GoKawiilSamsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 4 / 5 Very good pros and cons Pros Samsung's brightest watch ever.
An extensive set of health and activity tracking features for $699.
The 800 mAh battery can last around 60 hours with Always-On Display enabled. Cons The best features aren't fundamentally new, but they are useful.
The watch is still a heavy device, despite design improvements. View now at Samsung
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Samsung's second-generation Galaxy Watch Ultra launched today at its Galaxy Unpacked event in London. Among the smartwatch lineup, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 offers the most comprehensive health features available, with new outdoor activities to track and health conditions to monitor. It also receives some hardware updates that keep the display vibrant and the battery strong.
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Ahead of Unpacked, I got to try out the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 firsthand. I exercised, worked, moved, and slept with the watch for several days to get a sense of how Samsung has improved this device and who this smartwatch is right for. So, what's my verdict?
Samsung says it's updated the smartwatch to be 12% thinner alongside a thinner band, but the truth is, it's still a bulky, rugged watch. You don't buy a rugged, Ultra-tier smartwatch for its lightness and small size in the same way that you don't order a Big Mac as a vegetarian. Regardless, it's nice to know that Samsung is at least trying to make this bulky, hardcore watch easier to sleep and live in.
Samsung moved its processors from the Exynos chips to Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear Elite 8 Gen 5. With this migration comes several battery and productivity improvements on the Ultra 2, including an incredible boost in battery capacity -- 35% to be exact, with an 800 mAh battery. I noticed the smartwatch lasted around two days before it hit 15%. The chip claims to make fast charging faster, though from my experience, it still took around an hour and a half to get the Ultra 2 back from 15% to 100%.
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