# The Galaxy Watch9's heart score needs a blood pressure cuff you buy separately

Source: https://idevice.com/the-galaxy-watch9s-heart-score-needs-a-blood-pressure-cuff-you-buy-separately
Published: 2026-09-19

> Samsung announced Heart Health Score in June and left out the part where it will not produce a number until you calibrate it against a cuff you do not own.

Samsung's new Heart Health Score on the Galaxy Watch9 needs a blood pressure cuff you buy yourself. Boutayna Chokrane wore the 40mm model for two weeks for WIRED and scored it 6 out of 10, and the cuff is the reason she never got the feature working. Few buyers will. Apple and Oura both flag possible high blood pressure from the wrist alone, with no second device to calibrate against.

Samsung announced the score on 4 June, seven weeks before the watch went on sale. It took over from Vascular Load, the metric that arrived with the [Galaxy Watch 8](https://idevice.com/smart-watches/samsung-galaxy-watch/roadmap/watch-8) and is being switched off this year. The replacement folds sleep, stress, activity and body composition into a single number, and it now wants a cuff reading on your arm before it will produce one. Samsung's answer to the competition is that its version can take a live reading on demand rather than waiting for you to be asleep.

The 40mm battery went from 325mAh to 390mAh and the day didn't get any longer. Samsung estimates up to 30 hours. Chokrane averaged closer to 25 with the always-on display running, which covers a day and a night and not much past that. A full recharge took her about 100 minutes. The [Pixel Watch 5](https://idevice.com/smart-watches/google-pixel-watch/roadmap) does it in 45.

Vitals tracks blood oxygen, heart rate, heart rate variability (how much the time between heartbeats changes, a rough read on how recovered you are), breathing rate and skin temperature while you sleep. It spends seven nights building your normal range before it will flag anything outside it. The sleep apnea detection alongside it is cleared by the FDA. In her testing both lined up with what the Apple Watch Series 11 and the Pixel Watch 5 reported.

Hearing works the way Apple's version does, listening to the noise around you and warning you when it gets loud enough to cost you something. Daily Cardio Load totals the strain a workout put on your heart and tells you how much recovery it bought. Finishing a run takes two goes at the lower button, a press to pause and a long hold to end, and she was reaching for the buttons rather than the screen because her hands were wet.

Fitness Index asks for more setup than any of the others. Two days of wear, a recorded run or walk, a night of sleep tracking and a body composition measurement, and only then does it rank you against other people your age. Raise-to-talk for Gemini, where you lift your wrist toward your mouth and start speaking, reaches a Galaxy Watch two generations after the Pixel Watch got it. The Watch9 starts at $379.99, thirty dollars above where the Watch 8 started.