Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 review: stuck in a familiar orbit

If last year’s Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 was tried and true, this year’s Galaxy Watch 8 is a bit more like tried and fine.

This isn’t overtly bad. Most smartwatch newbies will be delighted by the $349.99 Galaxy Watch 8 — provided they can stomach the new squircle design. It’s more that if you’ve been a fan of Samsung smartwatches, it feels like Samsung has more or less been retreading safe, dependable ground with incremental tweaks since the Galaxy Watch 5. Aside from Gemini, there’s not much here that moves Android smartwatches forward. Truly, on the hardware side of things, the squircle is the Galaxy Watch 8’s main talking point.

Let me just get this out of the way. Yes, I’ve read all your screeds in the comments about how the squircle is an aesthetic sin. When I first saw photo renders of the Galaxy Watch 8, I, too, internally screamed and called it “a watchface only a mother could love.” While I always aspire to Kendrick Lamar levels of haterade, I must regretfully tell you that the Galaxy Watch 8’s squircle is barely noticeable on the wrist. Maybe it’s the silver-and-white combo of my review unit creating an optical illusion or maybe Samsung hired a warlock to cast a high-level Stockholm syndrome spell on my eyeballs. I don’t hate the squircle on this watch, and I suspect you won’t either.

As for why Samsung did this, I’m sorry, but its reasons have functional credit. The watch is thinner, sits flatter against your skin, and is more comfortable.

Spec-wise, you’re not getting anything the Galaxy Watch 7 doesn’t already have. The processor is the same, as is the BioActive sensor. The battery is a skosh bigger in the Galaxy Watch 8, but we’re talking 325mAh compared to last year’s 300mAh for the 40mm model. (The larger 44mm watch gets an even smaller battery bump; 435mAh compared to 425mAh.) That means battery life is also relatively unchanged. You still need to charge daily, but anecdotally, the Galaxy Watch 8 is reliable at getting you through the day and then some, even with the always-on display enabled. The screen is also brighter with a maximum 3,000 nits to 2,000 nits, but I didn’t see a major difference, even under direct sunlight.

I largely agree with my colleague Allison Johnson’s initial impressions of Gemini on the wrist. It can be a lifesaver when your hands are full or you don’t want to whip out your phone. I’m less interested in Gemini answering low-stakes queries. The draw for me is that Gemini can handle more complex, sequential tasks and prompts. But as with all AI, the more complex the task, the more trial and error you need to endure.

While shooting these photos, I asked Gemini to “look up nearby coffee shops and send them to Amelia on Slack.” It gave me two suggestions 40 blocks away and then told me it wasn’t integrated with Slack yet so I couldn’t send that message. Oops. A prompt to create a “K-pop-inspired running playlist for a 30-minute run” was decent, even if it included a few songs that weren’t K-pop. I prompted Gemini to tell me to carry an umbrella anytime it rains in my current location. That was less successful. Gemini could save in its memory that I don’t like rain. It’s adept at telling me the forecast if I ask. But it has yet to set reminders to carry an umbrella when I ask if it’s going to rain. This will obviously require more experimenting on my part to see if this is even possible.

Gemini is promising if you’re patient enough to experiment. Sometimes, I sit watching Gemini do its thing and think, “It’d be much faster if I just did this.” My hunch is that people who “get” AI will enjoy experimenting. Everyone else might end up using it just like Assistant or ignoring it after a few failed attempts.

Meanwhile, the new health features are a mixed bag. There’s an Antioxidant Index that gauges whether you’re eating enough fruits and veggies by detecting the carotenoid levels in your skin. I wrote a deeper dive into that, but the short of it is I fooled it with a Cheez-It, a piece of broccoli, and a blackberry that exploded, irrevocably staining parts of this watch purple. Did I increase my fruit and veggie intake in the pursuit of testing this feature? Yes, absolutely. It could be useful for level-setting when you start a new diet, but I suspect most people will forget to use this once the novelty wears off. Also, do you need a smartwatch to tell you to eat more fruits and veg? Probably not.

Another new feature is Vascular Load. It’s fine. The idea is to monitor how stressed your vascular system (aka your veins) is when you sleep and compare it to certain factors like sleep duration or exercise. This is a nebulous metric. A stressed vascular system may indicate… worse health? A higher likelihood of chronic illness? Samsung is vague here because it falls under the wide umbrella of wellness features. A good or bad score isn’t meant to tell you anything other than “check what your recent lifestyle choices have been.”

I liked the Running Coach program the most. You start with a 12-minute test run, and it grades you on a level of one through 10. I was miffed when it deemed me, a runner with a decade of experience, at a dismal level three. In fairness, this is a test that heavily weights pace. It’s hot as balls out here, and I’m keeping things slow and steady after a few recent injuries. After deflating my ego, I’d say this was a fair assessment of where I’m at right now, based on the program it generated for me. I’m currently in the middle of an injury recovery program, but after perusing my plan and the various levels, I found the workouts were well-structured.

Despite the hit-or-miss health features, I maintain this is a great smartwatch, even if I don’t like the $50 price hike. It’s more that this mix of upgrades doesn’t feel compelling.

The telling thing is Samsung’s most significant wearable innovation in recent memory was last year’s Galaxy Watch Ultra and Galaxy Ring. Even then, the former felt like it copied Apple’s homework. The latter was a clear ecosystem play. I found the Galaxy Watch FE underwhelming, but at least Samsung was shaking things up. Against that chaos, it was easier to appreciate the Galaxy Watch 7 sticking to its guns. In a year where a squircle design you introduced last year and an AI assistant made by another company are your big updates, sticking to your guns feels more like stagnation.

When I wrote my Galaxy Watch 6 review two years ago, I asked how long Samsung could continue to coast. It’s a bummer to be sitting here, two years later, pondering the same question.