Like clockwork each summer, Samsung has released their latest wearables, this time the Galaxy Watch6 and Watch6 Classic. This release offers two different form factors, including notably bringing back the physical rotating bezel on the Watch6 Classic edition. Samsung has also tweaked a number of new features on the hardware front, including a brighter screen and a slight shift in battery and processor. The screen size has also notably increased, within a 20% larger display area compared to past watches. All while adopting Google’s Wear OS 4 version, and also Samsung’s new One UI 5 watch skin.

On the sports and fitness front, the company has added a new running track mode, which snaps your GPS track and distances to the track, as well as new automatically detected/personalized heart rate zones. They’ve also expanded their sleep analytics, with sleep consistency and sleep animals symbols.

here’s what’s new:

– Added physical rotating bezel back to Watch 6 Classic
– Increased display area by 20% compared to Watch 5 (40mm is 1.3” @ 432×432, 44mm is 1.5” @ 480×80, and 43mm Classic is 1.3” @ 432×432, and 47mm classic is 1.5” @ 480×80)
– Decreased bezel size by 30% compared to Watch 5 (15% thinner from Watch6 Classic to Watch 5)
– Doubled the peak brightness (nits) from 1,000 nits to 2,000 nits
– Minor internal chipset change from Exynos W920 to W930 SoC
– Increased battery size (mAh) slightly on all watches (300mAh on 40/43mm, 425mAh on 44/47mm)
– Include new One UI 5 Watch (which is custom skin of Wear OS 4)
– Added more sleep analytics/coaching (Sleep Messages, Sleep Consistency, Sleep Animal Symbols)
– Added new sleep mode screen at night
– Switched to invisible infrared sensors over green LED for general HR monitoring (red still illuminates at night though at times)
– Added passive irregular heart rate rhythm alerts (when paired with Samsung phones only)
– Added five personal heart rate zones during workouts (e.g. warm-up/fat burn, cardio, etc..)
– Added new Track Run sport mode (for running tracks)
– Re-introduced automatic cycling detection (was removed from Watch 4 & Watch 5)
– Added new transfer app to move between phones
– Added watch location sharing through Samsung SmartThings Find
– Added new wallet that combines Samsung Pay & Samsung Pass (on Samsung phones)
– Updated Camera Controller remote control app with Galaxy Z Flip5 camera to switch modes & zoom
– Switched to new quick-release style strap design, with just a single button (spoiler: works fine)

Note that there isn’t a new Galaxy Watch6 Pro variant, that remains the Watch5 Pro, and with that, the existing GPX route following features on the Pro aren’t on the new Watch6 models. Albeit, there are plenty of 3rd party apps that can do that.

Further, there are no changes to the optical heart rate sensors or other components here, it remains the same biosensor as last year.