8 Features Of The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra That Can Make Your Life Easier

Priced at RM3,399, the Galaxy Watch Ultra is a durable and stylish accessory built for everyday use and the great outdoors.

Launched alongside the Galaxy Watch7, the Galaxy Watch Ultra is a more rugged version of the usual sleek and slim Galaxy Watches.

Aside from the new squarish watch face, it also features an unprecedented action button, called the Quick Button, on the side, which can help toggle features easily (more on that later).

As far as tangible customisation goes, there are three trail band colours to choose from: orange, dark grey, and white sand. Each one is sturdy and flexible and can be easily swapped out with the one-click button on the watch body.

This is a very solid watch. It has a Titanium grade4 frame and a sapphire crystal glass watch face.

It's built to withstand the great outdoors and extreme temperatures (-20°C to 55°C) with an altitude resistance of up to 9,000m.

It has IP68 certification for both water and dust resistance, and it can survive up to 100m underwater.

With the 'Always On Display' feature enabled, it boasts up to 60 hours of usage time — 100 hours if you're in power-saving mode — so you don't need to worry about your battery dying while you're out hiking.

This is a new feature introduced with the Galaxy Watch Ultra, and it's a very helpful one to have on hand.

If you're in need of help and need to call attention to yourself, you just need to long press the Quick Button for five seconds, and a loud siren will go off.

The siren is a piercing 86-decible sound and can be heard up to 180 metres away. You can deactivate it by tapping the stop button on the screen.

This goes hand-in-hand with the watch's fall detection and emergency SOS should you need medical assistance.

For active people, the watch has a new Multi-Sports Tile, which lets you switch between the tracking of different sports with a click of the Quick Button.

Whether you're going for a run or cycling, the watch automatically detects popular activities and provides performance insights on your workout, like its duration, the distance you covered, and how many calories you burned.

It can also manually track over 90 additional exercises, the stats of which you can get with a single glance at your watch.

The watch is equipped with several sensors aimed at monitoring your body's health, including your ECG levels, sleep pattern, body composition, stress levels, and many others.

It can also give you an energy score (your body's battery level, essentially), which takes into account your activity, sleep, and heart rate to help you find the right balance of rest and activity each day.

Some of these features, like ECG tracking and sleep apnoea detection, require a Samsung device, as you'd need to launch the Samsung Health Monitor. However, basic measurements like your heart rate, sleep, and stress levels can still be measured on devices from other brands via the Samsung Health app.

If you're on the move or don't have much time to type out a response, the watch can do it for you. When tapping into a message chat on the Galaxy Watch Ultra, a list of suggested replies will pop up below.

Once you've selected your reply, just click the tick button to confirm, and you're good to go.

With the help of Galaxy AI, the watch offers advanced sleep coaching, complete with your own "sleep animal".

The sleep animal corresponds with different sleeping types, and based on your answers and sleep data, the system can map out a sleep coaching programme tailored to your needs to help you develop healthy sleeping habits.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra also has sleep apnoea detection through the Samsung Health Monitor app. Do note that this feature is not meant as a diagnosis but more of an indicator should you wish to get it checked out.

Thanks to the all-new Quick Button, certain functions can be toggled with a simple click.

One such function is the Torch feature, which turns the whole watch face into a bright white light when activated. The brightness of the light can be adjusted by interacting with the screen.

Other actions that can be toggled via the Quick Button are Stopwatch, Water Lock, or none at all.

It's no secret that one of the best things about a smart watch is the ability to customise your watch face at any given time. The same goes for the Galaxy Watch Ultra, this time, with night mode available.

Watch faces can be selected via the Galaxy Wearable app, and said faces can be further customised by long pressing on the watch face (this is mainly for the complications icons and the overall look of the design).

A standout feature is the introduction of night mode, which changes the colours and brightness of your watch face to suit low light environments. This feature works with the Ultra Analogue and Simple Ultra watch faces.

Its large watch face might be a bit too bulky for some people, but it lends itself to its outdoor capabilities, and its heftiness gives you confidence that it can withstand most activities.

Even though I was using another phone brand while testing out the features, I was still able to track a lot of my health stats, as well as customise the watch to my liking. Of course, if you really want to maximise your use of the watch, pairing it with a Samsung device will give you full access to what the Galaxy Watch Ultra has to offer.