I just finished a long trip that saw me trekking, sleeping by river beds, camping in the Himalayan foothills, living in tribal lands, and staying as far away from city landscapes as possible. It was a necessary change of pace. It was also my first extended spell where the Apple Watch wasn’t my on-wrist companion.
This time around, I gave a chance to the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic. Samsung’s $499 smartwatch is a blend of luxurious looks and next-gen health features, all built atop solid AI foundations.
There’s a lot to like about this smartwatch, aside from its usual strengths, such as diverse activity tracking, improved biosensing accuracy, customizable action button, and more. But over the course of a month, I came to the realization that the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic is an evolution in a few key ways.
It can actually get work done
“I don’t want yet another screen on my wrist.”
That’s a sentiment that I often hear across the smartwatch community. There’s a definitive FOMO in the segment, as well. I know a lot of people who spend anywhere between $200 and $400 on a smartwatch, and barely use even half the features available, let alone the full suite of health and wellness monitoring chops.
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Pretty soon, they get tired of “yet another gadget” that demands their attention with charging hassles, the notification chores, and more. This apparent break-up is not because the smartwatches were bad, but simply because the wearable couldn’t serve a purpose that is fundamentally different (or convenient) compared to their trusty phone.
The Galaxy Watch 8 Classic finds that purpose, thanks to a dramatically smarter onboard assistant. Say hello to Gemini! This next-gen AI agent is a huge leap over Google Assistant, Bixby, or Siri on the Apple Watch. In fact, it can handle a handful of chores with far fewer hassles than using a phone.
But it’s not just the on-paper perks of Gemini that set it apart. It’s when you push it in tight situations that you realize just how helpful it can be. You see, this is not a robotic answering machine. Gemini is a powerful language model that manages natural conversations with human-like ease and native access to vast knowledge.
It understands complex, multi-step questions and open-ended requests — while Siri often falls short or simply sends you to a web search. “Hey Gemini, find me the nearest clinic and open a map navigation view to it.” Riding pillion on a scooter in a chilly rural landscape, and getting the task accomplished right on your smartwatch is such a relief.
Not having to whip my phone out of the jeans pocket for a whole variety of tasks is a massive convenience. From checking the latest news rundown, having Gemini narrate the food history of a tribal land while you’re strolling in a scenic village, and just having a natural conversation with seamless follow-up queries is extremely convenient.
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While traveling, your itinerary notes are a lifesaver. Gemini can dig into those, and a whole bunch of other crucial Google services, such as Gmail, to retrieve important information with just a voice command. I loved how it could handle my WhatsApp conversations, as well, while all I had to do was utter the voice commands in my earbuds, without ever touching my phone.
An on-wrist assistant that is smarter, conversational, and dips across services that are used on a daily basis is nothing short of a savior. I only realized the sheer convenience when I took the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic outside my comfort zone, and it exceeded my practical expectations.
Sensing, for the future
We take smartwatches for granted, especially the health-sensing tech. Every single capability, from oxygen saturation measurement to something as advanced as ECG and AFib detection, takes years of engineering work and meticulous medical validation. It’s not hard to grasp why, and it also explains the loud “FDA-certified” claims by makers such as Apple and Samsung.
But the slow-and-steady approach to wearable sensing tech also means breakthroughs don’t happen each year. Smartwatches started with heart rate measurement, and as of 2025, we have reached a state where they can also pick up any abnormal changes in blood pressure levels.
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The Galaxy Watch 8 Classic pushes the envelope, thanks to a next-gen sensor stack and wellness algorithms that can provide additional insights, such as Energy Score, Vascular Load, Ectopic Beat Detection, and an industry-first nutritional value measurement system that can measure the carotenoid levels.
But these features are not merely “yet another number.” Instead, they offer a more accessible breakdown of your sleep, rest, and body energy status that can be easily grasped by a regular person. Let’s start with the vascular load feature.
It keeps an eye on the blood flow in your vessels while asleep, and how stiff the arteries are, to this movement. The broad idea is to gauge how much “work” the heart is doing during your shut-eye time. The results are shown across three broad levels, but more importantly, they offer a glimpse into your sleep quality, stress levels, and dietary habits that might be affecting the normal heart activity.
In a nutshell, it’s a more accessible way of understanding heart activity health. Instead of vague numbers, you get a rating on a scale of Higher, Slightly higher, Steady, Slightly lower, and Lower. On a similar note, you have the Energy Score system, which combines data from sleep quality, stress levels, and activity history to provide you with a daily summary of your physical and mental readiness.
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On a similar note, the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic offers a first-of-its-kind Antioxidant Index system. With a thum-press on the light-activated BioActive sensor, the Galaxy Watch 8 classic can measure the level of an important category of antioxidants known as carotenoids.
Broadly, carotenoid levels offer a peek into your vegetable and fruit intake, which supply essential nutrients to the body that keep us healthy. In just five seconds, the Samsung smartwatch can classify your carotenoid levels across three tiers, and also offers suggestions such as downing some carrot juice, or eating an orange.
It’s not as accurate as those bulky laser-based antioxidant sensors that rely on Raman spectroscopy. Samsung, however, maintains that the feature retains “a high level of accuracy.” As a regular smartwatch user, what’s more important to me is that the wearable on my wrist can measure a crucial biomarker and nudge me into making healthy diet changes.
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I don’t need to explain the importance of an antioxidant-rich diet and its interplay with body health. And if my smartwatch can offer a scientific evaluation of that crucial metric, I would gladly put it to use. For me, this feature was an important reminder to maintain a balanced food intake while traveling.
The oft-ignored design situation
I have broken or damaged more smartwatches than I have the courage to admit. Yet, I can’t imagine going out without wearing one. But accidents happen, and they are unannounced. This is one area where the Galaxy Watch 8 fares far better than its Apple or Google rivals.
On the Apple Watch and Pixel Watch, you have a sleek display with sloping sides and thin bezels. It’s an eye-candy, but a fairly fragile one. One minor bump on a railing or wall, and you’re left with a corner crack that needs an expensive replacement. You can put a bumper case, but those are horrifically ugly.
The Galaxy Watch 8 Classic offers an elegant solution to those durability woes. This one looks closer to a well-designed mechanical timepiece (with stunning watch faces to boot), than an average smartwatch. But more importantly, it’s studier.
Nirave Gondhia / Digital Trends
To give you an idea, Apple Watch Series 11 comes with an IP6X rating, which means it can only handle water exposure. The Galaxy Watch 8 Classic, on the other hand, offers an IP68-cleared chassis with a military-grade MIL-STD-810H build.
Instead of exposed glass, you have a metallic platform that covers the sides and shields the display on top with a rotating bezel. That bezel is not just an eye candy. It’s a physical UI interface element that can be rotated in either direction to switch between workouts, scroll past notifications, or explore the app gallery and system menu pages.
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Touch inputs can be finicky, especially when you are dealing with a wet screen (under rain or swimming). Or, when you’re wearing gloves. Combined with a system-wide gesture control system, the rotating bezel offers an entirely different route to controlling every aspect of the device without ever interacting with its touch-sensitive display.
Oh, talking about the display, it’s an extremely bright OLED panel that reaches an impressive 3,000 nits mark, much higher than your average high-end. Simply put, what you have is a smartwatch that is sturdier, classier, and ready to be used in challenging terrains without any serious usability or endurance woes.
Overall, the $100 markup you pay over a mainline Apple Watch gets you a watch that is stronger, far smarter, and more future-proof in terms of wellness capabilities. And after taking it on a long adventure, I don’t see myself shifting away from the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic anytime soon.
