Galaxy Watch 6 vs. Apple Watch Series 8: How Does Samsung’s New Smartwatch Compare?

Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watch 6 received its official introduction at Wednesday’s Galaxy Unpacked event. With a host of features to track your health and fitness and communicate digitally, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 aims to take on industry leader Apple and its latest Apple Watch Series 8. But how do the two smartwatches compare on specs and price? Let’s take a look.

The big physical difference is that Samsung uses a round face for its watches, while Apple continues with a square look. But both can be had in two sizes that are only a millimeter in difference, so there’s little to go on here. Both are waterproof to around 50 meters (roughly 165 feet), feature aluminum in their construction, and both have interchangeable bands. 

Watch this: Samsung Unveils Galaxy Watch 6 Series at Unpacked in Seoul

10:16

And the features are closely matched too, with both models offering GPS tracking, heart-rate sensing, fall detection, sleep tracking, automatic workout detection and more. Both also offer contactless payments using either Samsung Pay or Apple Pay. The Galaxy Watch offers 16GB of onboard storage for saving songs locally to work out with, while the Apple Watch doubles that to 32GB. Samsung reckons its watch will last up to 40 hours between charges however, while Apple only promises 18. How that stacks up in real-world testing remains to be seen. 

One of the biggest differences, though, is the price: the Apple Watch Series 8 costs nearly $100 more than Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6, in both sizes. We’ll be putting these through their paces in the full review soon to see whether it’s worth saving that money, but you can check out the full specs comparison below.