Samsung Galaxy Watch9 review
One UI Watch 9 + Wear OS 7
The Galaxy Watch9 runs on the latest Wear OS 7-based One UI Watch 9 software. Visually and navigation-wise, the OS is nearly identical to the older version 8, which in turn introduced the new UI and visual refinements. We suggest that you check out the software section of our Galaxy Watch8 Classic review where we explore all the changes brought about by One UI Watch 8 in depth.
For the first time, Samsung officially announces how many updates Galaxy Watch Ultra2 and Watch9 owners should expect. The company pledges 5 years of major OS upgrades, which is quite generous in the world of wearables.
Home screen • Quick toggles • Recent apps • App drawer
The integration of the Now Bar and Gemini AI directly into the watch to do simple tasks like start a timer, add a calendar meeting or ask for directions happened with the previous One UI Watch generation. This one introduces the raise-to-talk function. Simply raise your wrist and ask Gemini to do something. Unfortunately, in our experience, the feature was hit or miss. Most times, Gemini didn't respond.
Settings menu and widgets
The Galaxy Wearable app for Android, however, is a different story. The whole app has been revamped, just like the Samsung Health app, covered in the next section. The new design is cleaner, more interactive, and has nicer animations. Some of them may be unnecessary, but nice-looking nonetheless.
Galaxy Wearable app
You get three main tabs in a small navigation bar at the bottom. Watch faces get their own tab, while the watch settings occupy the third tab. The middle tab is a combination of both and provides quick access to the most common settings.
The rest of the new features are mostly health and fitness-related, so let's get into it.
Samsung health and fitness tracking
With the One UI Watch 9, Samsung is allegedly taking the first step in transitioning from a reactive to a preventive philosophy and approach toward Samsung Health. By taking all vital measurements into account, Samsung Health analyzes all the data captured by the Watch9's sensors, and when something is meaningfully off baseline, you will be notified to take action.
Speaking of Samsung Health, the Android app companion is fully revamped and is in line with the Galaxy Wearable app. Each category gets its own tab, while the home tab is fully customizable with small and large widgets of all the data you usually track or prefer to see first.
Samsung Health app
Back to the new health-related features, in addition to the vascular load, the app can now give you a summarized score of your overall heart health. It takes into account several measurements: 7-day sleep time average, moderate to vigorous physical activity average, BMI and vascular load. BMI, of course, will always be off for individuals carrying above-average muscle mass, but that's a different topic, and it doesn't concern the vast majority of the population anyway.
Similar to heart health, the app tracks your fitness index as well. It collects data from your walking or running activity and your body composition, with the latter still being mostly a guesstimation. Even if you think it should at least be good for relative measurements on yourself, you have to remember the electrical impedance method will produce wide deviations depending on when and what you ate before measuring, as well as on how hydrated you are at the moment of measurement.
Vitals data
Still, kudos to Samsung for giving you suggestions and data based on your own baseline. You need to wear your watch constantly for a full week, including during sleep, to collect all your vital data. This data is then used to guide you during workouts.
Sadly, the Galaxy Watch9 omits the Trail Run and Diving activities with related features that come with those activities. They are exclusively available on the Galaxy Ultra2 model. On the other hand, sweat loss estimation is available, which was marketed as a feature and is part of the Galaxy Ultra2's Trail Run. Take a look at this GPS-tracked hike, for example.
Hiking data
Samsung also serves you data in a tidier way and provides a little bit of extra data during your sleep, for example. We don't know how accurate it is since we haven't had the chance to pit the Watch9 against professional-grade equipment.
Sleep data
We also noticed that the watch now provides VO2 max data, but we doubt it's very accurate since it requires specific equipment and an exercise scenario to measure properly.
The watch also gives suggestions for appropriate watch faces that may fit your lifestyle. After our first bike ride, the Galaxy Watch9 suggested the following watch face.
Watch face recommendations
Last but not least, Samsung Health takes some extra precautions to keep you safe from injury and hearing loss. Just like Apple's Watch, the Galaxy Watch9 constantly monitors how noisy your environment is and alerts you when it's too loud around you to take action. And as for injury prevention - we all know that injuries are hard to predict, but taking into account your Daily Cardio Load, Vitals and Fitness Index, Samsung Health will notify you if you are pushing it too hard, which in turn could lead to injury.
