If you’re an Android user looking for the most complete smartwatch at a price that doesn’t require the same financial commitment as the $699 Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, the Galaxy Watch 9 is where Samsung is combining its broadest health feature set with its best price. The Watch 9 is now available for preorder, starting at $380 for the 40mm Bluetooth model. The 44mm version runs $410 (Bluetooth) or $460 (LTE), and the 40mm LTE configuration is $430. Units begin to ship on August 7.
Customers who preorder through Samsung store can receive up to $250 in instant trade-in credit, plus 10% off select products with their purchase and another 10% off through the Samsung offer program. If you prefer to preorder through Amazon, you can get $50 gift card.
Anyone upgrading from the Watch 8 will immediately notice the extra hours spent between charging sessions. The Galaxy Watch 9 comes with a 20% larger battery compared to the Watch 8. That kind of difference on a small wearable shows up in many ways on a daily basis — an extra few hours of mixed use, or the difference between making it through a full night of sleep tracking without reaching for the charger. The Watch 9 also runs on the new Snapdragon Wear Elite chip, which Samsung describes as 32% faster on CPU tasks and 19% faster on GPU tasks, with a 15% efficiency gain over the previous generation. It’s the same chip that drives the brand-new Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, so there’s no compromise.
An Even More Complete Health Picture
Samsung’s most substantive upgrades delivered with the Watch 9 are on the health analytics side. The Heart Health Score is a new metric that synthesizes your heart rate measurements into a single, readable score rather than presenting raw numbers that require context most users struggle to translate. Daily Cardio Load advises runners specifically on when to push and when to pull back, drawing on recent workout data to make that recommendation rather than applying a fixed formula. The Fitness Index pulls together five dimensions — strength, body composition, cardio, flexibility, and endurance — into a single overview of where you actually stand.
The Vitals suite that Apple Watch users will recognize from comparable Apple health features tracks heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen, skin temperature, and respiratory rate over time, looking for gradual changes that a single-point measurement would miss. That long-horizon monitoring approach is shared with the Ultra 2 and represents Samsung’s clearest statement about what it thinks a health smartwatch should actually do.
Gemini At Your Service
The Watch 9 has no dramatic physical changes from the Watch 8. Samsung kept the round aluminum case with a touch-sensitive bezel, which remains one of the better navigation inputs on a smartwatch without a physical crown. The bands have been redesigned with air pockets for improved breathability. Like the Ultra 2, the Watch 9 adds raise-to-talk with Google Gemini. The gesture activates Gemini for quick lookups without pulling out your phone, which is an everyday convenience as Gemini continues to grow in usefulness at a rapid rate.
With preorder prices for the brand-new Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 starting at $379 for the 40mm Bluetooth model, this new launch is the most practical on-ramp to Samsung’s current health ecosystem — more iterative than transformative, but the iteration is definitely pointed in the right direction.