If last year’s Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 was tried and true, this year’s Galaxy Watch 8 is a bit more like tried and fine.
This isn’t overtly bad. Most smartwatch newbies will be delighted by the $349.99 Galaxy Watch 8 – provided they can stomach the new squircle design. It’s more that if you’ve been a fan of Samsung smartwatches, it feels like Samsung has more or less been retreading safe, dependable ground with incremental tweaks since the Galaxy Watch 5. Aside from Gemini, there’s not much here that moves Android smartwatches forward. Truly, on the hardware side of things, the squircle is the Galaxy Watch 8’s main talking point.