Our Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Pro hands-on experience at Unpacked today was quite pleasant, in that at least one of the models brings back a fan-favorite design element. Samsung seems to have a love-hate relationship with the physical rotating bezel on its smartwatches. After removing it even from the high-end Galaxy Watch 5 Pro last year, the company has brought it back with the Galaxy Watch 6 Pro in 2023.
Both Watch 6 models are natural evolutionary upgrades compared to their predecessors. You can expect improvements in several areas while also expecting them to deliver great performance in basic functionality such as fitness and activity tracking. Let's take a close look at these new smartwatches.
Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic hands-on: Return of the bezel!
Fans always felt that removing the physical rotating bezel is like taking away the soul of the Galaxy Watch. It's great that Samsung has heard their feedback and made amends this year. The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic is the high-end model this year and it brings back the rotating bezel.
The design of both models is otherwise what you'd expect. It's subtle yet refined and quintessentially Galaxy Watch. With flat, circular display is helped immensely by the 30% reduction in bezel size on both models. Even the rotating bezel is 15% thinner on the Classic. This makes the viewing experience larger by 20% without needing to increase the dimensions of the device.
You can get the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic in two sizes, 47mm and 43mm, whereas the Galaxy Watch 6 is available in 44mm and 40mm. The former gets a 1.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a 480 x 480 pixel resolution and the base model gets a 1.4-inch Super AMOLED display with 432 x 432 pixel resolution. The displays have a higher 2000 nits peak brightness which provides improved visibility outdoors.
If you're upgrading from an earlier model, you'll also notice the improvement in performance. Both models are powered by the new Exynos W930 Dual Core chipset that's clocked at 1.4GHz. The RAM has been increased to 2GB and there's 16GB of storage on board. The Galaxy Watch 6 Classic has a 425mAh battery, it's smaller than the mammoth 590mAh battery in the Watch 5 Pro. However, the new chipset should deliver enough power efficiency to offset this decrease. The base Galaxy Watch 6 has a 300mAh battery.
There are a bunch of new software features as well. Samsung has worked particularly hard to improving the sleep tracking features. You also get personalized heart rate zone analysis, fall detection, menstrual cycle tracking, and more. All of the other health and fitness tracking features that you'd expect from the Galaxy Watch are present and work just as well as they always have.
Overall, the Galaxy Watch 6 and Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are solid upgrades over the predecessor. If you were particularly disinterested in the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro last year and felt that its offerings were overkill for you, the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic will certainly appeal to you a lot more. Don't forget to check out our full video hands-on of the new smartwatches to learn more about the Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic.
