Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra review

One UI Watch 6 + Wear OS 5

The Watch Ultra runs on the latest version of Wear OS 5 with Samsung's custom One UI Watch 6 software on top. Just like the One UI overlay for smartphones, the One UI Watch is still based on Google's OS but with different aesthetics and additional features.

Wear OS offers deep integration with Google's products and other apps on your phone. And although Samsung doesn't explicitly mention how long the software support would be, our previous experience with Samsung smartwatches shows that you will get at least 2-3 years of timely software support. Samsung is pretty swift with the updates, so kudos for that.

Thanks to the new chipset, Wear OS 5 on the Galaxy Watch Ultra feels smoother and faster, so we have no complaints about usability.

Compared to the previous Wear OS 4 + One UI Watch 5 version of the software, the newer release offers just a few UI changes and not many new features. In fact, if you've used Wear OS 4 or 3 up until now, you will feel right at home with the Watch Ultra.

Wear OS 5

Sure, font sizes and some icon scalings are changed, but not enough to put you off. Here are some screenshots from the watch.

With the maturing Wear OS, the modding and developers community has also been expanding. You can find many compatible watch faces on Google Play, in addition to the default ones and many Wear OS-adapted apps. Samsung has prepared a couple of Ultra-specific watch faces, but those are mainly for the outdoorsy type of users.

Various tiles

Samsung's notification handling remains one of the best in the industry. You can immediately tell what the incoming notification is about as the preview shows the app icon, the text (along with images if available) and the sender's avatar. Of course, you can also interact with the notification and send quick responses, including voice-to-text responses, as long as the language is supported.

Notifications and quick responses

Galaxy AI can also give you suggestions for quick answers depending on the context, but of course, it can be used only in a few languages.

Most of the settings and features that require some sort of customization are available only on the Galaxy Wearable companion app on the paired phone, or they are simply easier to customize there.

Galaxy Wearable app settings

The app itself isn't much different from before, but a couple of UI changes make it more streamlined and offer easier access to the most commonly used settings.

Galaxy Wearable app settings

The Galaxy Wearable app allows you to customize everything from notifications and sounds to display, battery, apps and advanced features. The Buttons and gestures sub-menu is arguably the most interesting one.

Galaxy Wearable app settings

It allows you to choose what the Action Button does (it's Samsung's Health app by default) as well as assign specific actions to the home and back buttons. You can launch certain apps with double or with press-and-hold.

Galaxy Wearable app settings

The Shake-to-dismiss and the knock-knock gestures are now joined by the double pinch gesture. It only works in certain scenarios or apps. The UI lets you know when you can use the gesture and some examples are when capturing a photo, answering calls and silencing alarms. The camera capture feature works only with Samsung smartphones.

Galaxy Wearable app settings

Another cool new addition to the feature list is the Siren. Hold down the Action Button, and it will activate a pretty loud siren. It's a safety feature that might come in handy if you are lost in the woods, injured or stuck under an avalanche.

Samsung Health and fitness tracking

Compared to last year, the health and fitness tracking capabilities of the Ultra offer modest improvements for the most part. In fact, most of the new features are thanks to the more robust design allowing the watch to operate in extreme conditions, but we've covered that in the previous pages already.

Still, Samsung Health now allows you to import GPX data to have turn-by-turn navigation on routes, and the guidance considers altitude. The software allows you to track back via the same route so you don't get lost.

Riding your bike in nature is also better now as you can carve your own path (record your own route) and race against your own time the next time you take the same route. You will get real-time updates on how you are doing.

Hiking data

A new dedicated Night mode when doing a midnight hike will preserve battery, and your watch won't be a distraction.

The Quick Button might come in extra handy for hybrid athletes or triathlon athletes as it allows you to switch between different sports on the fly with just the press of a button. You can arrange the activities on the list to your liking.

As we mentioned earlier, the dual-frequency GPS could be a game-changer for runners as it provides considerably more accurate positioning, even in concrete-dense urban environments.

Unfortunately, automatic workout tracking is still a huge miss. Except for walking, the watch will rarely pick up the right activity, and when it does, it usually thinks you are riding your bike when you are actually driving slowly around the city. We experience the same issue with last year's Galaxy Watch6 Classic with the older Wear OS version. Samsung hasn't fixed that yet.

Regarding health tracking, the Ultra has a few new tricks up its sleeve. And it wouldn't be a top-end Galaxy device if AI wasn't involved.

To our surprise, AI isn't employed in some everyday tasks like speech recognition, for example, but for optimizing background processes related to your health tracking.

Galaxy AI is used to determine your Energy Score, that's comprised of different health markers - sleep, heart rate during sleep and daily exercise.

You get a daily score based on these factors, and if there's a component that needs your attention, the Samsung Health app will guide you by giving tips on improving your daily habits.

Energy score

Speaking of the sleep score, it now considers heart rate variability, in addition to your body temperature, which is a feature from last year. This is interesting because heart rate variability alerts, for example, are available only in some countries, just like the ECG feature. It requires licensing from local health regulatory bodies.

Sleep tracking

Having said that, we wouldn't rely too much on that score mostly because it involves rough estimates of how hard your daily exercise has been and sleep. And sleep tracking is notoriously unreliable on commercial smart wearable devices. We can't say for sure the Watch Ultra isn't accurate with sleep tracking, but it's presumably quite off compared to professional equipment.

Sleep tracking

The same goes for the body composition measurements. The readings you get are heavily influenced by how much water you drink, at what time you take your measurements, how much and when you eat, etc. There are too many factors that may skew the result, which makes it unreliable even if you use it just for reference.

ECG and HRV, as usual, are available only when paired with a Samsung phone.

Glycation tracking, a fancy way of saying the Watch Ultra can track your blood sugar levels, isn't restricted to Samsung phones only. It measures it while you are asleep. It gives you an AGEs Index that indicates your current metabolic health.

For other heart rate measurements, steps, workout tracking (except calories) and even oxygen levels, the watch is pretty accurate. We also like that the Samsung Health app for Android is quite customizable as you can choose various panels with the most important metrics to you. We just wished the tile for daily steps on the watch showed data from several days ago. You need to open the app on your phone to see how many steps you did yesterday or the day before. Only, daily steps are shown on one of the default tiles.