Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Review: First impressions of the stylish wearable

Design and screen

• New squircle design
• Thinner design
• New watch connector design

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 marks a design refresh for Samsung’s flagship smartwatch, which was due for an update. There’s your pick of graphite and silver colours and your choice of 40mm and 44mm sizes. That’s the same case size as the Watch 7.

The case is still made from matted armoured aluminium and is actually 11% slimmer than the Watch 7’s case. It’s just not a round one anymore. In its place is the same cushioned design featured on the Galaxy Watch Ultra, just without the bigger bezel surrounding the screen. It still has the feel of a Galaxy Watch, and if you liked the look of previous Watches, you shouldn’t be too alarmed about these changes.

Front and centre is a Super AMOLED display that Samsung claims is now 50% brighter than the one featured on the Watch 7. The peak brightness is now 3,000 nits, matching the brightness offered on the Galaxy Watch Ultra.

Seeing this indoors isn’t the best environment for judging how much brighter it actually is, but if you were hoping for an improvement in visibility, it looks like Samsung has delivered that.

Flip the watch over and you’ll find Samsung’s BioActive optical sensor, which, along with covering heart rate, blood oxygen tracking and body composition analysis among other features, now offers some additional smarts. You’ll also spy a new watch strap connector design that aims to make it much easier to switch out the Watch 8’s official bands for something new.

Features 

• Runs on Wear OS 6
• Gemini AI 
• Antioxidant index measurements

In typical Samsung fashion, it’s promising a performance and software boost, adding its latest Exynos W1000 chipset to keep the Watch 8 running smoothly. That’s matched with Wear OS 6 and Samsung’s One UI 8 to provide the software experience.

Wear OS 6 does bring some user interface improvements to notifications, Tiles (widgets) and seems to make it easier to navigate the many features on offer.

Along with offering the same core smartwatch features as the Watch 7, Samsung has introduced Gemini AI, Google’s AI chatbot, to answer your queries in a slicker and quicker fashion.

Samsung gave the example of using Gemini to find nearby places and to send links to friends to join you there, or to create a playlist for a short 10-minute bike ride. If it works as well as it sounds, this could be a big win for Samsung and Wear OS smartwatches in general

There are a lot of new features for those who turn to Samsung’s smartwatches to keep closer tabs on their health and wellbeing.

Many of those new additions are tied to Samsung’s enhanced sleep monitoring capabilities. Now you can get guidance on when to go to bed after the watch has tracked three nights of sleep. If you own any Samsung SmartThings smart home devices, the Watch 8 can lean on that data to better analyse your sleep environment. Samsung is also activating its sleep apnea feature in the UK, which it began rolling out globally last year.

If you’re a runner, there’s now a new personalised running coach that’s not just made for beginners. After you’ve completed a 12-minute running test, the Watch 8 will analyse your data to build a plan for you that’s in line with your test results.

If you’re struggling to hit targets in your program, Samsung will automatically adjust future sessions. It’ll even give you a motivational nudge during runs and deliver real-time feedback to help you gauge progress.

For the first time, Samsung is introducing an antioxidant index feature that uses the BioActive sensor on the back of the watch to measure carotenoids, which are antioxidants found in vegetables and fruits that are stored in your skin. 

A five-second measurement from that sensor will assess whether your antioxidant level is high or low, with a high level being better. Low will lead to recommendations on things to eat to get that index going in the right direction. 

In true Samsung fashion, it refrained from discussing battery life, instead claiming that the battery is 8% better than that of the Watch 7. The Watch 7 battery wasn’t great, and 8% better doesn’t suggest it’s going to get significantly better and really rival what OnePlus and TicWatch Wear OS smartwatches can offer in battery life.

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