Design and positioning
What you’d expect, the Galaxy Watch8 Classic does: it brings back Samsung’s famous spinning bezel to the latest models. It feels more unique with the return, but the company had to cut away an important part to do it. The package as a whole is very good.
This model’s title already says a lot about it. For some reason, Samsung took away the rotating bezel from all of their most current phones, so adding it back feels like a fix.
The Galaxy Watch6 family was Samsung’s last bezel-based product line. Now the Watch8 models are here, and after a generation, Samsung has added a Classic model with a rotational crown once more.
That’s a good move.
Watch8 comes in two styles: the sportier Watch8 and the more classic Galaxy Watch8 Classic. Samsung also still sells the Galaxy Watch Ultra from last year as the most expensive and rugged choice.
The review unit is the Classic, which comes in just one 46mm size this time. You can buy it with or without LTE. The model with LTE costs 579 euros, while the model with Bluetooth costs 529 euros.
You can choose between a white or black review unit. Both come with a black strap, but the white one has white highlights on the crown and bezel.
The strap that comes with the watch is made of a material that looks like leather on the outside and is actually plastic on the inside. Samsung also has cloth straps and a choice that is made for sports. That’s important because Samsung’s own quick-release system makes sure the sensors stay in place against the skin, but for now, third-party straps can’t be used because of this design.
It goes up against the Huawei Watch 5 and the Google Pixel Watch 3 LTE at this price point. Garmin and Polar make watches that are more sporty, and the Apple Watch Series 10 is in the same price range.
There is only the watch, a strap, and a charging wire in the retail box.
Hardware and screen
The outside of the Watch8 Classic looks very different now. The case is made of stainless steel and has a shape that some might call more like a standard dress watch.
The spinning bezel is housed in a metal case that has a gear-like texture that makes it easy to hold on to but can feel a little rough. There is a splash of color inside the frame and around the buttons.
The screen is smaller than it was on the Galaxy Watch6 Classic (47mm), which is a shame. The Watch8 Classic has an AMOLED screen that is 1.34 inches and has 438 x 438 pixels. For this size of watch, the screen could be bigger, but it’s bright and clear enough for everyday use.
It comes with new watch faces, and some of them look good with the Classic. When Always-On is turned on, faces can switch to a more subdued color scheme to save power when the watch is not being used.
The spinning bezel is pretty wide, which makes it a key part of the design. Sapphire glass that doesn’t scratch is used for the screen, and it’s well protected inside the frame.
The bezel’s detents are set in a way that makes sense, and they click clearly and satisfyingly. It feels natural and accurate to scroll with the bezel, and it’s quick and easy to use to move around in the UI. It’s hard to do without the border once you get used to it.
Controls and gestures
There is now a third menu button on the Classic from Samsung. Samsung has used that button before, on the Galaxy Watch Ultra, so they know how to make it work.
You can’t change a lot about the new button. You can set a single press or double tap to do something like start a workout, open the camera remote, turn on the lights, or start the stopwatch. One useful alternative to using the touchscreen is the button, which can be used to pause and restart workouts.
There are still two more real buttons. A tap on the top button usually takes you back to the watch face, and a double-tap can start a payment or other action that you’ve set up. Samsung’s Gemini AI helper can be called up with a long press. If you hit the bottom button for a long time, Samsung Wallet will open. NFC payments are easy to use.
The Watch8 Classic can be controlled by three wrist gestures: a double pinch, a shake, and a knock-knock tap. With each, you can handle a different function and link an app to the knock-knock gesture.
Strap comfort and fit
The default strap looks like leather but is silicone on the underside. It is not the most comfortable option for long workouts, though it resists wear better than genuine leather. For heavy training, it gets clammy, so the fabric strap is the better choice for sporty users.
Software and setup
On top of Google’s new Wear OS 6, the Watch8 Classic has Samsung’s One UI 8 Watch. The mix looks good and works well, and the Play Store lets you use a lot of third-party apps.
If you already have a Samsung phone and watch, pairing is easy. When you turn on the device, it shows up right away. Setting it up is quick, but you have to install Galaxy Wearable and Samsung Health and sign in to both of them.
Samsung Wearable lets you control the watch, and Samsung Health lets you see health information. There could be a smoother split there, but it works after a while. The watch doesn’t work with iPhones.
The UI has been updated a lot. It adds more detailed tiles and a “Now Bar” that gets its information from Samsung phones. Based on what it shows, you can make the Now Bar less noticeable or more noticeable.
In Wear OS 6, tiles are still very important. Tiles are full-screen views for things like sleep, weather, or exercise goals that you can move through with your finger or the bezel. Tiles can now summarize multiple pieces of info and be changed. However, these composite tiles only work with Samsung’s own apps for now.
The layout requires more vertical scrolling, but it neatly groups together info that is related. Some of the benefits of the bezel are lost because more content has to be scrolled, but the change is still a net plus.
You can still swipe up to get to the app drawer, and a swipe down will hide the settings. The design is responsive, and you can do most things from the main screens without having to open the app drawer very often.
Health and fitness features
The Watch8 Classic has the same basic health features as its predecessor. It can track your menstrual cycle, SpO2, blood pressure, and sleep. It can also do an ECG and find irregular heartbeats. For advanced tools like ECG and blood pressure to work, you need a Samsung phone.
A lot of the features are new or taken from the Ultra. Now the watch has two metabolic indices—an AGEs index and an antioxidant index—as well as a running coach and alerts for high stress levels.
During tests, stress monitoring did what it was supposed to do, giving accurate readings when nothing unusual happened. The vascular load index takes into account both sleep and stress and makes sense as a whole.
The AGEs measure didn’t make sense. The scale goes from 196 to 808. There isn’t clear on-screen help for which end is better, but the color code helps. The goal of the index is to show how food and lifestyle affect metabolic health. During testing, values didn’t change much and never definitely moved into the green range. This made it hard to say what the metric was really useful for.
To get the antioxidant index, you have to take the watch off your wrist and press the sensor with your thumb. It changed based on the person’s lifestyle during the test; drinking and eating poorly caused significant drops. The antioxidant score, on the other hand, gives clear cutoffs and tips on how to improve your number.
The running coach does good work, but he or she sticks to safe models. The app made a four-week plan to help you run a 10K in just over an hour after a 12-minute test to set a standard. The plan tells you what each workout is for, but it’s not clear how to set a specific goal, like race distance.
The training advice is mostly about pace instead of heart rate zones, which could be a good or bad thing, based on your tastes. A lot of the time, the watch can be annoying during interval practices. Interval data often stays hidden until you switch phases, and pace updates are slow on short segments like 200-meter intervals.
The watch can track a lot of different sports besides running, such as cycling, swimming, American football, cricket, and Zumba. Running and walking are automatically detected, and when the watch senses movement, it will suggest that you save the action.
Heart rate tracking worked fine, but it wasn’t the best in its class. The readings were generally a little higher than those of some competitors, and the peak and average rates were about the same. Heart rates dropped a little too slowly for the monitor to pick up on.
Other devices can lock on faster than dual-band GPS, but dual-band GPS locks on pretty quickly. All of your exercise data is stored in Samsung Health, which also has guided workouts, challenges, and the opportunity to log your food to keep track of your calories.
Sleep and step tracking
It was easy to track sleep. The watch’s log matched what the wearer thought and consistently recorded awakenings. The sleep results were about the same when compared to a reference device, but HRV sometimes showed differences. The watch gives you a sleep number and a short verbal evaluation, and it can also remind you to go to bed.
Counting steps made it easier to tell the difference between real and fake steps caused by chores, and short trips still show the right distances.
Performance and storage
Storage grows to 64 GB, double what the original Galaxy Watch Ultra shipped with; the Ultra has also been updated to the same capacity. The watch has 2 GB of RAM and an Exynos W1000 CPU. In day-to-day use, the watch is snappy and does not feel sluggish.
Battery life
There are 445 mAh in the Watch8 Classic. Samsung says it can be used for 40 hours or 30 hours with the Always-On Display turned on. When the study was done over the course of about four weeks, the best results happened after two days of modest use and up to an hour of exercise every day. If you use it a lot, it’s more likely that you’ll go a whole day without charging.
A few short charges during the day kept the watch living in real life, but heavy training or the Always-On Display quickly drains the battery. When AOD is turned on, the battery will last for about a day. This is shorter than many Huawei, Honor, and OnePlus models, which last for several days.
You can charge it wirelessly with the puck that comes with it or by charging it wirelessly from your phone. The strap design makes it hard to get the watch in the right place on a phone to charge it backwards.
From empty to half charged in about 35 minutes. Fill to full slows down as the battery gets close to full, but it still only takes less than 90 minutes to fully charge. When you think about how fast the battery can die, that’s not very fast.
Pros
- The rotating bezel is a pleasure to use.
- Useful extra shortcut button.
- Elegant, premium look.
- Solid build quality.
- Comprehensive health features.
Cons
- Poor battery life and only moderate charging speed.
- Smaller display than predecessor.
- Nonstandard strap attachment limits options.
- Wrist heart-rate not the most accurate.
Verdict
The Galaxy Watch8 Classic is one of the most stylish Android devices you can buy. It’s a big watch, but similar tech in smaller cases now has the same features and often longer battery life. That’s important for buyers who want small watches or who care about long-lasting performance over several days.
The cost isn’t low. The price of over 500 euros is fair for the features, but the fact that the software will only be updated every four years means that it won’t last very long compared to the price.
The rotating bezel is what makes the gadget stand out. It speeds up navigation, makes it more reliable, and makes it more fun. The screen is clear and bright. Even though it tends to trap sweat, the included strap is comfortable, and Samsung’s proprietary strap fit keeps sensors close to the skin while reducing the options for third-party straps.
One UI Watch 8 groups information smarter than before, which is a nice improvement to the software.
The main problems with it are the battery life and how fast it charges. Many people can get by with short charges, but if they use their watch a lot for sports or if the screen is always on, they will need to charge it every day. Another letdown is the smaller screen compared to the old Classic and a heart-rate tracker that isn’t quite as good as the best in its class.
The Galaxy Watch8 Classic is a good but pricey option if you want a stylish band with lots of features to go with your Android phone.
