Samsung Watch Ultra thougths

 

I have been using the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra for a few weeks now and I have some thoughts on it and the updates that came wih Samsung health when I got the watch. I had the older Watch 5 Pro and loved it after just liking the prior Galaxy watch I was using for a few years. The watch 5 had nothing really wrong with it just felt like it was time for an upgrade and I figured I was getting more into my fitness so the ultra looked like a very good upgrade. 

I do not have large wrists so and the size difference on the watch 5 and this watch ultra is not too bad but to be honest both look a little overkill on my wrist like they are very much too big looking for my wrist. Either way it does not bother me to wear a large watch and I don't much care what people think about it so I do not mind the large size. What I don't care much for is the wristband that I picked. I got the one with holes I think it is the water band or something like that. It looks fine from the right side but the problem comes when I put my wrist down to write things on the left side. 

You can see that the left side has this large metal holder for strap and this is where the problem is for me. that metal bit presses hard into my wrist when I am trying to write things or use my wrist on a surface. Now this is a me problem being a lefty and being old and still writing things down instead of using a notes app on my phone or computer but still it annoying to deal with when I have to write stuff down. It is not a very big problem so I will still use this band for a while and think about repalcing it later but its just the way this metal is and only when I am writing things down so I can live with it. 

The energy score features are something that I do not care for one bit at all. I have been exercising for a while now I mean that is the main point of this blog and have only used Samsung watches and Samsung Health for logging the work outs. You would think that this would update something where the infromation about needing rest and not overdoing it would be different. Its almost like this alert was set up to make me feel like going on a bike ride is a bad idea when its just my daily ride. I was reading that this is maybe due to the options I picked in the activity levels when I set up the account but again these should be dynamic as its all logged on here and Samsung should be able to have better info on the energy score than this. 

You can see above that everything else is "good" with the energy score factors except for the previous day activity which is me exercising. This information is all but useless because of how this is scored. If I were taking a walk every day for my health would this still score it as needs attention? The answer is that yes it does and that is very odd to me. It really makes it like workouts and exercising is a bad thing or that you should only do very light things. I mean sure don't just go from zero to 2 hours a day that would be stressfull on your body I am sure but I have been doing this for months and Samsung Health should have that info and update my engery score with that info in mind. With everything else as "Excellent" or "Good" you would also think the score would be higher than 57 which seems very bad. I am not a fan of this feature at all because this. Also there is one other part that makes this information all but useless. 

I have the worst sleeping paterns with the worst wake sleep cycle. I am always tired and sleep does not seem to fix my tiredness. My energy levels are always very low and this is not a new thing, this has been a thing for as long as I can remember but I ignroed it as I was a healthy person and I have been told by doctors my weight was fine and do not show other symptoms for anything stop worrying about it get more sleep at night.... So I started to use the Samsung Glaxy watches while I slept and recoreded my snoring as there were some questions I had about how well I was sleeping and my bed partner (as the DRs refer to my significant other as) has complained about this snoring for years. The Samsung Watches recoreded me waking up like every other minute and my sleep O2 levels dropping somewhere in the 70 percent range on some nights. Most nights were not 70 but they would drop and stay below 90 percent often. I am still getting this looked at by professionals and nothing is written in stone just yet about it but I was able to use the data gathered by the Samsung Watches to show my Dr something was wrong with my sleep itself. I got a sleep study done because of the watches and I will have some answers soon about what is going on with my sleep. I looked at the report that the Dr generated from the study and looked at the info on the watch for the same night and they matched very well. The sleep study said 88 percent O2 the watch ultra said 87 percent O2. So what is the point of this whole paragraph where I complain about my sleep you might ask? How does Samsung Health have me listed as good / excellent on anything related to sleep? The sleep study showed that my sleep was awful and the watch had the same info so how is it excellent? 

Following up on the whole sleep thing something that was released around the same time as the Watch Ultra is the sleep apnea testing on the health monitor app. I tested it out to see what it would say about some of this sleep issues I have and it is the hardest thing to get working just for testing out. It would not gather enough data to determine anything. I was able to get it to work eventually but getting it to work was a pain and the info it gave me was nothing other than see a Dr if you think anything is wrong which is good advice don't trust a watch for medical things trust your Dr but still I would have liked to see what info it gathered and how it determined that I did "not" have sleep anea. Now setting up the watch to check for sleep anea came with some warnings about it not working on some sleep anea and not working for anything less than severe cases so I did not expect it to work. Even with not expecting it to work I was still disapointed at how bad it was get get the data and how hard it was to get it to work. All that being said I used the O2 and sleep / wake information to get a sleep study so the watches gave me the info and it was accurate. 

One last short thing about the Galaxy Watch Ultra that I am not super happy with is the battery life. The Watch 5 that was 3 years old had the same battery life as a brand new watch and I have the same profiles on them so its not like I have a ton of alerts or notifications on the new watch VS the old one its all the same on that. Now I do have constant heart rate running and get notifications on it when I am using my phone so I know there are imporvements I could make for better battery life. It lasts about 36 hours with out charging and does use a fast charger that I have a few of so I am not happy as I could be about the battery but its not like its worse than my older watch so that is at least fine enough. 

So with those negatives I have said you might think I don't like the Watch Ultra but that is not the case. Listing the things that I find annoying or things that are not as good about the watch are easier than listing everything that I like. I like the night mode it goes into where the face turns red in the night instead of the bright screen. I wish there was a feature like that in the older watches it has been so nice to not get blased in the face with light when I wake up and check the time. The new button in the middle of the watch makes it so much more simple to get going when I go on a ride. I press the button and select ride and its done. This means I don't have to swipe the screen a bunch to get to where I log the ride. The new multi sport mode is cool too but I have not used it yet. I do plan at somepoint to try it out and do a triathlon but for now that one will be a cool to se feature. I also like the quick charging it has the Watch 5 charged so very slow but the Watch Ultra I put it on the charger and it charges up in just a few minutes. 

Overall would I purchase this watch again knowing what I know about it after purchaing it though? No I think I would have stuck with the Watch 5 pro for a little longer and upgraded to maybe the Ultra Watch 2 when ever that comes out. I am not upset with purchase? Also no I like the new stuff and have gotten some value out of it so far. If I had to give it a rating out of 10 for some reason I would rate it like 7/10 good but not exellent. 

Anyway thank you for reading I hope you have an awesome day!