Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 hands-on

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, refining its premium smartwatch with a thinner design, a significantly larger battery, a brighter display, and new outdoor-focused features.

While it may not look dramatically different from the first Galaxy Watch Ultra, Samsung has made several hardware improvements that should enhance both everyday use and outdoor adventures.

After spending some time with the watch, here are our first impressions.

Samsung has retained the familiar design of the original Galaxy Watch Ultra. The new model still features a 47mm titanium case, a circular display housed inside a cushion-shaped frame, and the signature orange Quick Button.

The biggest physical change is its thickness. At just 10.7mm, the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is around 12% thinner than its predecessor, so it should be noticeably more comfortable to wear throughout the day.

Samsung has also redesigned the strap. It's now 26% lighter and noticeably softer, helping improve comfort whether you're exercising or wearing the watch overnight.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 now features Samsung's brightest smartwatch display ever. Its 1.52-inch display reaches up to 5,000 nits of peak brightness, which should make it much easier to read maps, workout information, and notifications outdoors in bright sunlight.

Powering the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 is Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Wear Elite processor. Samsung has moved away from its Exynos chips for this generation, and during our brief hands-on the interface felt smooth and responsive.

Battery capacity has also received a major upgrade. Samsung has increased the battery from 590mAh to 800mAh, an increase of around 35%. Since battery life remains one of the biggest limitations of Wear OS smartwatches, this could prove to be one of the Ultra 2's biggest improvements.

We'll need more time to properly test battery life, but the larger battery certainly looks promising.

Samsung continues positioning the Ultra series as its adventure-focused smartwatch.

A new diving experience developed in partnership with Mares automatically tracks depth, dive time, and water temperature. Combined with 10ATM water resistance and an IP69K rating, the Ultra 2 is built for more demanding environments than a typical smartwatch.

Samsung has also introduced a new Trail Run mode. It can display routes, elevation changes, gradients, upcoming turns, and distance directly on the watch, while also estimating body-water loss and reminding users when it's time to hydrate.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 also benefits from Samsung's latest health and AI features.

Fitness Index combines metrics including VO2 max, heart rate, body composition, activity duration, and step count to generate separate scores across multiple fitness categories, along with personalised recommendations.

Vitals learns your normal health baseline over several nights before monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature, breathing rate, and heart-rate variability for unusual changes.

Samsung has also introduced Raise to Talk for Gemini, allowing users to simply raise their wrist and begin speaking without first pressing a button.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 feels like a refinement rather than a complete redesign, but a substantial refinement nonetheless.

The thinner design, brighter display, significantly larger battery, and expanded outdoor features all make it a stronger smartwatch than its predecessor.

We'll need more time to test battery life and Samsung's new health features, but as far as our first impressions are concerned, we like it.