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As I prepped for my day this morning, I opened the YouTube Music app on my Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and queued up the latest episode of my favorite podcast. Everything felt great until I actually went out on my run, when the watch lost connection to my phone and stopped playing the podcast. Turns out, auto-downloading isn’t enabled by default. Why? I asked the same question.
I’d love to say this was the only annoyance I’ve faced in the past month since I started using the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, but that’s only a half truth. That’s not to say this is a bad watch by any means — far from it — but several aspects of the experience have been irritating until I tweak something to work the way I expect. This is one reason I stopped using Wear OS watches over the past two years, and while some aspects have improved, others have gotten worse.
That feeling extends across the entire Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 experience. The hardware is faster, but the battery life is worse, and the charging is much slower. Samsung has finally addressed some of the weakest points of the workout experience (like the missing rep count feature on previous watches), but some things are still too obtuse for their own good.
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Plus, many of the best features are arbitrarily locked to Android owners who happen to use Samsung phones. I wanted to say I loved the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, but that would also be a lie. Here’s my full review.
What’s good
Right off the bat, I was impressed with Samsung’s design and build quality. The circle-within-a-squircle design looked better than I initially imagined, and I appreciate that this watch uses buttons instead of a crown that gets in the way when working out.
I also loved how well apps worked on the phone. This watch is a multitasking beast, both thanks to the Snapdragon Wear Elite processor inside and Wear OS’s generally excellent OS design. It’s so nice to easily juggle messaging apps, check my calendar, and log my workouts without losing any progress.
The new trail run workout mode is absolutely superb. This one differs from outdoor running because it provides turn-by-turn navigation (which is paramount for not getting lost on a mountain trail, trust me) and an easy way to load up routes from apps like AllTrails. The voice guidance was more attentive than my favorite Amazfit watch, which I appreciated.
While I rarely ever use Gemini on a watch, it’s a great feature to have when you want to do something hands-free. Samsung also loads this watch with great gesture support, furthering the idea that you don’t need to get your grubby fingerprints on the screen.
I was also elated to see that several workouts support rep counts and weight measurements, something that’s been missing from most Wear OS watches since their inception.
I’ve also loved using the Running Coach feature, which has been helping me train for a half marathon I’ve scheduled in November. I’ve never run a half marathon before, and setting this up on the watch was as easy as opening Running Coach and following the prompts in the Samsung Health app.
Not just annoyances. Real problems.
Samsung’s Running Coach is excellent, but I found that the watch doesn’t measure pacing correctly. This was especially prominent during my half marathon training, as the watch wants me to run at a specific slow pace to build endurance, but it’s hard to do that when it constantly thinks I’m going too fast. I found this to be the case even during the Spartan Race I wrote about last month, so it’s not limited to slow paces.
While I appreciate all the cool new heart health features Samsung added to this watch, they’re only for people using Galaxy phones. This makes no sense at all and, quite frankly, is embarrassing for an Android device. Android thrives on interoperability between brands, and Samsung feels like it is making a mockery of that.
I was also extremely unimpressed with the blood pressure and food logging features. Blood pressure monitoring was far too difficult to set up (you have to use a blood pressure machine to create a baseline), and food logging in the Samsung Health app is extremely archaic. In the age of Galaxy AI, I still have to search and scroll through lists of items instead of just asking AI to do it. Competitors like Amazfit have had that feature for years, and it’s time Samsung got with it.
Lastly, I can’t express how disappointed I was with this watch’s battery life. With an 800mAh battery, this thing should last a week. As it stands, I could barely get through 2 days, and it takes around 2 hours to charge it from empty. If I paid $700 for this watch, I would be pretty disappointed in how mid the overall experience has been.
You could buy the Galaxy watch Ultra 2, or…
If I were recommending new Wear OS watches this year, the Pixel Watch 5 would be my choice. If you’re deeply entrenched in Samsung’s ecosystem or have a specific feature you love (like diving or trail running), this is a great second-place option, but it’s hard to recommend something so expensive when it simply doesn’t excel in all the areas it should.
