Samsung has a new Galaxy Watch, I’m just not sure it’s time to upgrade

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is a capable smartwatch, but it struggles to justify the extra spend over the regular Watch 8. Rival wearables also offer more for less money.

Like clockwork, there’s another slew of Samsung smartwatches this year. The one I’ve been wearing for a couple of weeks, the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, brings back a rotating bezel that can be used to scroll through menus or change volume of audio playing on your phone.

But it’s slapped onto a watch with a quite large and oddly garish squircle design, with a display that’s smaller than the cheaper Galaxy Watch 8 and the two-year old Watch 6 Classic, Samsung’s last smartwatch to bear the rotating bezel.

What you’re left with is an accomplished smartwatch with a set of capable health and fitness tracking tools, but for the high asking price, it’s a tough sell when you can find similar functionality for less on rival products.

The Watch 8 Classic starts at £449, with a £499 model adding 4G (if your mobile provider supports it). The watch struggles to justify the premium over the £319 regular Watch 8, which appears to have all the same software features in a lighter, more compact design.

In fact, according to Samsung’s website, the cheaper model actually offers dual band GPS, which is more accurate, something the pricier Classic apparently lacks. Going for the Classic gets you double the storage at 64GB, but the processor and RAM are the same.

That said, I enjoyed using the Classic to track my runs, and found the GPS perfectly accurate even on routes among buildings and with tree cover. Paired with all the Classic’s sensors, including ones to track your continuous heart rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels, you get a decent sense of your performance and health after a few activities.

The watch is set up to give you a daily Energy Score, an arbitrary mark out of 100. As I write, mine is 76, which is ‘good’, apparently. You also get a sleep score, which today for me is 80 and also ‘good’. It’s nice to have these insights, but as you can see, they’re not overly helpful. The Samsung Health app is not great at suggesting if I should exercise or take it easy, something that the Garmin, Fitbit and Whoop apps all do better.

You have to install three apps - Samsung Health, Galaxy Wearable and Samsung Activity Monitor - just to use all the features of the Classic, which is confusing. I struggled to fully set up the device, and the less tech savvy might go months without realising they haven’t switched everything on. This also applies to desirable features such as continuous heart rate monitoring or sleep apnoea detection, which are off by default and which the watch does not prompt you to switch on. You have to find the switches yourself buried deep in the settings.

... for the high asking price, it’s a tough sell when you can find similar functionality for less on rival products.

It’s worth noting that while you can use the Watch 8 Classic with any modern Android phone, you can only get Samsung Activity Monitor on Samsung phones, so other Android brands lose out on the watch’s electrocardiogram (ECG) to detect heart arrhythmia, blood pressure checks and also sleep apnoea detection. It’s a shame Samsung limits these features to only work with its own phones.

The 1.3-inch screen inside the large 46mm casing is the same size as the screen in the 40mm Watch 8, but the 44mm Watch 8’s screen is larger at 1.5-inch and a cheaper watch. Samsung’s insistence that the Classic must have a circular rotating bezel on top of the squircle body that’s now across the whole line up has surely resulted in a smaller display than you might expect. It’s not too small, but could be bigger given the device is quite chunky.

As I wrote when I first got it, the white model of the Classic is not a looker. The faux-leather white strap is dressy, as is the James Bond styling of the silver bezel, but the overall look is too gaudy for my tastes. The black version looks better, but this is a confusing design that can’t decide if it’s formal or sporty. Then again, it is very comfortable to wear despite the weight.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the chunkiness led to great battery life. The watch couldn’t last two whole days and nights of tracking, meaning I could take it off the charger at 7am one day and it’d be begging for a charger by late evening the next. That’s with the always-on display enabled, as you should be able to leave on.

The OnePlus Watch 3 has similar features but can last up to five days, and dedicated sports watches from Garmin, Suunto and Coros can last anywhere between five days and a whole month.

With Samsung so keenly promoting the Watch 8 Classic as a health watch, the bad battery life doesn’t make sense. Wearables that track your fitness are best when they last for several days for uninterrupted monitoring, but having to charge so often is annoying, just like it is for the Pixel Watch or even the Apple Watch Ultra.

Samsung’s redesigned One UI 8 Watch software is pleasant to use, and is based on Google’s latest Wear OS 6. You get Google Gemini built in, which is advancing nicely and works well as a conversational digital assistant. Other things irked though, such as one really annoying bug I encountered that switched off the always on display and raise to wake function, seemingly after I used sleep mode and wore the watch to bed. These issues should not exist on such an expensive product.

Google apps integrate well, and the app store includes apps such as Spotify, WhatsApp, Todoist, Strava and AllTrails that work well on the wrist.

If you like the design and use a Samsung phone, it’s a good choice, as long as you don’t mind charging it every two days.

Spinning that bezel takes you through menus and scrolls through screens, though the new design takes away the circular tiles and instead gives you pill shaped information bubbles that you can customise. It makes screens more feature-rich, though I found it less visually pleasing than the older design.

The Classic also has a new antioxidant sensor which you can use by taking the watch off and pressing your thumb onto the sensor array on the back. It claims to be able to measure your antioxidant levels, but the advice and information it gives you is wordily dense and quite medical, and doesn’t commit to tangible advice. It feels like a missed opportunity to impress.

The device also has the Quick Button from the more expensive Galaxy Watch Ultra, which you can programme to do any number of things, from starting a workout to booting up an app. Just like on the Ultra, it’s nice to have, but not essential.

Overall, the Watch 8 Classic does most of what it sets out to do very well, but it’s not an automatic recommendation for Android users. If you like the design and use a Samsung phone, it’s a good choice, as long as you don’t mind charging it every two days.

£449 is a high price, and the £319 OnePlus Watch 3 offers superior battery life. For that price you could also get the regular Galaxy Watch 8, which has a subtler design and most of the Classic’s features.

Or, if you can do without the third-party apps, you might be better suited to a mid-range running or sports watch such as the £379.99 Garmin Forerunner 265 or £299 Suunto Race S offer better dedicated fitness tracking and far superior battery life.