This limited what I was able to test during my week with a unit of the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. And since I was unfortunately sick during my first few days of use, I wasn’t physically well enough to go out and do much of anything. What I ended up doing on those days was obsessively checking my antioxidant levels and being told repeatedly that I was very toxic. Just kidding, of course, that’s not what these readings mean and that’s not what this feature is supposed to do. Also, the Antioxidant Index feature isn’t even new, but it was something relatively new to test.
I will quickly note that the antioxidant function is somewhat flawed, and it’s not something I really understand at the moment. This essentially involves analyzing the reflections of light emitted by the device’s LEDs to determine the concentration of carotenoids in your blood. I guess I need to eat my fruits and vegetables better, but my results, before and after taking my vitamin B12, vitamin D, and iron supplements, were all “very low” (poor). Even after drinking cold-pressed juices, the numbers only increased slightly, but never enough to take me from “Very Low” to “Weak” (still bad).
Even more interesting, I found that lighter-skinned individuals seemed to score higher by default. My partner is fairer than me and his readings were better, even though I know for a fact that I have a better diet. I tried placing the sensor on the palest part of his arm and his score jumped a few more points, which made me think the system was better suited to people with lighter skin tones. (Like in much of the world?)
On those inactive days, the Watch Ultra 2 kept me from being too much of a couch potato by vibrating harshly to encourage me to get up and move around every hour or so. As long as I got up and walked a few steps, the watch would ring again to congratulate me. Pretty standard smartwatch stuff. Of course, it performed other typical tasks perfectly, like alerting me to notifications from my smartphone, keeping tabs on my heart rate and steps, and setting alarms and timers. Oh, and tell the time and look pretty, of course.
In fact, the Watch Ultra 2 is a very nice piece of hardware. Its appearance of course remains very similar to its predecessor, but the way it features engravings on the bezel around its face and the general sharpness of its edges was very pleasing. Most people I showed it to immediately noticed how pretty it was.
When I finally got out of the house, the Watch Ultra 2 proved very useful, proactively tracking walks once I’d moved for at least 10 minutes. The bright, roomy screen made my data easy to see at a glance and was especially useful when my partner and I got hopelessly lost after going off-road on a casual hike.
Luckily, I had dropped a waypoint and started the compass-based tracking features on the Ultra 2, so we were able to bring up the navigation guidance there and find the correct entry point into the woods. And because the screen was so big, it was easy to see where we were versus where we needed to be.
That said, I probably could have used a similar feature on my Apple Watch Series 9 to accomplish the same thing, and it’s also much smaller and more comfortable. Even the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is significantly more compact than Samsung’s chonkster and offers many of the same features.
Where Samsung is unique is some of its health-related offerings. Antioxidant testing remains a rarity in the smartwatch category, while hydration reminders are also rare.
