iDevice review
Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 review: a great watch you'll charge every day
Comfortable, bright and full of health tracking, with a battery that runs out too soon.
Thumbs up
- Very comfortable, day and night
- Bright screen that handles sunlight
- Useful sleep scores when the battery lasts
- GPS and heart rate in line with good watches
- IP68 and 50m water resistance
Thumbs down
- About a day of battery
- Missed nights of sleep data
- Key health features need a Samsung phone
- Auto workout detection misses
- Case scratches easily
Wear the Galaxy Watch 9 for a week and you'll keep forgetting it's there. It's very comfortable, light enough to sleep in, and the screen stays readable even in strong sunlight. Samsung rates it at up to 3,000 nits behind sapphire crystal.
Then the afternoon slump hits your battery. On busy days with a workout and notifications, you may need a top-up before dinner, and plenty of people end up charging it before bed. That's the problem with sleep tracking on a watch that can't get through the night.
Battery
A day of serious use is about what you get, and it's barely changed from the Watch 8. Skip a charge and you'll miss sleep data. Wear it overnight on a low battery and you can lose whole nights. Build a daily charging habit, or this watch will keep catching you out.
Health and sleep
Samsung tracks heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration, skin temperature and blood oxygen around the clock. Sleep scores show up reliably each morning with an AI Sleep Coach, though it doesn't always catch you waking during the night. Samsung's fitness scores are useful for spotting trends, not for judging a single day.
Workouts
GPS, heart rate and step counts line up with what you'd expect from a good smartwatch, and routes match other trackers and mapping tools. Automatic workout detection is less reliable, so start a workout yourself when it counts. Gemini works on the watch, but the gesture to call it up doesn't always fire.
Build
It's water resistant to 50 meters and carries IP68 and MIL-STD-810H ratings. The case can pick up dings and scrapes quickly, so a careful owner may want a bumper. Bands from the Watch 8 fit, and the Watch 7 and Watch 8 charger works, but older Galaxy Watch chargers don't.
Phone matters
You need an Android phone on Android 13 or later. There's no iPhone support. On a Samsung phone you get everything, including ECG, irregular rhythm alerts and sleep apnea detection. On a Pixel or other Android phone, those health features, Suggested Replies and Samsung Find are locked away.