Wear OS in a form of its own

Review: Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 - Improved

Samsung's latest watch is more comfortable, has better battery capacity and higher performance. But this results in surprisingly little actual improvement.

Erik Mörner Erik Mörner

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:18

Improved performance and most of what you can expect from a smartwatch today. The Galaxy Watch 9 is a watch with the latest Wear OS, a system developed jointly by Google and Samsung, giving Samsung something of a head start. Wear OS brings a strong connection to Google and its services, as well as an app selection that makes Spotify available, for example, alongside WhatsApp, Strava and others.

However, as more people use smartwatches, it has become increasingly apparent that apps are less important and integrated health features are taking centre stage. Smartwatches have long since lost their role as something of a computer on the wrist, and several apps that were available during the early days of smartwatches have withdrawn. Instagram, Uber and Twitter (X) are examples of this. You still receive notifications from apps on your phone, however, and can therefore interact with them on the watch even if the app itself is not available on it.

Some teething problems and bugs

I use the watch around the clock for several weeks and, after the first night with it on my wrist, I receive a message. “Congratulations on your first night's sleep measurement,” it says. I receive the same message again after night two, which is puzzling, but when I then open the Samsung Health app, both nights are saved there.

However, that is not the only problem I encounter during the test. As mentioned, I test the watch over several weeks, and several of my running sessions are only partially recorded. The total distance is saved correctly, but when I look at the GPS route plotted on the map in the app, only roughly the first tenth of my run is displayed. This problem comes and goes, and for a while I think I have found the explanation: that it only works fully when I also have my phone with me. However, that theory is disproved by further tests, so I have the test unit replaced. Once I have decided to do so, the original watch suddenly works flawlessly, and when I receive a new test unit, I never encounter this problem again.

I use the watch extensively throughout these weeks, both day and night. One of the first things I do is enable everything the watch can do. Naturally, I want to make use of the available possibilities, and not all functions are active from the outset, so I go in and enable continuous stress monitoring, continuous heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen levels during the night, hearing warnings and so on. I also activate the eSIM on the watch so that I can stream Spotify during my workouts without having to bring my phone with me.

Battery life is limiting

It is 10 pm on Thursday when I first put on the watch, and a day later I have 40 per cent battery remaining. One night of sleep tracking uses around 20 per cent of the battery, and on Saturday morning, after less than two days, the watch warns of a low battery level and tells me to charge it. Without any further exercise over the weekend, the watch barely lasts a day, so battery life can vary. When I push the watch a little and go running with both GPS and Spotify streaming actively via the eSIM connection, most of the battery capacity is drained and the watch does not last anywhere near a full day, meaning I have to charge it more often. If you want to save battery, eSIM is therefore a critical feature, and downloading music to the watch in advance may be smarter.

The Galaxy Watch 9 offers a wide range of health features. These are mostly handled by Samsung Health, which means that a Wear OS watch from one manufacturer never works in quite the same way as one from another manufacturer. While Samsung has Samsung Health, Google, for example, has Google Health (previously Fitbit), and Xiaomi has Xiaomi Fit.

Quite recently, shortly before the Galaxy Watch 9 was launched, Samsung redesigned its Samsung Health app. It now consists of a range of tiles, each providing you with portions of facts, advice and conclusions about your sleep, exercise, health, latest workout or whatever it may be. You can select and deselect these tiles in the phone app, as well as rearrange them so that you see what interests you most first. In addition to Samsung Health, Samsung also has another app called Samsung Health Monitor. Unlike Samsung Health, it requires your phone to be a Samsung, so its features, sleep apnoea, ECG and blood pressure, do not work when the watch is connected to a phone from another Android manufacturer. As in previous versions, blood pressure measurement also requires you to first calibrate the watch using a proper blood pressure cuff. This can be a little cumbersome, and we cover it in more detail in the review of its sister model, the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2.

To draw conclusions from all the data the watch collects, it needs to be used over a longer period. Several tiles in Samsung Health ask me to use the watch for several consecutive days before they will provide any results. Here, battery life sometimes becomes a limitation. Precisely because it sometimes falls short of a full day, on several occasions during the test period I find myself either about to go for a run or about to go to bed, with insufficient battery capacity to take measurements and too little time to charge it.

Useful advice, but cluttered

Samsung Health presents several interesting and useful conclusions and pieces of advice during the test. For example, in the Fitness Index function, I can set a goal for my training, see what is required and compare it with my current status. I can then see, for instance, that my running training should focus on endurance and flexibility, while strength and fitness are already good. Vital signs are another feature. There, I can see important metrics and the app warns me if anything is outside the normal range. It takes a few days before the watch has established your normal values, and only after that can it consequently warn you of deviations.

There are therefore some real highlights in Samsung Health, but I find that the arrangement of tiles for each isolated function and conclusion makes it difficult to get an overall picture. It easily becomes cluttered, and I click around at random between the tiles instead of the watch and app guiding me towards what is important.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 combines Samsung's and Google's ecosystems, so you have, for example, Google's AI assistant Gemini and can start talking simply by raising your arm, while also having both Samsung Wallet and Google Wallet for contactless payments – the choice is yours.

Sleep, health and exercise are usually measured accurately, but in challenging situations, such as when I run between tall skyscrapers, the GPS route can be inaccurate and jump around considerably like a slalom course between the high-rises. However, this applies in larger cities, such as Hong Kong where I tested it, and is not noticeable in Sweden.

Performance is good and the watch is powered by the latest Snapdragon Wear Elite, but the differences compared with its predecessor are marginal. We do not notice any major improvements in either performance or battery life. The latter in particular would be clearly desirable.