A stable outdoorsy look ahead to the right adrenaline junkie

Pros:
– Solid chrome steel case
– Rotating bezel
– Bright, radiant show
– Eco-friendly artificial leather-based strap
– Pretty correct sensors
– Skin temperature sensor
– Solid efficiency

Cons:
– Average battery life
– Somewhat heavy on the wrists
– Some of the sensors don’t work in India

Price: Rs 59,999
Rating: 4.5/5

Samsung’s newest launch, the Galaxy Watch Ultra, is about to compete instantly with Apple’s Watch Ultra, and the similarities between the 2 are evident in each title and design. However, regardless of these parallels, Samsung’s mannequin goals to carve out its personal area of interest with a bunch of recent options and a strong design.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra represents Samsung’s most superior smartwatch up to now. It boasts a bigger, harder construct in comparison with its predecessors, and is designed to be extra sturdy and long-lasting. The watch encompasses a considerably thicker and extra resilient strap, which reinforces its suitability for rugged use. The outer casing is constructed from scratch-resistant titanium, including to its sturdiness. The watch face is housed in a particular squircle-shaped “cushion,” which Samsung highlights as a key design ingredient.

One of the standout options of the Galaxy Watch Ultra is the addition of a ‘Quick button.’ This new orange button, positioned alongside the standard controls, gives customers swift entry to incessantly used capabilities, underscoring Samsung’s concentrate on sensible usability.

While each the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra and the Apple Watch Ultra goal comparable high-performance markets, they cater to distinct ecosystems — Samsung’s look ahead to Android customers and Apple’s for iOS customers. Samsung’s mannequin isn’t just a competitor but additionally an announcement of its dedication to offering a top-tier smartwatch expertise with enhanced sturdiness and superior options. So how does it fare as an EDC watch? Well, we spend over a month testing it out totally, and right here’s what we discovered.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra LTE Review: The Design
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra LTE actually stands out with its design. Its giant, chunky 47mm case, which mixes a round face with a squared-off edge, provides it a particular look. The watch feels strong from the second you maintain it, complemented by large silicone straps that improve its rugged, sporty enchantment.

Available in Silver, Grey, and White, the Galaxy Watch Ultra is sort of the presence. Personally, I’m not eager on the square-in-a-circle form that Samsung has chosen. A chunky, totally round design, like some Garmin fashions, would have been preferable. However, contemplating its resemblance to Apple’s Watch Ultra, it’s clear why Samsung opted in opposition to a purely round show.

The watch’s display is surrounded by makings on a hoop or a bezel of kinds, which doesn’t rotate, and on the correct aspect of the case, there are three buttons: a customisable quick-access button, a house button, and a again button. The left aspect homes the speaker, whereas the again is residence to the sensors.

There are launch buttons on the again for straightforward strap elimination, although the fastening mechanism is proprietary. This means customary straps with quick-release pins gained’t match, which is a bit disappointing. The straps themselves are large, sturdy, and cozy, with a double-clasp buckle that retains the watch safe throughout any exercise.

The gray strap that got here with my grey-coloured overview unit provides the watch a extra understated look in comparison with the brilliant orange band seen in Samsung’s promotional supplies. This gray strap additionally units it other than the Apple Watch Ultra.

Speaking of the Apple Watch Ultra, comparisons are inevitable largely due to how Samsung is positioning the Galaxy Watch Ultra, and the way it’s designed. People are beneath the impression that Samsung has been busy taking notes from Apple, at the least for the design, and for good purpose. Both watches that includes comparable traits reminiscent of correct Global Positioning System, emergency sirens, night time modes with pink illumination, and battery life that falls simply in need of lasting a full weekend within the wild.

Despite this, the Galaxy Watch Ultra boasts a variety of spectacular options, significantly for Wear OS customers.

The watch’s upgraded sleep and restoration metrics, enhanced by Galaxy AI, make it extremely efficient, assuming you’re snug carrying it in a single day. Though it’s priced on the upper aspect and lacks a major display improve, with out a shadow of a doubt, it’s Samsung’s greatest smartwatch up to now. The casing is totally dive-proof, with IP68 and 10ATM rankings, making it immune to excessive temperatures and situations.

The acquainted two-button setup is complemented by a brand new Quick button that may be customised to start out exercises, change between segments, or bounce to the subsequent profile utilizing the Multisports tile. During testing, the interface was clean and intuitive, making it straightforward for normal Samsung customers to adapt regardless of the design adjustments.

Although the Galaxy Watch Ultra lacks a bodily rotating bezel — which might have been a a lot helpful function in case you’re within the outdoor and are carrying gloves to guard your palms, — you do get a digital rotating bezel. During our assessments thought, we felt that the bezel could be a bit difficult to make use of, particularly once you’re getting used to it. Fortunately, you get used to it actually rapidly. Plus, the person interface stays straightforward to navigate with common faucets and swipes, and the big {hardware} buttons present further ease of use.

Ultimately, the watch’s look is a matter of private style. The all-grey mannequin seems to be glossy, whereas the matching gray strap on the testing unit makes it stand out — whether or not that’s a constructive or damaging relies on particular person choice. The Galaxy Watch Ultra is substantial and the colourful strap garners consideration, resulting in combined reactions from these I encountered over the previous week.

One factor that’s simple is the watch’s sturdiness. The titanium case and sapphire crystal ensures that it could actually take a beating, after which some. It can deal with excessive temperatures and impacts that may doubtless injury most different smartwatches, and it helps a variety of third-party apps. It has resistance as much as 10ATM or about 100 meters, a depth that you simply wouldn’t dare take most smartwatches to. It may survive temperatures from -20 to 50 levels Celsius keep utterly purposeful at altitudes as much as 9,000 meters.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra LTE Review: The Display
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra continues with the round-screen design of the earlier era of Galaxy Watches, regardless of utilizing a squarish chassis. The Galaxy Watch Ultra options the identical 44mm display dimension with a 480 x 480 full-colour AMOLED show that we see within the Galaxy Watch 7.

Samsung has maintained the identical dimension as its earlier largest mannequin. This method might depart some unused area on the watch, however it may also assist in managing manufacturing prices. The show is protected by Sapphire Crystal and gives always-on capabilities, together with a brand new infrared-style Night mode.

The 1.5-inch AMOLED show is impressively vivid, reaching as much as 3,000 nits, and it meets Samsung’s excessive requirements for show high quality. The display is extremely responsive, enhancing the general person expertise.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra LTE Review: The Performance And Software
The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is powered by a 3nm, 1.6GHz Exynos W1000 penta-core SoC, coupled with 2GB of RAM, making certain clean and speedy efficiency. During my time with the watch, it dealt with duties with none noticeable lag or slowdowns. From a well being and health perspective, the watch offers correct knowledge for important metrics like steps, coronary heart fee, and SpO2 ranges. For occasion, after I manually counted 1,000 steps, the watch recorded 960 — an inexpensive margin of error.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra gives superior well being metrics reminiscent of BMI, blood stress, and ECG readings, all of which seem like pretty correct. A notable new function is the irregular coronary heart rhythm notification. If the watch detects an irregular heartbeat for an hour, it alerts you to take an ECG for additional evaluation.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra gives an array of superior sleep monitoring options, although they arrive with a couple of problems. The watch’s sizable and considerably cumbersome design could make it uncomfortable to put on in a single day. For optimum use of its options, together with the brand new AGEs Index (Advanced Glycation End-products) which tracks metabolic well being, the watch must be worn snugly all through the night time. If you skip carrying it to mattress, you miss out on detailed sleep metrics and doubtlessly invaluable well being insights. In the U.S., the watch may even detect sleep apnea, however this function isn’t but accessible in India as a consequence of regulatory constraints.

Aside from well being monitoring, the Galaxy Watch Ultra offers a variety of security options, reminiscent of fall detection and a loud emergency siren. This siren is especially helpful for alerting others if you end up in a tough state of affairs, particularly throughout outside actions.

One of the standout options is the programmable Quick button, which permits customers to start out a exercise with only one press. The watch additionally excels in monitoring varied actions, together with mountain climbing, working, swimming, and biking, because of its new precision dual-frequency Global Positioning System. This Global Positioning System functionality enhances accuracy and contains older options just like the TrackBack perform. TrackBack helps you retrace your steps on a Global Positioning System-driven route, guiding you again to your start line in case you veer off track. The dive mode, just like the Apple Watch Ultra, features a water lock and a perform to eject water from the system, which labored successfully throughout a browsing session, regardless of some noticeable beeps.

I spent every week totally testing the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, draining its battery and exploring its full vary of options. I made calls, replied to WhatsApp messages, used third-party apps like AllTrails, and tried the Body Composition instrument. Overall, the watch’s suite of smartwatch and health options carried out seamlessly. My preliminary check was a morning of browsing, the place the water lock perform labored effectively beneath my wetsuit for over an hour. Although Samsung gives profiles for windsurfing and kitesurfing, there’s no particular profile for browsing. To work round this, I created a customized exercise within the Samsung Health app to trace coronary heart fee and calorie expenditure, which offered an approximation of my efforts for restoration monitoring.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra demonstrated its sturdiness throughout water actions, dealing with waves, salt, and some tumbles off the board with ease. Running efficiency was additionally spectacular. During a 5K run round London’s Hyde Park, the watch precisely estimated metrics like coronary heart fee, cadence, elevation acquire, and tempo. Samsung’s Global Positioning System accuracy, per comparisons to the Apple Watch Ultra 2, was dependable.

The watch’s superior working metrics are noteworthy. It displayed a real-time graph of working symmetry, serving to me monitor whether or not I used to be favouring one leg over the opposite. While working on an incline, I observed a change within the symmetry graph as I moved to the sting of the trail to intensify the slope, highlighting the watch’s detailed monitoring capabilities.

Other options carried over from earlier fashions embrace well being monitoring with an upgraded Samsung BioActive sensor array. This contains coronary heart fee, blood oxygen ranges, coronary heart fee variability, pores and skin temperature, ECG scans, and physique composition evaluation utilizing BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis). The measurements I obtained had been fairly near my earlier smart-scale readings, demonstrating the watch’s accuracy.

Powered by One UI Watch 6, Samsung’s Wear OS 5 pores and skin, and the Samsung Health app, the watch integrates all collected knowledge to supply personalised well being and health insights. Third-party apps on Wear OS may benefit from Samsung’s dual-precision Global Positioning System, including further performance not accessible as customary.

Additionally, the Galaxy Watch Ultra options an Apple-style double-pinch gesture management, which can be utilized with a Samsung cellphone to take photographs or dismiss alarms. While this can be a cool function, it’s fairly area of interest, and extra gesture controls are reportedly in growth.

However, there are a couple of drawbacks. Samsung’s fundamental exercise profiles don’t provide real-time map views for positioning or instructions—it is advisable use one other app and monitor exercises within the background for these options. I discovered it inconvenient to consistently swipe the touchscreen to vary screens throughout exercises, particularly when my palms had been soiled and sweaty. Although the Quick button permits you to pause exercises, I needed for a rotational performance like Apple’s Digital Crown. This was my foremost subject with the watch, however total, it carried out excellently by way of metrics and performance.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra LTE Review: The Battery
The battery lifetime of the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra presents a combined image. Equipped with a considerable 590mAh battery, one may count on spectacular endurance from this smartwatch. However, in sensible use, the watch sometimes lasts round two days earlier than needing a recharge, which suggests there’s potential for enchancment on this space.

Samsung positions the Galaxy Watch Ultra as a high-performance gadget ultimate for sports activities and journey lovers. For shorter excursions, reminiscent of a two-day trek, the watch will doubtless serve you effectively. However, for prolonged adventures, packing a charger and an influence financial institution could be advisable to make sure you don’t run out of battery.

Samsung advertises that the Galaxy Watch Ultra can obtain as much as 100 hours of battery life. This prolonged length is achievable in case you change to low-power mode and disable options such because the always-on show. In my expertise, with the always-on show lively and after a number of Global Positioning System exercises, the battery life barely prolonged into the third day, clocking in at roughly 62 hours. This discrepancy highlights a spot between the marketed and real-world battery efficiency, significantly for customers relying closely on Global Positioning System and display options.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra Review: The Verdict
Priced at Rs 59,999, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is actually extra of an funding and les of a toy that you’d wish to purchase for on daily basis, common use. Its giant dimension and rugged design might not enchantment to everybody.

The absence of a bodily rotating bezel and changing it with a capacitive contact possibility, is one other level of rivalry. While the Galaxy Watch Ultra excels on paper with its spectacular specs and new options, it falls in need of reaching a definite Samsung identification. Instead, it appears to imitate points of Apple’s Watch Ultra, with out totally embracing its personal distinctive traits.

Despite these criticisms, the Galaxy Watch Ultra gives a number of standout options. Its superior well being and health monitoring capabilities, together with irregular coronary heart rhythm notifications and a loud emergency siren, are invaluable additions. The watch’s rugged building additionally instils confidence for lively sports activities lovers and outside adventurers.

In essence, the Galaxy Watch Ultra is a compelling selection for Android customers who’re health or sports activities lovers, or anybody in search of a daring and substantial smartwatch. It stands out as a notable possibility available in the market, although it may have higher distinguished itself from its rivals by sustaining extra of its authentic Samsung identification.