Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 Review: Almost the perfect watch

Design and screen

• Same ‘cushion’ design as Ultra model
• Slim at 8.9mm thick
• Bright if compact AMOLED screen

The Watch 9 continues the design language of the Watch 8 with a circular screen placed on a squircle watch face. I thought this looked too busy on the Watch 8 Classic, but this more minimalist, regular Watch 9 looks slick in the silver and white of my review sample. 

I received the smaller 40mm model for review, which has a 1.34-inch AMOLED screen. A larger 44mm has a 1.47-inch display, though both boast a peak brightness of 3,000 nits. I had no trouble seeing anything on the smaller screen even in direct sunlight. It’s a really well-calibrated display, and I left the always-on option enabled so the screen didn’t turn black when not in use – handy for glancing at the time from any angle.

The 40mm model is available in graphite or the cream I tested, while the 44mm comes in graphite or silver options.

The watch’s casing is aluminium, making it very lightweight, and it has the expected IP68 full dust and water resistance (up to 50m with a 5ATM rating) which means it can be worn in the shower, pool or sea. The clean design has only two buttons on the right edge, and a speaker grille on the left for the socially unconscious among us who want to take hands-free calls on a smartwatch.

I found the 40mm model comfortable to wear all day, though my sample had a S/M strap that I had to wear on the very last hole – I am definitely a M/L wrist size! This strap is the Sport Band, though Samsung gives you the option of a Fabric Band or the oddly named Misty Band at purchase. The latter has a two-tone finish.

The slim and light build meant I had no issues wearing the watch at night to track my sleep either, making this a device I’d wear round the clock, were it not for the battery life – more on that shortly.

Performance and software

• Snapdragon Wear Elite means zippy performance
• Intuitive tile-based WearOS software
• Third-party apps run well

I noticed a clear boost in performance on the Watch 9 over previous generations, which is down to the use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset. This was most noticeable in app loading, including the Google Play Store, which I always find very slow on even the newest Android smartwatches. 

The Watch 9 loads apps faster than the Pixel Watch 4, and the power is most noticeable when using the Gemini app, with my voice commands appearing in text on the screen microseconds after I said them. This speed of processing encouraged me to use Gemini more, even if the actual results of Google’s AI assistant weren’t better than on any other device. 

It’s handier for opening apps or setting reminders, which is great when the Watch 9 also supports hands-free Gemini. This works by raising your wrist and talking to the watch to ask a question without having to say “Hey Google” or press any buttons, speeding the use of the tool up considerably. 

Samsung’s version of Wear OS changes the look and feel of Google’s Pixel Watch version considerably, but usually for the better. Though I am a fan of the Pixel Watch’s software design, Samsung has built software here that’s more intuitive to use and better set out, for example with the notifications being grouped by app.

The default layout of ‘tiles’, which are accessed by swiping left from the watch face, are not too overwhelming, and you can add others with several bubbles of information you can scroll through and access quickly rather than have umpteen big tiles to swipe through.

Third-party app support is top-notch, and comparable to the range of tools available on the Apple Watch. I used Spotify, Shazam, Pocket Casts, Strava, AllTrails and Nike Run Club alongside the now very polished Google apps such as Maps and Keep, with no bugs or issues.

It’s worth noting that when paired with a Samsung phone, your alarms as well as Do Not Disturb and sleep modes sync between watch and phone, which is very handy, but this doesn’t work when the watch is paired with any brand of Android phone. It’s a small quality-of-life feature that sounds trivial but improves day-to-day use, and it’s annoying that it’s Samsung-locked.

As you may have guessed, this smartwatch cannot be paired with an iPhone, just like every other Wear OS device. 

Health and fitness tracking

• Infuriating setup of Samsung Health
• Plethora of interesting data insights when set up
• Accurate GPS tracking

When fully set up, the Galaxy Watch 9 offers a dizzying array of health and fitness features, including ways to track your heart health, daily cardio load, vascular load, blood glucose, and antioxidant levels automatically.

But all of the features I just mentioned will not be tracked until you manually tap into their sections within the Samsung Health app and enable them. This is incredibly annoying, as I went two or three days of wearing the watch before fully finding them all, as the app does not prompt you to allow the tools to begin tracking.

Once enabled, most do not reach back and tap into data already collected, and require you to wear the Watch 9 for a few more days until they have enough stats to measure that thing.

If Samsung insists on asking your permission to turn most of the Watch’s advanced tools on, there should be a set-up wizard or, at the very least, prompts to switch things on. Without it, buyers might go days or weeks before realising their new device isn’t tracking everything it could be.

Thankfully the Galaxy Watch 9 can track most activities and sports the casual and even more advanced user requires, and it does it with aplomb. I really like the workout app on the watch, which I tested mostly on runs. It is no-nonsense, and displays the data I want as default, with duration, pace, distance and the time of day a glance away.

I was also impressed with the auto-workout detection, which picked up the first walk I went on and started to record it, plotting it from the start a few minutes in, as well as successfully detecting when I had stopped. I didn’t press a single button, yet the Watch 9 accurately recorded my whole walk. I was impressed, as not all pricey wearables manage this by a long shot. It even recorded a casual sea swim automatically.

The Watch 9 has the same dual-GPS tech as the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, and I found the run route plotting very accurate. On close inspection of the final map route, it occasionally incorrectly showed me running through the corner of a building, but for a £349 device aimed at the general user, rather than a dedicated running watch, it’s a hair away from the best accuracy but more than acceptable for all but the pickiest data diggers.

If you want Samsung’s dedicated modes for trail running and diving, they are exclusive to the Ultra 2, but otherwise the cheaper Watch 9 has you covered for a plethora of sports from running to hiking and swimming, via aqua aerobics, archery, badminton and kayaking.

The watch packs in Samsung’s BioActive Sensor (covering heart health), a temperature sensor, accelerometer, barometer, gyro sensor, geomagnetic sensor, and light sensor, which combine to give detailed data on whatever workout you complete. The Samsung Health app has matured nicely over the years, and data is well presented post-exercise.

It creates scores for energy, heart health, fitness index, and daily cardio loads, among other measurements, and the tiles in the app are fully customisable to make sure you see the data you want up top.

I’m less enamoured with the AI insights the app gives based on activity. Sometimes they didn’t appear at all on the home screen, and when they did they seemed too wishy washy to be of demonstrable use. 

Maybe I shouldn’t complain, as I find rival AI health coaches, such as the Google Health app’s coach, far too wordy and in the way. Samsung’s is inoffensive but not much use. You might prefer that if you don’t need an AI bot to tell you what your fitness data shows.

Sleep tracking is excellent, with results comparable to the Oura Ring 5 and Whoop MG, two wearables I have found most accurately relay my wake-ups in the middle of the night with a four-month-old.

Annoyingly for non-Samsung phone owners, only Galaxy phones can use the Watch’s ECG, blood pressure and sleep apnoea. But for Samsung die-hards, those features top off a very well-rounded smartwatch’s health arsenal.

Battery life

• Piddly 390mAh battery on 40mm model
• Only one full day of comfortable use
• Sluggish charging

The 390mAh battery on the smaller 40mm model did not last long in my testing, despite being an upgrade on the small Watch 8’s 325mAh. Though I could stretch it from 7am one morning to mid-afternoon the next day, it was not enough juice to make it through two days and two nights. It means this Galaxy Watch 9 is a smartwatch you will have to charge once per day to see you through.

That’s not unusual for smartwatches in 2026, but rivals like the OnePlus Watch 3 last for a huge 120 hours thanks to clever tech. Though I didn’t test it, the 44mm Watch 9’s larger 445mAh will add a few more hours.

The lacklustre battery on the Watch 9 I tested was one of its biggest downsides. As I’ve recently tried out wearables such as the Fitbit Air and Whoop MG – admittedly screenless trackers that require far less power drain – I had got used to not charging my wrist tracker for several days.

If you don’t care about sleep tracking, it’s easy to charge your watch each night, but if you want to take advantage of this useful feature, you’ll have to get used to putting the Watch 9 on the charger before bed for a few minutes.

Samsung says the watch supports ‘Fast Charging’, but I found top-up speeds slow. It took about 90 minutes to charge the unit from close to zero percent, which is a large enough chunk of time to be annoyed about missing out on daily health data collection. The Pixel Watch 4’s charging tech is demonstrably faster, and Samsung is clearly lagging behind.

If you want a Watch 9 with staying power, size up to the 44mm. Both will last longer if you turn off the always-on display, but that hobbles the usability of the watch considerably in my eyes.

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