you often are scrolling and scrolling and scrolling in order to just archive a Gmail you had no interest in reading in the first place. You can shrink notifications to not show you full details, but Samsung doesn’t give you action buttons that way. You would still have to tap into the notification scroll for a mile and then deal with it. It’s just not a well-thought out notification system on such a small screen. But Samsung has had it like this forever and so I can’t imagine they think they are doing it wrong, even if they are.
Other parts are good, though. I like the companion app for all of the settings it provides, there are some solid watch faces included (with a great watch face editor), battery modes that’ll extend your battery life, a solid weather app, and access to almost everything you could want from Google Play (like Google Wallet).
The software on the Galaxy Watch Ultra runs just fine, my beef with it is the layout and notifications. These are just things I’ll have to deal with as I go forward with this device on the wrist.
Expensive. At $649.99, this is an expensive watch. I think that price is going to turn a lot of people off of what could be a watch they might really love. I’m not calling Android users cheap, but we’re used to paying $200 to $400 for a watch, and we complain about anything when it comes close to those $400 prices. Thankfully, Samsung is continuing to push high trade-in values to get interested parties into one, but still, selling this thing is going to take some work. The good news for Samsung is that people do seem interested in a big, rugged watch with all of the specs. The Sapphire Crystal glass, titanium case, new processor, beefy design, and advanced health metrics are a big selling point, assuming the size isn’t another turnoff. Let’s just hope the deals continue, especially as we head into the holiday shopping season.
The whole Apple Watch clone part. Look, I don’t want to get too into this, because it probably doesn’t really matter to Android folks, but Samsung really did come too close to the Apple Watch Ultra vibe. Samsung should be bigger and better than going the Apple clone route after all these years. While this watch is certainly a different watch with mostly different looks, they knew what they were doing when they removed the “7” from the name at the last minute and then pushed marketing materials with a focus on orange accents, a matching set of special bands to what Apple offers, etc.
I think this is a really great Wear OS smartwatch, probably the best you can buy if you are an Android user. Still, Samsung can’t do this goofy sh*t. Be your own company, Samsung. You are far too big of a player to be taking inspiration from whatever Apple is up to. If you want to make a rugged adventure watch because that’s what people are into, great – do that. But please, in the future, make it your own.
Should you buy a Galaxy Watch Ultra?
The Galaxy Watch Ultra is certainly not a smartwatch built for everyone. This thing is big, bulky, and not necessarily the prettiest thing around. It’s also quite expensive at $649.99 when you aren’t finding discounts. Thankfully, Samsung always has discounts.
That said, I really like the Galaxy Watch Ultra. This is Samsung attempting something new that isn’t exactly in their wheelhouse and I still think they mostly nailed it. This smartwatch can be fun, has excellent battery life and durability that won’t leave you worried, performance is top notch, the health tracking is as good as it gets, and it’s more than just another Galaxy Watch. This is Samsung exploring a bit and we should all hope they continue with it.
I’d wear the Galaxy Watch Ultra, that’s for sure.
This post was last modified on August 30, 2024 8:45 am