Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 vs. Galaxy Watch 6: should you upgrade?

We’ll be completely open here: These two watches are largely identical. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 is a gorgeous smartwatch with a sleek design, and slim bezels around the all-encompassing display. It has a subtle style, with even the larger size fitting well on a smaller wrist. The strap is comfortable and easy to switch, thanks to Samsung’s “one click” attachment points. It sports MIL-STD-810H, 5ATM, and IP68 ratings for dust and water resistance, so it’s durable enough for the rigors of daily life. And because the Galaxy Watch 6 is those things, so is the Watch 7. They’re basically the same, though the Galaxy Watch 7 is a little thicker.

As above, so below: There are few changes between the Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 7. The 40mm and 44mm case sizes come with 1.3-inch and 1.5-inch displays and 432 by 432 and 480 by 480 resolutions respectively. Both have slim bezels around the screen, with Super AMOLED tech running the show underneath. They’re crisp and colorful, with deep blacks and enough brightness to be seen in bright sunlight.

It’s a gorgeous display, but there’s been little change between the two devices. This category has to be another tie.

The Galaxy Watch is almost always powered by Samsung’s Exynos processors, and that’s true here. The Galaxy Watch 7 is the first watch to get the Exynos W1000 processor, an upgrade over the Watch 6’s Exynos W930. It’s a significant change too, and the Exynos packs five cores and a 1.6GHz clock speed. The Exynos W930, while strong, only has a two cores and a clock speed of 1.4GHz. We’re expecting to see a big jump up in response speeds on the newer watch. The Watch 7’s 32GB of storage is twice that offered by the Watch 6, giving you more room to download music and apps.

We’ll have to have time to test the Galaxy Watch 7 to really confirm this speculation, but at the moment, it looks as if the Galaxy Watch 7 has a big advantage here, and it brings home its first win.

You’ll find the same version of Wear OS on both of these smartwatches. Samsung uses a slightly tweaked version of Wear OS 4 with One UI 5 over the top, and it’s a solid piece of software. Sometimes it’s a little unstable and prone to bugs, but that’s going to be the case on both watches, so neither takes any advantage from that.

Samsung promises four years of software updates and five of security updates for both of the watches, though it’s worth keeping in mind that the Galaxy Watch 7 will get a year’s more support than the Galaxy Watch 6 by dint of it being a year younger.

You’ll get a different battery size depending on which case size you buy, but regardless, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 has a good battery life. The Watch 6 will last for around almost two days on a single charge, giving it more juice than previous versions. It’s a significant boost in battery life, and a genuine reason to upgrade if you’re using an older smartwatch. It also has 10W fast charging, doubling the previous rate.

How does the Galaxy Watch 7 match up to this? In short, we don’t know yet — but we know the specs, so we can speculate. The Watch 7’s battery sizes are the same as the Watch 6’s, so a similar performance is expected. We could see the Exynos W1000 offer more power efficiency though, so it’s possible the Galaxy Watch 7 may push the battery even further. We won’t know until we’ve had chance to play with it though, so this is a tie.

Samsung’s smartwatches have put fitness tracking to the fore from the very start, and the Galaxy Watch 7 and Galaxy Watch 6 are both excellent watches to track fitness, and have added health and mental wellness tracking as well. Samsung’s unique BioActive sensor tracks your heart rate and all the usual health stats, but can also perform a full body check and narrow down your weight, skeletal muscle, fat mass, and even your body water. The Watch 6 can also perform an ECG and check your blood pressure, as well as track your stress levels, alert you of odd heart readings, and more.

The Watch 7 gets this, plus a few more features. One of them is Energy Score. Energy Score is a combination of seven different health metrics, including how well you’ve slept, training history, and heart tracking, and it sums up its estimation of your energy levels for the day. Up a lot at night or been training a lot? It’ll be lower than if you’d had an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep and a restful few days without exercise. If you’ve used anything like Garmin’s Body Battery, then you know what to expect.

The Galaxy Watch 7 also introduces sleep anea detection. It’s been FDA-authorized and check for “potential signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea.” Also present is the AGEs Index, a metric that is supposed to “reflect your overall biological aging process and provide an indication of metabolic health.”

The Galaxy Watch 6 is no slouch in the health and fitness department, and for most people, it’s more than you’ll need. But if you want the most complete picture of your health and well-being, the Galaxy Watch 7 is where it’s at.

We’ve made no bones about it: The Galaxy Watch 7 doesn’t offer all that much over the Galaxy Watch 6. The upgraded processor and new health features are about the only real additions to the formula, with the possibility of a stronger battery. There’s not a huge amount to get excited about, especially when compared to the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, leaving the Galaxy Watch 7 as something of a damp squib.

So the Galaxy Watch 7 technically wins this showdown. After all, it’s the newer model, it has a faster processor, and it has a new feature to boot. But to be brutally honest, none of that is really that exciting. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 does almost everything the Watch 7 does, looks just as good, still has fast performance, and can track pretty much any exercise you need it to.

Is the Galaxy Watch 7 technically the better smartwatch? We haven’t fully reviewed it yet, but based on speculation, it certainly seems so. But is it worth upgrading your Galaxy Watch 6 for? Unless you really need features like Energy Score and sleep apnea detection, absolutely not. While you’ll get some credit for trading in your Galaxy Watch 6, the additional features and upgraded processor are not worth the extra money you’ll pay on top. If your Galaxy Watch 6 is still purring along and your battery isn’t struggling, then we recommend waiting at least another year before upgrading, as the Galaxy Watch 7 is not very different from what you already have.