Hello everyone

I hope everyone is doing great

I need your advice, I have a samsung s25u and I am thinking of getting a samsung g7 watch, and this'd be the first smart watch for me. The question is, is it worth it??

I need to hear your thoughts

And thank you everyone 🙏

I oped to upgrade from the GW6 to GW7; mainly because the pre-order discounts and trade in value and small workplace affiliation discount made upgrading relatively cheap, $96 out of pocket. The "improved" health measurement system is what encouraged me.

I reluctantly got the Green color with the Green sport band, with much reservation that there wasn't a darker/black option this year (and the silver looked too bright for my tastes, at least from the store pages). But the green also looked...almost disgustingly green, like a bad olive green. And as I saw more pictures of people who posted their Ultra photos, and that the colors of the Ultra looked better than in the product pages, I regretted pre-ordering the green watch 7 and contemplated cancelling it and ordering the Ultra (though I didn't care much for the ultra's physical design, and already found a GW 5 pro too heavy).

First impression of the color after unboxing it--it's HARDLY green at all. It's a really nice-looking darker metallic gray and I really like the watch color, and I think Samsung is doing a disservice by making the watches in the marketing pages/store pages so saturated. From other user's pictures, the silver variant is also not nearly as "brightly" silver.

The green sport band color is ugly. There's no two ways about it. It looks like it came from a GI Joe box. I'm using the black band from my GW6

My usage: I use a pixel 8 pro as my primary phone, but also have an S23 ultra. Debating moving back to my S23 ultra to understand what benefits I get from the samsung-specific features. I'm curious about the sleep apnea feature (though that should come with a SHM Mod), and the AGEs metric, and whatever else comes from the Galaxy AI features.

Initial impressions: Very little difference in use experience between the GW6 and GW7. I didn't expect much anyway. I think the play store does load things faster and is more responsive. It feels like apps install faster as well.

What I don't like:

• Watch OneUI 6 has a change where if you are using AOD and a watch face with complications, if you tap the screen to wake, and you happen to touch one of the complications, it wakes and launches directly to that app. I absolutely hate this and wish you could disable this I'm almost always tapping to wake and going straight to an app.

• AOD brightness in sunlight is still quite dim

• No longer able to reverse wireless charge from a galaxy S phone via battery share

What is better:

• Previously-mentioned performance is improved, play store loads faster, apps install faster. Noticed Whatsapp launches a lot faster

Notable/Subjective:

• Smoothest upgrade restore process I've ever had with galaxy watches; in the past, like going from a GW5 pro to GW6, most things did not get applied, like my settings and watch faces. This time literally everything was as expected on the GW7

• I like that the screen is raised from the crown, it makes using the touch bezel better IMO

• Sleep tracking is...different... My GW6 wouldn't seem great in terms of sleep tracking. I also have a pixel watch 2, and the GW6 would differ in terms of things like time asleep, or time spent in sleep stages--it didn't have great agreement with the PW2 but wasn't unusable. My deep sleep used to only be on the order of 45-60m with the GW6. Last night my GW7 measured that I spent 2.5 HOURS in deep sleep--which is pretty much unprecedented from years of using fitbits and most-recently my pixel watch 2. I think Samsung's sleep tracking is still pretty bad. As far as how I use sleep tracking it probably doesn't matter too much but it's disappointing to see after all of the marketing hoopla over the "Bioactive" sensor

• Still charges from previous chargers, and still charges from a 3rd party battery pack that supports wireless charging of galaxy watches (Albeit quite a bit slower than the included charger)

• I still don't like Samsung's left-right notification card system and wish they would go to a vertically-scrolling list. I know people say this design makes sense from rotating bezel designs, but I generally don't buy that because (a) usability is worse than a list where you can see multiple notifications in a single screen, and (b) the rotating bezel is used to scroll vertical lists already; this general notification design is a worse overall user experience.

Overall: I like the GW7 but I don't think anyone with a galaxy watch 6 has much reason to upgrade to the galaxy watch 7 unless there is a steep discount. The improvements aren't too meaningful. I am hoping the touch-to-complication behavior gets an update where this can be disabled (or be able to disable touch-to-wake entirely when using AOD).

It's also a bit heavy on my wrist, and I can't sleep comfortably while wearing it — unlike lighter bands like the Galaxy Band I used before.
Honestly, I'm also too afraid of damaging it because it's expensive, while I used my old band without worry.

Now I'm thinking of selling it and getting the Galaxy Fit 3 instead.

What do you think of this decision?