The Samsung Galaxy Watch series have always been great fitness trackers, but this year, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Samsung Galaxy Watch9 have moved further into preventative health, and it means they’re about to get even more useful.
Even though they’re brand new watches, there are already discounts available with exclusive Amazon savings. Right now, you can save £30 off when purchasing a Samsung Galaxy Watch9 or Watch Ultra2 with a pair of Buds4 or Buds4 Pro. There’s also a 100-Day Buy & Try offer, so there’s no real risk involved either.
Rugged & ready
Not sure whether the savings on these watches are for you, or unsure which to buy? Let’s start at the top. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra2 is Samsung’s rugged, hard-wearing watch for adventurers, with a titanium casing ensuring it can take anything you throw at it. The new Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset and large 800mAh battery ensures it can keep going, and going, and going, surviving long, battery-sucking workouts relying on GPS as you navigate trailheads or take on marathons. However, it’s slightly thinner than the previous Ultra, packing better performance into a smaller parcel.
There are plenty of fitness features to like here. As well as Samsung’s suite of activity profiles, last year’s Running Coach feature makes a welcome return alongside some new additions. A revamped Trail Run activity profile now includes GPX route tracking within the workout profile itself, so you can follow a route, view the map on your watch and get notified if you’re about to hit a change in elevation, so you can prepare accordingly. Real-time Hydration Alerts also help you avoid the dangers of dehydration on a long run: the watch analyzes your metrics on the fly, estimating how much water you’ve lost, and alerts you to hydrate accordingly.
It’s also got a dive watch functionality, becoming a working dive computer in partnership with Mares, the leading diving equipment brand, and its forthcoming companion app. The combination of these new outdoor-focused features powered by that lengthy battery life and rugged case make the Galaxy Watch Ultra2 an ideal adventure companion.
You can check out the full details, including where to buy, right here.
Predicting & Preventing
However, the real star of the show isn’t the new fitness features or all the new existing ones: it’s the preventative health features, available across both the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and its smaller sibling, the Samsung Galaxy Watch9. Preventative health ensures that while wearing the watch, you’re alerted to health issues before they become serious problems, providing you with data and the knowledge to action upon it.
The new Vitals feature, for example, allows you to track five key metrics with your watch while you sleep: heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), respiratory rate, skin temperature, and blood oxygen levels. It measures these metrics against your base resting levels, and lets you know if there are any significant deviations from your normal levels. Rising skin temperature and low heart variability, for example, can indicate oncoming illness.
A US Food and Drug Administration-cleared Sleep Apnea feature can indicate whether your breathing is disrupted during sleep, helped by AI algorithms in Samsung Health, and recommend you visit a doctor to test for possible signs of sleep apnea. In heart health, your daily Cardio Load score can provide actionable, personalized insights, again powered by AI to ensure up-to-the-minute health info based on your metrics.
The watches even now have Hearing Alerts, alerting you to sounds over a dangerous or harmful decibel level. If you’re at a concert, for example, this could be the prompt you need to fish out your earplugs if you’re standing next to the amps.
Slim & sleek
These preventative health features, as mentioned, are on both the rugged Ultra2 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch9. The Watch9 is the Ultra2’s stylish sibling; a slimmer, sleeker watch in two sizes, 40mm and 44mm. With its round AMOLED display mounted on an armor aluminum ‘cushion’, the smallest watch clocks in at just 8.6mm thick. This wide, flat shape is perfect for minimizing movement during vigorous exercise.
The watch might be packing a smaller 390mAh battery than its Ultra sibling, but the bigger 44mm watch still clocks in at around 40 hours of use while even the smaller size gets around 30. It’s also still packed with features, including fitness tools such as the Running Coach and the Fitness Index — a clever feature that compares your stats with other Samsung users to see how your performance and progress compares to the average user.
It’s also capable of running lots of third-party apps, thanks to Samsung’s Wear OS-based One UI Watch operating system. You can accept and reject calls, manage notifications, music and even use Google Gemini with the new Raise to Talk functionality. You can even add it to a phone’s data plan, allowing you to use it outside of Bluetooth range, if you get a compatible model. It’s a true smartwatch as well as an all-day health companion.
You can check out the watch (and where to get those Amazon deals) right here.