Your Smartwatch Loses Up to 60% of Its Value Before the Next One Ships

Six months. That is roughly the window between buying a smartwatch at full price and discovering what strangers on eBay think it is actually worth. Wareable put a number on the gap this week, and for some buyers the number stings.

The site analysed 6,372 used smartwatch sales on eBay US and found devices shedding between 24% and 60% of their original price after half a year on a wrist. Budget models lost roughly 50% on average. Premium models held on better in percentage terms, dropping about 37% — but those premium watches launched at an average of $960, so the dollar bleed was worse: $307 gone in six months, against $133 for the cheap stuff.

Garmin devices retained 69% of their launch price on average. Apple managed 58%, Google 56%, and Samsung finished last at 42%. Every device in Wareable's bottom five for value retention was a Galaxy Watch.

The individual results are more useful than the brand averages. Garmin's Forerunner 970 held 74%, the Venu 4 and Fenix 8 both 72%. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 kept 69% of its $799 launch price, reselling around $550, while the cheaper Apple Watch SE 3 kept only half. The pattern repeats almost everywhere in the data: the expensive watch in a brand's range depreciates more slowly than the cheap one.

The exception is the Coros Pace 4, which launched at $249 and resold at an average of $190 — 76% retention, the best single result in the study. Wareable flags the caveat itself: that figure rests on 18 sales, so treat it as an early signal rather than a verdict.

The largest dollar loss Wareable highlighted was the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, which kept 44% of its $650 price. That is about $362 of value evaporating in half a year from a watch positioned as Samsung's premium answer to the Apple Watch Ultra.

Conor Allison, Wareable's chief editor, ties the split to what each category is actually judged on. "Dedicated sports watches are valued as durable fitness tools, while traditional smartwatches face the same challenges as other modern electronics," he wrote. On Garmin specifically: "Unlike multipurpose smartwatches loaded with LTE, app stores, and smart integrations, dedicated running and outdoor watches are judged on tracking accuracy, battery life, and specialist software such as real-time mapping. These core functions do not lose relevance the moment a successor launches."

His explanation for Samsung's position points at the refresh treadmill: annual releases, heavy promotional discounting on the new model, and upgrades small enough that buyers work out last year's hardware is not fundamentally different.

Recent reviews back that reading up. Cherlynn Low's Engadget review of the Pixel Watch 5, published 21 August, notes the watch "isn't very different physically from the Pixel Watch 4," running a Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 Accelerated chip that is "essentially the same chip" as its predecessor's with slightly higher clocks and more memory, behind a display with the same 3,000-nit peak. She scored it 9/10 and still could not review it in full, because the workout builder and the blood pressure and insulin resistance trend reports were not due to arrive until September. A buyer paying launch price bought hardware parity and an IOU.

Two things follow from the numbers, and they point in opposite directions depending on which side of the transaction you are on.

If you are buying used, Samsung is the bargain. A Galaxy Watch Ultra at 44% retention is the same hardware Samsung sold at $650, available for roughly $290 six months later. Wareable notes that if the pattern holds for the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2, the secondary market should list it below half price by early 2027. The depreciation that punishes the first owner is the second owner's discount.

If you are buying new and expect to sell later, the calculus reverses, and Garmin's launch schedule is a live example. Garmin unveiled the Fenix 9 on 25 August at $999.99 for the 43mm model, with the Fenix 9 Pro at $1,099.99 — a 3,000-nit OLED, 50% more RAM, 64GB of storage, a faster map engine and up to 29 days of battery in smartwatch mode on the 51mm size. Orders opened 28 August. The Fenix 8 that just held 72% of its value is now the previous generation, and that retention figure was measured before a successor existed.

The blunt version: buy the top of a range rather than the bottom, buy a sports watch if you want the resale floor to hold, and if you want a mainstream smartwatch, let someone else absorb the first six months. On current evidence, that first owner is doing you a favour worth several hundred dollars.