Samsung Galaxy Watch9 Review: I Don’t Need Another Health Score

New smartwatches can now detect potential sleep apnea and monitor environmental noise levels directly.

Samsung has released the Galaxy Watch9, an incremental update to its everyday smartwatch. This new model features a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear Elite processor and a slightly larger battery. A key new software addition is the raise-to-talk functionality for Google's Gemini AI assistant, bringing it in line with competitors. Samsung has also expanded the watch's health tracking capabilities with new metrics like Hearing, Vitals, Sleep Apnea detection, Daily Cardio Load, Fitness Index, and a Heart Health Score. However, the Heart Health Score requires calibration with a separate blood pressure cuff. Despite the larger battery capacity, real-world battery life remains around 25 hours with the Always-On Display enabled, falling short of Samsung's 30-hour estimate. Charging also remains slow, taking approximately 100 minutes for a full recharge. The design retains the familiar "squircle" shape, and while comfortable, it offers limited functional advantages over a circular or square display. The display itself is bright and durable, with good outdoor visibility and robust water and dust resistance ratings. The overall user experience is smooth, but the increased health data can feel overwhelming, and some new metrics are of questionable utility for the average user.

The Galaxy Watch9's modest update, driven by a new Snapdragon Wear Elite chip and enhanced health sensors, positions it as a more competitive, albeit complex, health-tracking device. The inclusion of features like Vitals monitoring and FDA-cleared sleep apnea detection suggests a market trend towards more proactive, baseline health analytics in wearables, moving beyond basic step-counting to identify subtle physiological changes.

While Samsung aims to provide comprehensive health insights, the practical utility of features like the Heart Health Score, which necessitates external hardware, remains a point of contention. This highlights a broader industry challenge: balancing extensive data collection with user-friendly interpretation and avoiding feature bloat that can lead to data overload, potentially prompting consumers to seek simpler, more focused health-tracking solutions.