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The rotating bezel is back

Review: Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic - Luxurious and Polished

Galaxy Watch 8 Classic leans more towards a classic watch appearance than the Galaxy Watch 8. Most notably, the rotating bezel is back.

Elias Nordling
Published

This year's generation of Galaxy Watch offers two models, where the Galaxy Watch Classic is the more expensive one, with slightly more luxurious material choices and a slightly larger screen. Functionally, the two watches are identical, feel free to read our review of it as well. Do not expect higher performance or longer battery life from the Watch 8 Classic, but there are advantages in the design that may make it worth choosing the more expensive model.

Like the Watch 8, the Watch 8 Classic has Samsung's new "squircle" design, meaning the round dial has a slightly squarer back. According to Samsung, this improves sensor readings, and although the first impression is that it somewhat detracts from the point of having a round dial on a smartwatch, I soon got used to it and don't think about it.

It's quite a heavy watch, partly due to the large screen, partly because it's made of stainless steel and not aluminium like the regular Galaxy Watch 8. You also get several control options for the watch. 

Above all, we have the rotating bezel, a special feature for the Galaxy Watch that has come and gone over the years and is a favourite for some. The metal ring around the dial rotates with a nice click feel and without being too stiff, and the rotation corresponds to swiping right and left on the screen. There are also three buttons on the side, one more than on the regular Galaxy Watch. You can program the third button to your favourite function, for example, to go to your workouts. In fact, you can control the watch entirely by swiping on the screen, the buttons and bezel just make it quicker to access the functions you want.

The watch's strap has a special attachment which, according to Samsung, is designed to allow you to quickly and easily switch between sports bands that withstand sweat and water and more luxurious options. The downside is that they are not standardised and you have to buy new bands directly from Samsung.

Fast

The Galaxy Watch 8 series has the same chipset made with 3-nanometre technology as the Galaxy Watch 7 that powers the watch. It's fast, and I don't feel that the watch lags. It's particularly noticeable when I lift my arm or tap the watch to wake it. On most watches with Wear OS, it feels like you have to wait for the watch to wake up for half a second, but not here. The animations when I swipe across the screen also flow well. I suspect that Samsung has tweaked the performance a bit in the system compared to last year's model, as I don't remember it feeling quite this fast.

Wear OS and Samsung's One UI interface are also good for multitasking. On some simpler watches, you can't see the watch face when you have a workout session running and more, but here there are no problems having multiple functions running at the same time, such as listening to a podcast you've downloaded to the watch, having a workout session, and checking how far you've come in filling the three circles that indicate today's activity level.

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The battery life, however, is still the system's weakness. Both Google and Samsung talk about improvements in battery life, but it's a single-digit percentage, nothing that makes any meaningful difference. The battery life varies somewhat with how much I exercise and what other functions I use, but on average I get just over a day and a half of battery life. Some days two, but that's not something you can count on. In practice, I need to charge the watch every day, which for a watch where a large part of the health measurement is based on having it on when you sleep is quite impractical. There is no really good low-power mode that extends battery life by reducing functions to a minimum but still keeps track of your pulse and movement. For example, I discovered that the watch was at 17 percent battery when I was about to take a swim. I took a chance that it would manage to log the swim anyway, but the watch died before I finished swimming and the workout wasn't saved.

If the watch charged quickly, so that you could throw it on charge while getting ready in the morning, the shorter battery life would be easier to forgive, but the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic does not charge quickly.

With the included wireless charger, the watch says it needs 1 hour and 27 minutes to charge fully, but when that time has passed, the battery is only at 75 percent, and it actually takes about two hours to charge the battery from empty to full. In practice, you need to charge the watch for an hour a day or more.

Well-organised

If it weren't for the battery life, I like Wear OS, or at least Samsung's version of it. It is partly based on the ability to install apps and partly on having widgets with aggregated information, called cards, which you swipe between. Samsung has made it easy to quickly find the information I'm looking for.

I don't miss any features in the system. For example, you can tap payments with Samsung Wallet. You can call on Gemini and get answers to questions. You can download music and connect a headset to the watch. You can, of course, receive notifications on the watch. By default, it is set to play sound when it does, which is just annoying, and I change it to only vibrate. I can also respond to notifications from messaging services and even email, with pre-set quick messages, by speaking a message or using a microscopic keyboard on the screen.

However, inexplicably, the option to schedule Do Not Disturb on the watch is still missing, and I sometimes get woken up by notifications on the watch even though the phone is set to Do Not Disturb overnight. You can get around this by using Samsung's routines for night mode, which you can then sync the watch to, but I find routines cumbersome and prefer the regular Do Not Disturb function on the phone.

I find everything I want for health and training in the watch. It's easy to log workouts and I get the data I want from them, even if the GPS route is a bit shaky and often doesn't stick to the roads I've taken. The amount of health data collected is large, from heart rate and steps to metabolic health and vascular load on the blood vessels. What I should then do with that information is not always as obvious.

The question is also how reliable they are. A new feature measures the amount of antioxidants in the body, a measure of whether I'm getting enough fruits and vegetables. According to the watch, my values are terrible and I should eat more vegetables and perhaps drink less alcohol. This despite being a vegetarian and not having drunk alcohol for several weeks. I try stuffing myself with even more fresh fruit and vegetables than usual, whereupon my value falls further. I simply find it hard to believe this.

I haven't talked much about news compared to the Galaxy Watch 7 because there aren't that many. The screen has received a boost in brightness, which is appreciated in sunlight, and perhaps I would find the Galaxy Watch 8 a bit faster if I had them side by side. The Galaxy Watch 7, of course, did not come in a Classic variant with a rotating bezel.

I like the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. I would have loved it if it had a longer battery life or at least faster charging, now I have to settle for liking it with reservations.

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