Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: An excellent all-rounder

For most people, the Galaxy Watch 7 is the right choice when it comes to Samsung smartwatches, and it’s duly up there among the best smartwatches you can buy.

While Samsung would like you to look longingly at the all-singing, all-dancing (and rather expensive) Galaxy Watch Ultra, the Galaxy Watch 7 is quietly doing most of what the premium model does at less than half the price. That price rises if you want a larger screen and 4G, but even then it’s a comparative bargain.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: What you need to know

As the name suggests, the Galaxy Watch 7 is the seventh-generation Galaxy Watch, but Samsung’s history of wearables actually goes way beyond that, as fans of the Gear line will remember.

But the Galaxy Watch began in an era when Samsung had largely nailed the formula, and as such each generational improvement tends to be iterative. That’s the case again here. It still comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes, with optional LTE connections for both, so you can leave your phone behind and still be connected.

It still has built-in GPS, a BioActive sensor to measure various health metrics and a glorious AMOLED screen. The 300mAh or 425mAh battery (depending on size) are still good for one to two days’ usage.

There are a few improvements on the inside, though. First, the 3nm W1000 chip is supposedly three times faster than the 5nm W930 processor in the Galaxy Watch 6. Storage has been doubled, too, with 32GB now the norm, and the GPS is now dual-band for enhanced accuracy. The BioActive sensor has been improved to offer more accurate readings, with several coloured LEDs accompanying the standard green and red ones.

These spec enhancements are accompanied by both new and improved features. Sleep tracking comes with a new algorithm, and you can now chain together exercises into a workout routine. If you do the same run or cycling route regularly, you can now race against previous efforts.

Galaxy AI now offers suggested message replies and a single Energy Score to tell you how prepped you are for the day’s exertions. Finally, a new AGEs index joins the other health indicators (blood pressure, ECG, bioimpedance) to assess your risk of diabetes or a stroke.

All of these things and more are included in the Galaxy Watch Ultra, of course. By opting for the cheaper model, you’re missing out on a significantly more rugged design capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and water pressure, a larger battery, a customisable extra button, an 86dB siren, a brighter screen, multi-sport workouts, Functional Threshold Power for cyclists and Track Back for easy navigation back to the start point after a workout.

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Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: Price and competition

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 starts at £289 for the 40mm model, and £319 for the 44mm version. You can add an extra £50 to either if you want 4G connectivity for using your watch without your phone when out and about. That means that even the most expensive 44mm Galaxy Watch 7 with 4G connectivity comes in £230 cheaper than the £599 Galaxy Watch Ultra.

What if you want a smartwatch without Samsung Galaxy branding? Given the £399 Apple Watch Series 9 only works with iPhones (just as the Galaxy Watch only works with Android devices), it’s probably not an option for most people reading this.

There’s the Pixel Watch 2, which now sells for £249 (or £299 for the 4G version), although it’s likely to be replaced by a newer version in a matter of weeks. Alternatively, the £374 Garmin Venu 2 Plus is a good choice for those who want a serious sports watch that also does the smart stuff quite well.

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Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: Design

While the Galaxy Watch Ultra introduces an all-new rugged design, the 7 will look very familiar to anybody who’s purchased a Galaxy Watch since 2020’s Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Yes, that’s the Active and not the Classic, sadly. It seems the optional rotating bezel for precise app selection (and, let’s face it: fidget-spinner-style fun) has been abandoned again, after being revived for last year’s Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. With no Apple Watch-style rotating crown, you have to rely on two buttons and the touchscreen for navigation.

To be fair, the latter does offer a haptic dial. Rotate your finger around the touch-sensitive strip surrounding the display and you’ll get a gentle haptic buzz as the screen cycles through things. It won’t fool you into thinking the bezel is moving, but it’s a slight improvement at stabbing at a tiny touchscreen with your fingers.

Said tiny touchscreen is actually available in two sizes: the 40mm model comes with a 1.3in display, while the 44mm version I tested has a 1.5in screen. The latter is the same size as the Galaxy Watch Ultra’s display, which looks bigger thanks to the thick titanium shell squared off around it.

And it’s a whole lot more comfortable. While I found myself itching to take off the bulky 60g Galaxy Watch Ultra and its uncomfortably rigid 33g Marine band at every opportunity, the Galaxy Watch 7 is far easier to set and forget – which is crucial for all-day health tracking. It’s still a bit irritating while sleeping, thanks to a case that’s 9.7mm thick and 33.7g in weight, but you get used to it.

Generally speaking, however, it’s a well-designed and good-looking smartwatch – especially if you’re fond of the round faces that Apple continues to overlook. And while its looks are the same as recent models, there’s a positive here: there are plenty of great third-party straps that will work without fuss, which isn’t something you can say for the Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: Performance

While things may look identical on the outside, it’s all change within. Like the Ultra, the Galaxy Watch 7 gets an upgrade to the fast 1.6GHz Exynos W1000 processor with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. Not only is that double the storage of the Galaxy Watch 6, but Samsung says the new processor is up to 3.7 times faster, too.

Whether such an upgrade is necessary is another matter – smartwatches don’t need to do as much as phones, and nobody was really complaining about the Galaxy Watch 6 feeling sluggish. But you can’t really complain when this upgrade doesn’t come with a price hike, and it hopefully means that its buttery smooth operation will continue for several Wear OS upgrades.

The screen is the same as ever, but that’s fine. The 480 x 480 (432 x 432 on the 40mm model) AMOLED display is bright, sharp and a pleasure to look at. Compared to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, its peak brightness is 1,000 nits lower — but at 2,000 nits it’s still extremely easy to look at, even in bright sunlight.

The battery capacity is another area that’s unchanged: it’s still 300mAh for the 40mm model and 425mAh for the 44mm version. Given the processor is now 3nm rather than 5nm, there’s potentially room for improvement here, but in practice that seems to be eaten up by the performance gain, and you’ll likely get a similar time from it. Expect 24 hours between charges, and if you can reach 36 without turning off the always-on display, consider it a bonus.

(Note that Samsung has identified a fault with some Galaxy Watch 7 units where battery life is draining to zero in under 12 hours, but a fix is on its way.)

In that 24-36 hours, you can treat yourself to tracking over 100 activities, from kite surfing to hula hooping. That number feels a bit inflated by a lot of similar-sounding activities (is track running really that different to an outdoor run, as far as the watch is concerned?) and plenty that could easily be covered by a generic “other activity” option, given they just offer time, heart rate and an estimated calorie burn, but it’s nice to have the option.

I found the Galaxy Watch 7’s tracking to be very good, both in the gym, where my heart rate closely matched both the equipment and my Apple Watch 7’s estimates, and in the great outdoors, where the 5km Morden parkrun was measured reasonably accurately by the new dual-GPS system (it came in at 5.07km — interestingly, similar to the 5.06km the Ultra model recorded a week earlier).

When in use, useful information about your run is displayed clearly across two screens — and these can be customised to your tastes in the on-watch settings, just like on Garmin Forerunners.

In terms of other health features, the most promising is a product of Samsung’s embrace of artificial intelligence via Galaxy AI. As well as offering predictive responses to text messages, with the new Energy Score Galaxy AI takes all the data it has on you (sleep data, heart-rate tracking, recent exercise and so on) and distils it into a simple score that will tell you how ready you are for training.

This isn’t exactly a new concept, but early impressions seem to match how I’m feeling, and — crucially — it shows its workings so you can sense-check it. Open up the Samsung Health app, and you can tap on any area of the calculation to see why you’re scoring high or low, and find out what you can do to improve things.

While it’s all generally good, I do have some criticisms. First, some of the health tools feel a touch iffy. The body composition analysis, for example, gives a fat percentage that’s 5% more than my Qardio scales, which makes me think that there’s a reason you don’t usually run the electrical pulses required for an impedance analysis from the wrist. True, you can still keep an eye on how the figure changes over time, but it’s clearly no substitute for a set of callipers.

This, in turn, makes me feel unsure about the other measurements the Galaxy Watch 7 claims to be able to take from the wrist — such as the brand new AGEs (advanced glycation end products) index analysis, which is supposed to watch for risk of stroke and diabetes. The measure it gives is a little vague — a position on a bar between high and low — but I suppose that’s useful to take to your doctor for follow-up testing if things begin to change.

The blood pressure measurement, however, continues to feel like a waste of time. The figures seem fine, but before the watch can take a reading itself, you need to calibrate it by taking three measurements via the medically recognised arm cuff — a process you need to do again every month to maintain accuracy. At that point, frankly, you may as well just keep using the cuff. After all, if you need a blood pressure measurement more than once a month, you probably also need the peace of mind that using dedicated equipment ensures.

That said, wearable medical analytics is a constantly evolving field, and it’s nice to see Samsung pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in inexpensive devices, even if the results aren’t always convincing.

My two remaining gripes are wholly within the company’s remit to fix, however. And they’re longstanding ones.

The first is the Samsung Health app, which remains a bit of a mess to navigate. That would be softened with the help of a web interface, but there’s still no sign of that, so you have to struggle on with your smartphone. It’s mitigated by the ability to connect to other apps, but even here the options are limited, with only Strava and Technogym supported.

The second is that many of the watch’s features — Energy Score, irregular heart-rate notifications, sleep apnea detection, the ability to take an ECG and blood pressure monitoring — are locked to Samsung smartphones. That feels like an unfair punishment on those who dare to opt for another smartphone brand, and I imagine it’s counterintuitive: the Galaxy Watch series is good, but not good enough to make you change brand loyalties.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review: Verdict

Despite some reservations about the health features and the lack of a Classic model, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 is one of the best Wear OS watches you can buy. It’s fast and aesthetically pleasing, with a great screen and a pretty comfortable design.

It’s also not bad value as premium smartwatches go, not only undercutting the starting RRP of the Google Pixel Watch by £60, but costing less than half the Galaxy Watch Ultra with most of the features intact.

That said, it doesn’t offer that much more than the previous generation, and given that it also looks the same you may well want to opt for a discounted Galaxy Watch 6 instead (especially as the Classic includes that sorely missing rotating bezel).

Even that word of caution is positive in its way, though: the iterative changes between generations are just proof that Samsung really has got this Wear OS smartwatch-building lark down to a fine art.