It had to happen sooner or later. Samsung’s answer to the Apple Watch Ultra comes in the form of the Galaxy Watch Ultra (first impressions), and other than the name suffix, the two share aspects like core positioning and the look of the strap. That said, Samsung’s contender is seriously loaded and goes all out in an attempt to carve an identity for itself. Not that there’s much chance of an audience overlap — the Galaxy Watch Ultra stays true to the Android side of the fence, just like its Apple rival that likes to stay in its own garden. The large-sized contender has been sitting on my wrist for a hot minute now, and I’d say the experience has largely been quite positive. Read on.
Table of Contents
Design and display
Large and chunky, the Galaxy Watch Ultra comes in a 47mm squircle case that sports a circular screen. The solid build is evident from the get-go, and the wide silicone straps add to the rugged, sporty look. The screen has markers surrounding it, while the right of the case bears three buttons, with a quick button that can be mapped to any function you want, a home key and a back key. On the left side of the case is the speaker, while the back is where all the sensors are, as expected. A couple of release buttons on the back let you detach the straps easily, but the fastening mechanism is proprietary, which means you can’t use standard straps with quick release pins with the Watch Ultra. Such a bummer, that. The straps themselves are wide, sturdy and comfortable to wear for long periods, using a double clasp fastening buckle that should ensure the watch stays on your wrist even during whatever sport / activity / adventure / shenanigans you want to partake in.
In my case, the bright orange bands my review unit came with make it stand out quite a bit. Speaking of adventure and activity, you should also know that the Galaxy Watch Ultra is impervious to water up to 10ATM, which translates to a depth of 100m. For comparison, the regular Galaxy Watch 7 can handle 5ATM. It helps that the Galaxy Watch Ultra case is fashioned out of titanium, and the screen features sapphire crystal glass. The device is built to withstand temperatures between -20 degrees up to 50 degrees, and altitudes up to 9,000m.
The 1.5-inch AMOLED display goes up to 3,000 nits in terms of brightness, and is a beauty, conforming to the expectations Samsung has set. It’s super responsive too, and while there’s no rotating bezel on the Ultra (possibly to keep the use of moving parts to a minimum, since this is an outdoor watch), you do get a virtual touch-based rotating bezel. However, it’s a bit too sensitive and tough to use properly. Thankfully, you can get by just using regular touches and swipes to navigate the UI, and the large hardware buttons help too.
Features
Loaded is one way to put it. As a smartwatch designed to tackle the great outdoors and Samsung’s flagship wearable, the Galaxy Watch Ultra boasts a whole bunch of features, especially on the health and fitness front. You should also know that the device comes with LTE connectivity (in the form of an eSIM), and doesn’t have a Bluetooth-only variant. Here’s a glance at the key features on offer:
Health and fitness
- New BioActive sensor
- New Multi-sports tile
- Galaxy AI-powered insights (including Energy Score)
- Functional Threshold Power (FTP) for cyclists
- Blood pressure, ECG, and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) (including body composition)
- Menstrual cycle tracking
- Auto workout detection
- Irregular heart rhythm notification
Safety
- 86-decibel siren for emergencies, activated by pressing the quick button for 5 seconds
- Fall detection
- Emergency SOS to alert specified contacts
Others
- Dual-frequency GPS
- Smart replies powered by AI
- Double pinch gesture to perform actions like capturing photos or answering calls (when paired with a Galaxy phone)
UI and app connectivity
With Google’s Wear OS on board, complete with Samsung’s tweaks, the UI is fairly straightforward and swipe-driven. It’s extremely smooth and lag-free too. There are extensive customisation options available for you not just to change the watch face but also the tiles you want displayed, the quick settings, the sequence of the apps, the behaviour of the quick button etc. Swiping down on the watch face shows the quick settings, swiping up shows the apps, and swiping right displays the notifications while swiping right brings up the tiles.
Moving on to the companion apps, this is where things get intriguing. You need the Samsung Wearable app to pair the watch with your Android phone, and in case you have a Galaxy smartphone, this should already be preloaded. When you start pairing the watch, the appropriate plugin also gets downloaded. Next, you need the Samsung Health app to sync and show all your activity data. And strangely, you need one more app, the Samsung Health Monitor, to show your ECG and blood pressure data. Three companion apps for one wearable is a bit much if you ask me, but that’s how things are.
The apps themselves are intuitive and easy enough to understand, and maybe keeping things segregated by using three different apps helps in a way too. Once you have set up the watch the way you want (via the Wearable app), the Health and the Health Monitor apps are the ones you’d end up using frequently to check your health data. Samsung Health is a full-featured platform, which, apart from giving you a look at your health and activity data, insights based on historical trends, etc, also lets you compete with friends and gives you access to content on workouts and mindfulness. Plus, you can back up all your data and sync it up with Samsung Cloud as well.
Performance and battery
The 3nm, 1.6GHz Exynos W1000 penta-core SoC mated to 2 gigs of RAM ensures speedy operation throughout, with no hiccups evident during usage. More importantly, from a health and fitness perspective, the data captured by the Galaxy Watch Ultra seems quite accurate for the essentials like steps, heart rate, SpO2, etc. To test it out, I walked and manually counted 1,000 steps, and the step counter on the watch displayed 1,060. Having access to advanced metrics like BMI, blood pressure and ECG at all times is good too, and from what I can make out, these numbers are also quite accurate. A new feature that has just landed is irregular heart rhythm notification. If the watch detects irregular heart rhythm for an hour, it’ll throw up an alert, so you can take an ECG immediately for further evaluation.
The Galaxy Watch Ultra does boast some nifty sleep monitoring features as well, but this is where things get a bit tricky. You see, the watch is just too big and bulky to be worn to bed, at least for me. And some of those advanced features, like the new AGEs Index for example, only shows up after you’ve worn the watch to sleep, and provided it’s worn snugly. AGEs is short for Advanced Glycation End-products, which is an indicator of metabolic health. So if you don’t choose to wear it while sleeping, you’re missing out not just on detailed sleep metrics, but also potentially useful stuff like AGEs. In fact, in the US, the Galaxy Watch Ultra can detect sleep apnea as well, but due to regulatory issues, this feature isn’t available in India. At least not yet.
On the positive side, there’s no doubt that the Galaxy Watch Ultra not only delivers on the promises made, it actually shines in most aspects. Apart from all the useful health features I mentioned, you get a ton of safety features too, including fall detection and that incredibly loud siren. The built-in eSIM means you can ditch your phone at home and go tackle the great outdoors without missing out on calls and messages. The audio while handling calls on the Watch Ultra works fine, though your experience might vary depending on ambient noise of course.
Thanks to Wear OS, there are quite a few watch faces and apps you can download on your watch. And some, like WhatsApp for instance, can even work independently. Samsung also offers a few features on the Watch Ultra that work only if you have the device paired with a Galaxy smartphone. For instance, you can make use of a double pinch gesture to get rid of notifications or click a photo using the appropriate app on the watch. In my opinion though, these ecosystem features aren’t strong enough for one to consider acquiring the Watch Ultra specifically for use with a Samsung phone.
Coming to the battery life, I did expect the 590mAh battery to deliver solid battery life. But in my usage, the Galaxy Watch Ultra lasts a couple of days, give or take a few hours. This is one aspect where some improvement is needed.
Verdict
At Rs 59,999, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra can lighten your wallet by a fair bit. Plus, with its large size and outdoorsy positioning, it might not appeal to everyone either. That said, advanced health and fitness features, options that help with peace of mind (such as irregular heart rhythm notification and the siren), the rugged build that instils confidence while indulging in active sports, etc, are aspects that combine and come together nicely in this smartwatch that’s big in more than one way, making it a hard-to-ignore proposition. The bottom line is, if you’re an Android user and a fitness / sports buff who likes the great outdoors, or just want something big, bold and beautiful sitting on your wrist, it doesn’t get better than the Galaxy Watch Ultra as of now.
Editor’s rating: 8 / 10
Pros:
- Solid build
- Loaded with features
- Nice screen & smooth UI
- Accurate tracking
Cons
- Too bulky for sleep tracking
- Battery life could be better
- Proprietary straps
