Name: Galaxy Watch Ultra hands-on: why the new face?
Uploaded: 2025-07-20T16:51:20.000Z
Duration: 7 min 53 s
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Another year, another three Galaxy Watches to unpack.

Anywho, let's dive into the Galaxy Watch 8, the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, and I guess there's a slightly updated Galaxy Watch Ultra.

Hardware wise, the first thing you'll probably notice is the squircle.

There's just this square thing behind it, which, to be fair, Samsung told us at a demo before unpack that it has very good reasons for this.

First, it lets them make the watch thinner.

Second, the watch now sits flatter on the wrist, and third, it can house a slightly bigger battery.

Again, emphasis on slightly, teeny-weeny slightly better.

In pictures and renders, the squircle was not my favorite, but it grew on me a little while trying them on.

I wouldn't call it Stockholm Syndrome, but on the bigger sizes, I did notice that it sat more flush with my wrist.

The squareness also isn't quite as in-your-face when it's in person, but I get the feeling that this might be a polarizing design choice since many of you, and I mean many of you, have told me over the years that the roundness is one of the things you like most about the Galaxy Watch's design.

Otherwise, it's a pretty incremental year for hardware.

The sensors are the same, the processor is the same, you can still fast charge, and LTE is still an option.

Like I said earlier, battery sizes have been bumped up a smidge, and the Galaxy Watch 8 still comes in two sizes, 40mm and 44mm.

Though there are a few differences, the Classic, for example, now only comes in a single 46mm size, which is sort of a bummer if you were a fan of the smaller version.

Of course, the Classic still has that iconic rotating bezel, which, I don't know, after all these years, I still love it so much, it's just so satisfying.

Compared to the regular 8, the Classic also gets the Ultra's quick button so you can program shortcuts, and oh, there's a new lug system so that it's a bit easier to swap the straps.

I popped off a press-on while trying the lugs out, and even though that was annoying, I still prefer this new lug system to the old one.

On the Ultra, you also get a bump up from 32 to 64GB of storage, and a new blue color that's literally it.

Okay, incremental hardware updates out of the way, let's talk about what's new with the software.

First off, we've got Wear OS 6 with Gemini on the wrist.

And this is a first for an Android smartwatch, and frankly, any smartwatch to really get a generative AI assistant.

And speaking of assistants, it's going to replace Google Assistant.

You can either use Awake Word, or you can long press the top button.

The point is that, one, it's going to be better at natural language, and two, once you've got all your services set up, it can handle much more complex queries.

Some of the demos I saw were along the lines of, you know, make a 10-minute running playlist, or start a run to burn the calories in a slice of pizza.

You know, things that require the use of multiple apps in a sequential order.

Okay, you've got to be smart with your prompt for Gemini, because a 1,000-calorie run for a whole pizza, that's like 10 miles, and I ain't doing that in this weather.

Now, a caveat is that my demo space was kind of loud, the Wi-Fi was dodgy, and some of the units weren't all completely set up.

So there was a bit of latency and some surprises, but I could see the vision.

One note, it won't require a subscription, and so long as you have LTE, you don't necessarily need the phone, but you do need a Wi-Fi connection, or an internet connection of some sort.

I'm going to reserve final judgment after a bit of testing, but feel free to share Gemini on the wrist testing ideas in the comments.

There's a bunch of new health features too, like the ability to measure your vascular load while you're sleeping.

It's basically a proxy for figuring out how stressed you are while snoozing, because apparently you can be stressed while you're sleeping.

There's also a new bedtime guidance feature that will suggest when you should go to bed for optimal sleeping.

So you take a 12 minute run test that tells you what running level you are, and then creates a custom training program for you.

It's more or less meant for beginners and intermediate users, though Samsung says you could use it to train for a marathon if that's what you want.

I did, however, get to demo the new antioxidant index.

The idea is that it's meant to give you some guidance into how well you're eating in your Antioxidants, if you don't know, are these molecules that inhibit oxidation or the creation of free radicals in your body.

And those things are associated with things like aging and cell damage.

You get antioxidants by eating your fruits and veggies.

So this is sort of like a, are you eating enough fruits and veggies index?

Anyway, Samsung says this feature works by using LEDs to measure carotenoid levels in your skin.

Now, carotenoids are the things that make carrots orange or other plants bright yellow or red.

You stick your thumb on the sensor, it beep boop bops, and essentially gives you a gauge on whether you're eating enough fruits or veggies based on what's in your thumb skin.

If you don't get a good score, it'll give you some suggestions on things to add to your  I did not get a great score. 43.

To be fair, it was just 4th of July here in America.

And in America, we eat hot dogs and hamburgers and maybe some corn with thick slabs of butter.

But it is a good example of why you should sort of take this kind of feature with a grain of salt.

Samsung itself even says it could take up to two weeks to see if your score changes.

And I mean, come on, we all know that we should be eating more fruits and veggies.

Just like even if you are eating enough, you should be eating more.

So we're going to have to do some rigorous testing before weighing in on whether the totality of all these updates are good.

But I do know one change that I'm not super fond of.

The Galaxy Watch 8 and the Classic are both more expensive.

The Watch 8's starting price is up by $50 at $349.99.

While the Classic is up by $100 at $499.99.

Tack on some more if you want LTE versions or the larger size of the regular 8.

I asked Samsung if this was because of tariffs, but they didn't really have an answer for me on that front.

Mainly it's they did profit analysis and number has to go up.

This is the first look at the new Galaxy Watches.

But hey, there's Gemini on the wrist now and that's a first.

You know, more so than the shape, I just think squircle is a bad word because it sounds like squirtle and then you just think of the Pokemon and like squirtle squirtle and squirtle squirtle is really cute.