I have always had something of a love/hate relationship with smart watches, usually depending on either; A) how connected I want to be and/or; B) how well (or not) the technology is actually working.
My first smart watch was actually a Samsung device – the Galaxy Gear S from 2017, which was a generally seamless experience and packed some genuinely useful features.
Since then, I have cycled through several different brands and operating systems, including Fossil, Motorola and Garmin, as well as a number of subsequent Samsung watches.
While my initial attraction has always been to the most fully featured ones, I have to admit that I have always had the most satisfying experiences from the ones that just do the basic stuff, but do it well.
The original Galaxy Gear S and my current Garmin 7X Pro Sapphire Solar provided the most streamlined, pain-free experiences (although the Garmin can be flaky around connection at times), while the Tizen Samsungs have generally been the most frustrating.
However, ever since Samsung and Google teamed up to develop Wear OS as an operating system things have improved, particularly in the connectivity and stability fronts, and my time with the latest Galaxy Watch 8 was possibly the most seamless and pain-free experience with a Samsung watch yet.
While, in my personal experience, Samsung watches can often be fickle thigs to initially set up and connect to your phone, the Watch 8 was fantastically slick and seamless, quickly finding and recognising my phone during the surprisingly fast initial set up process.
I am a fan of big, chunky watches and metal straps, generally in black or darker colours, so the petit white Galaxy Watch 8 with its white rubber strap was something of a turn off initially (it was supposed to be a Galaxy Watch Ultra, but the wrong one was sent out!), but after a few hours of wear the slim, super-light Watch 8 had grown on me.
The Galaxy Watch 8 blends the stability and effortlessness of the more basic watches I love so much with a multitude of new features, bulked-up battery life and an utterly seamless experience.
And after a few days of using it I was convinced that it was easily the best Samsung smart watch in years.
With massively improved battery life, the Watch 8 also now includes Google’s Gemini AI assistant that works genuinely well (and genuinely better than its integration into Samsung’s other non-phone devices so far), while the new “tiles” interface is fast and fantastically easy to use.
Samsung has jammed even more health and fitness monitoring features in the Watch 8, with things like antioxidant level and vascular load monitoring joining the likes of ECG and blood pressure monitoring.
The Galaxy Watch 8 blends the stability and effortlessness of the more basic Galaxy Gear S and Garmin watches I love so much with a multitude of new features, bulked-up battery life and an utterly seamless experience.
What is it like in a car?
One thing that I have always found useful while driving is getting phone notifications on a smart watch – the ability to glance momentarily at who is calling or sending a message before deciding to ignore it is genuinely preferable to wondering who it might be and then being disappointed when you finally pull over to check.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 represents almost as significant a generational jump for Samsung watches as the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 have for their foldable phones.
And while it is still a relatively niche option, select car brands like BYD and Polestar will allow modern Samsung watches to be used as digital keys, but that isn’t massively widespread as of yet.
And if you have an older car without imbedded satellite navigation, there is another little trick that I used to use when driving my crappy old classic Audi 100 that was a misguided project way back when I was a struggling freelancer – use it as a quasi-heads-up style navigation display by using your phone for navigation and getting the directions pop up on your wrist!
Regardless of its usefulness in a car, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 represents almost as significant a generational jump for Samsung watches as the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 have for their foldable phones.
