The original Galaxy Watch Ultra was a smartwatch that I wanted to enjoy. Two years ago, I was going between iOS and Android, mostly using the Apple Watch Ultra as my daily watch. I felt that I was in a good position to compare the two Ultra watches side by side. Needless to say, I wore the original Galaxy Watch Ultra for maybe 2 weeks and then ditched it. Sure, it had good battery life and plenty of activity tracking, but overall I don’t think it was worth the price. It was barely even comfortable enough to wear.
Enter Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. I’ve been running GWU2 for 2 weeks now and I don’t plan on switching it out until it’s Pixel Watch 5 testing time. This watch feels like a night and day difference to me. It’s more comfortable to wear most importantly, but then you add in a massive battery upgrade, improved internals, and a ridiculously nice display. This watch feels like it’s worth its price, even if it’s running Wear OS.
This is our Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 review!
What I Like
Hardware/Wearing: This for me is the biggest improvement from the original to the new Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. The first one simply wasn’t comfortable to wear for an extended period. With that said, Samsung has slimmed down the body by 12% (10.7mm vs. 12.1mm) and yet still built in a much larger battery. Wearability has gone up considerably, and while I would never wear a smartwatch to sleep, I could actually see myself doing so with this one to utilize the sleep features if I wanted to. And while it does look like a large, bulky watch, it doesn’t wear like one and that’s the point I want to emphasize.
Samsung still uses a titanium frame for this device, with its cushioned display design. The watch has the same three buttons on the display’s right side. Out of the box, the top button accesses Gemini with a long press and your most recent app with a double press. The middle button, the orange action button, can be programmed to do all sorts of things. I have it set to access my favorited workouts. The bottom button accesses Samsung Wallet with a long press.
In terms of durability, it has all of the ratings and certifications a military operator or global adventurer could desire, such as an IP69K high-pressure dust and water-jet rating and MIL-STD-810H military-grade environmental certification. Essentially, it will work in any conditions you might find yourself on this planet. I myself play pickleball and softball with it and it seems to hold up just fine. Oh, and my puppy has bitten it a few times but no scratches or marks were left.
The original Galaxy Watch Ultra came out of the box with a relatively terrible rubber strap. I hated it, immediately swapping for a third-party cloth band. Thankfully, Samsung provided a much softer rubber strap this time around and I wasn’t forced to buy a 3rd-party strap. I have gone and purchased one, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Point being, I haven’t had any issues with the comfort or wearability with the strap that came with the device, which I see as a bonus. I usually always swap out stock straps, but I’ve enjoyed this one. That’s a good thing for a $700 watch.
Display: Measuring in at 1.52 inches and protected by sapphire crystal glass, Samsung built in what must be one of the brightest displays ever for a smartwatch, with peak brightness on Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 hitting 5,000 nits. Direct sun? Zero issues reading this display. Compared to the last model which had a peak brightness of 3,000 nits, it is considerably better when using outdoors.
Colors are vibrant enough for my uses from the Super AMOLED display, which is nice considering I enjoy using the most colorful watch faces I can find.
Battery: Remember Galaxy Watch 5 Pro? According to Google’s AI overview, we “famously” dubbed it the Battery Life God. Well, there’s a new god in town, so hopefully everyone here is cool with polytheism.
Battery life on Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is beyond exceptional. It’s massive at 800mAh, without feeling like you’re wearing a battery brick on your wrist. I am getting multiple days of usage from this watch, with days full of notifications and workout trackings taking place. I do not wear it to sleep, as I literally can’t sleep with anything touching my body besides sheets, but I imagine that would affect battery life slightly.
My average day has been from 6:30-7am to 11pm the past couple of weeks with this watch. In that time, I have had no issues with battery life. As an added bonus, charging speeds aren’t slow. You can go from 0-40% in roughly 30 minutes. For a full charge of the 800mAh cell, you’re looking at 1.5 hours.
Software: Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 isn’t only about the toughened hardware, but the smarts as well. Yes, the watch has Gemini for all of your AI helper needs, but deeper than that, it needs to allow for easy access to the activities you want to do. I very much appreciate how quick the watch is to recognize that I’m being active. For example, when walking the puppy, if I don’t remember to select that I’m on an outdoor walk after 10 minutes of walking, the watch reminds me that it’s been tracking me automatically. Same goes for when I’m playing pickleball. The Apple Watch Ultra would hardly ever get that properly, so it’s a great change for me.
Thanks to the upgraded internals, such as the Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset, everything runs smooth and fast. When navigating the UI, there are no janky glitches or skipped frames like what I see on other Wear OS devices. I won’t name them, but you might be able to guess which devices I’m talking about.
Samsung really highlights the watch’s new trail running features. This won’t be for everyone, but it is a big selling point. Owners can load GPX routes onto the watch ensuring you don’t lose your way out on the trail. Being tracked with real-time GPS, you can see elevation changes, track your hydration, and much more. The area I live in is dominated by the Hood to Coast relay race that takes place annually. I ran it one year and I wish I had this watch back then. I could load up my legs of the race and then track all of the necessary details while I’m out running on the roads. For Strava lovers, Samsung is gifting 2 months of the service for free.
If I had one ill thing to say about the software, it continues to be notifications. On the Apple Watch, you get every notification that your phone gets, plus whatever apps you load onto your phone, if there’s an extension for the watch, it is automatically loaded. Wear OS feels like such a separate entity at times, which hurts the notifications experience. Once set up, you have to manually go in and set which apps can be sent to your wrist, which can be frustrating for someone who can’t navigate these menus efficiently. Once you have all of that set, you then get super random notifications from Samsung Health and Bixby and Samsung Wallet and so much other junk. It can feel like too much at times, so you’re forced to go into the settings to mitigate those. It’s tedious.
To leave this section on a high note, let’s talk health/wellness tracking in general. This watch can give you metrics on almost anything except your blood sugar. The only thing is, to get actionable insight into these metrics, you need to wear the watch to sleep for at least 7 days. If you plan on doing that, expect so much information coming your way. You can track your daily cardio load, medications, food intake, body composition, get mood check-ins, breathing exercises, menstrual cycle tracking, vitals, stress, and Sp02. It’s quite limitless in the things that you can track, but like others out there, I just don’t want to wear a watch to sleep. Sure, it’s comfortable to wear, but not that comfortable.
You can access this information via the Samsung Health app on your connected phone or the watch itself. The company is utilizing AI to build a coach that, again, can give you actionable insights into what your health data says. If you aren’t getting enough sleep or need to focus on eating better foods, you can get that. There is a lot of health consciousness going around, which is a great thing. This watch can help get you on the right track if that’s what you’re looking for.
What Could Be Better
Pickleball Tracking: Can anyone explain to me what Samsung’s beef with pickleball is? You can track almost any other activity a human being can do, but there is still no dedicated pickleball tracking in Samsung’s software. This drives me absolutely nuts. Deal breaker? No, not particularly, but it’s certainly annoying on an almost daily basis considering how much I play.
Other Notes
- Wife Impressions: “It’s a bit too big for someone with a small wrist. It sticks out really far compared to my Apple Watch. I would knock it on everything. It would take some getting used to. However, I do like that the face is circular but that the frame is a squircle. I like that a lot, it looks really cool. The display is huge. Nice.”
Pricing and Availability
Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is priced at $699 on Samsung’s website. Since it just launched, Samsung has plenty of deals going on currently and you can actually get the watch for just $599, no trade-in needed. That feels like a good deal, but it’s still expensive. You can find it on Samsung’s website, as well as your favorite carrier or retailer store. The watch comes in either Titanium Silver or Titanium Gray.
Buy Galaxy Watch Ultra 2
Final Words
This is truly the first time that I’ve felt Android users have a reasonable competitor to something like the Apple Watch Ultra line. I still don’t get the same exact “premium” vibe from Wear OS that I do with the Apple Watch Ultra, but the speed and responsiveness I’ve seen from this specific watch has been great. It’s what I expect from something that costs this much.
Coupling the performance with the amazing auto-tracking of workouts, I’ve been very pleased overall. The beauty of having a device like this is that regardless of what adventure life might throw your way, you can rest assured that this watch can survive it. It’s the type of device that makes me want to try more things, like mountain biking or trail running, for example. That’s a neat feeling, even if I’m perfectly content with my pickleball and simple hikes with the dog.
