Samsung has released the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 with a bigger battery

It’s the year of the Galaxy Watch redesign. With the new Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, announced today, Samsung is taking what people love about its watches and making them even better. The company has been doing this for the past few generations of its watch line, but this year’s update seems to be more focused on addressing Samsung’s weaknesses. As such, battery life and protection.

The Ultra 2, which is now $50 more expensive at $699.99, gets a few problems. The 47mm watch has a larger 800mAh battery – a massive 35 percent increase from the 590mAh battery in the original Ultra. I got about 70 hours on the original Ultra, so I’m curious to see how the battery boost translates to everyday use. I was worried that a bigger battery would require a chonkier watch, but surprisingly the case is 12% smaller, weighing 10.7mm. The standard cable is also 1mm thinner at 1.9mm, and slightly softer to the touch.

Another update for outdoor enthusiasts: The watch now has a 5,000-nit display with thinner bezels around the sides. Such light may seem excessive, but it is meant to improve the appearance and sunlight. I wasn’t invited to see the watches in person, but my friend Owen Grove saw the watch indoors and said the display looked a little brighter than the Watch 9, which has a 3,000-nit display. This gives the Ultra 2 a very stylish look and among the largest batteries.

The Ultra 2 is also getting a new tracking system, which seems to be an attempt to compete with Garmin over the Apple Watch Ultra line. It allows you to download GPX files of GPS tracks for real-time tracking and riding guidance. You’ll also get last-minute alerts and real-time hydration alerts. One note: Algorithms predict your sweat rate based on how much you exercise and how much you’re in the crowd — the sensors aren’t measuring your electrolyte levels or how much water you’ve lost. Divers also get IP69K, 10 ATM, and EN 13319 dust- and water-resistance, as well as a diving program from scuba equipment manufacturer Mares. The app will be available later this year and will monitor descent speeds, record times in depth, and provide climbing instructions.

The Galaxy Watch 9, which sees a price drop of $30 to $379.99, is largely the same as last year’s Galaxy Watch 8. The main difference is that the Watch 9 (and Ultra 2) ditches Samsung’s proprietary Exynos chipset for the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite. Obviously, this is to help with power consumption and AI processing. (Qualcomm announced the chip earlier this year at Mobile World Congress as “AI-first wearable” chipset..) This could be possibly a boost to Gemini’s functionality, and a new update with Wear OS 7 is that you’ll be able to talk without using Gemini’s voice. Samsung says it’s also fixed Gemini so it won’t start when you raise your wrist to check the time. It is difficult to calculate the performance ratio by hand; Some of my friends noticed a slight lag while scrolling through the screens, but that could be due to the demo colors and wonky connection. We’ll see how the watches fare when put to the test.

The battery capacity is slightly increased for the 40mm and 44mm watches. The smaller watch adds about 20 percent to a 390mAh battery, while the larger one gets a smaller bump from 435mAh to 445mAh. The straps are 17 percent lighter with a new “air bag”, which allows the difference between the fabric and the hand in what Samsung promises to be comfortable and breathable.

Most of the changes to the Galaxy Watch 9 come in the form of four new security features, which are also coming to the Ultra 2. The first is the Vitals feature. After one week of consecutive wear, the Samsung Health app will create a baseline of blood pressure, heart rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature, and respiration. In the morning, you will receive a regular alert if it deviates from the starting point, along with instructions on how to get back. This is a fictional version of Apple Vitals, which was released with watchOS 11 in 2024.

It also adds the Heart Health Score and the Daily Cardio Load metric. The former generates 100 points each day based on your eight-day sleep duration, moderate to vigorous intensity, BMI, and nerve density. The latter helps you track your fitness and recovery based on exercise, training volume, and real-time heart rate. The idea is to help you determine if you are overtraining, undertraining, or undertraining. Again, this is not a new concept. We’ve seen similar results from Oura, Whoop, and Fitbit (now Google Health) over the past few years.

A unique health metric is the new Fitness Index. It’s a radar chart which shows how your strength, flexibility, endurance, cardio, and body composition compare to other Samsung users, based on things like your VO2 Max, heart rate, steps, activity time, and bioimpedance analysis results. You can get familiar with radar charts if you play sports – it doesn’t tell you if your metrics are good or bad, but it’s a way to see your strengths and weaknesses.

This generation of Samsung watches is like a combination of the health reasons of the competitors and the refinement of the old work. That’s not a bad combination, except that all watches are expensive. The company has been increasing its apparel prices steadily over time – although geopolitical factors may also play a role in this year’s challenges. Even so, you don’t like to see prices go up.

The watches are available for pre-order from today and are expected to ship from August 7.