Samsung Galaxy Watch9 review

Hardware and sensors

Depending on the watch size, you get either a 1.34-inch or a 1.47-inch display. Both screen sizes come with the same feature set and brightness. Samsung says the display can peak at 3,000 nits, which is the same as last year's. We have a valid reason to believe that Samsung hasn't changed the displays this year.

Subjectively speaking, the display is perfectly bright for comfortable use outdoors, even on a bright sunny day.

Moving on to the SoC, for the first time we get a Qualcomm-powered Samsung Galaxy Watch. The Galaxy Watch9 and the Watch Ultra2 run on the flagship Snapdragon Wear Elite, promising a 32% jump in CPU performance and 19% GPU gains. Additionally, the SoC is advertised to improve GPS accuracy significantly, even in deep forests.

Overall operation seems snappy and responsive as before. We couldn't compare the previous model and the current one side by side, but if there are any improvements, they are marginal.

The SoC uses a penta-core CPU configuration that consists of one main core clocked at 2.1 GHz and four energy-efficient cores ticking at 1.95 GHz.

The memory configuration is only one, just like before. You get only 32GB of internal storage and 2GB of RAM. It's enough to store a few of your favorite playlists on Spotify, though.

Sensors-wise, the watch is fully equipped by today's standards, and we see no changes to the list compared to the previous generation.

• Accelerometer
• Barometer
• Gyro Sensor
• Geomagnetic Sensor
• Temperature Sensor
• Light Sensor

There is also Samsung's combined BioActive sensor, which combines the following:

• Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis
• Electrical heart sensor (ECG) and Optical heart rate sensor

Battery life and charging

This is the first 40-mm Galaxy Watch that we've reviewed in a while, so we don't have reliable internal data to compare with. Last year's 44mm Galaxy Watch8 got up to 48 hours under normal use with the same settings we used here - display set to automatic brightness, raise-to-wake function active, some steps/walking outside, heart rate measurement every 15 minutes, and sleep tracking at night.

This year's 40mm version lasted a little over 24 hours with a 3-hour hike with GPS tracking. Maybe if you replace the hike with a standard indoor workout, for example, it will get through a day and a half or two days. The keyword is maybe. Throwing the always-on display function into the mix reduced the battery life to less than 24 hours, and that's with just an hour and a half of indoor workout tracking.

If there are any endurance gains with the larger 390 mAh battery compared to the previous two generations, they are marginal at best.

Overall, battery life is nothing to write home about. In fact, we expected more, especially after the Galaxy Watch Ultra2 set the bar that high in terms of battery life.

When it comes to charging, the device draws power from the 10W wireless charging pad that comes with the watch itself and charges the Watch9 from completely dead to 100% in about an hour and a half.