Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Review: I’m a Traitor

Reading Time: 25 minutes.

I was on vacation with some friends when I woke up from a dream with a goal: make a watch. The only problem? I really don’t have the tools to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve assembled a watch from a kit, but to design the watch itself? That seemed a bit out of my league. Then, it hit me. I’m an Android developer! I can just make watch faces! Unlike stingy old Apple, other smartwatch manufacturers allow people to make custom watch faces. Most are junk. However, a rare few are creative and beautiful. That’s what I wanted to do. Make watch faces with precision and purpose, both ones that felt real and others that could only exist on a screen. I was excited.

By noon, I had ordered a Samsung Galaxy Watch5, in the 40mm size, with a rose gold finish.

Why’d I do that? You mean besides poor impulse control? Well, any Wear OS watch would have served as a test device, but the Samsung had something no other smartwatch had: style. Every smartwatch, from Apple to Google, Garmin to Fitbit, forgets that they’re not making another smartphone, they’re making an accessory. It has to be beautiful. A shoe can look lovely, but put it on your head, and it looks ridiculous. Similarly, a phone can have a lovely design, but adapting the iPhone 6’s design for the wrist ends up with something that’s simply too inelegant of an accessory. Samsung’s smartwatch is beautiful, versatile, and… it was on sale. They revealed the Galaxy Watch6 only a few days later, which means I was able to get the outgoing model for a steal.

I’m glad I did, Samsung actually knows how to make a watch.

First of All, I’m a Watch Snob Now

Not in the way you’re probably thinking though. I love a good, inexpensive watch. In fact, a vast majority of my watches are what serious watch collectors would call “cheap.” Most of my watches are Swatch watches, and second on the list is probably Timex or Casio. We’re not dealing with the kind of person who would turn her nose up at anything but a Patek Philippe. What I mean is, I have high expectations for watch design now. I’ve seen seriously great designs, and worn some of them too. Some are great because they’re light and slim and fun. Others because they have classic looks from years of watchmaking. I pay attention to what I put on my wrist now. It has to be quality and good looking.

The Apple Watch really doesn’t fit the bill anymore. The bulbous shape makes it look like it doesn’t quite belong on the wrist. The lugs are ugly and ruin what small chance the Apple Watch has at having smooth lines. It looks inelegant, bloated, and silly, and not in a fun way. Which brings me to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5. Because this watch made me realize that smart watches don’t have to look ridiculous.

The Hardware Itself

• Case size: Either 40mm or 44mm
• Weight: 28.7g or 33.5g, depending on model
• Water and Dust Resistance: 5ATM+IP68/MIL-STD-810H
• 9.8mm thickness, just under 1cm, or less than most mechanical watches
• 1.5g of memory
• 16GB of storage
• Super AMOLED display
• “Armor Aluminum” body
• Processor: Exynos W920 5nm process
• GPU: Mali-G68
• WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, and optional LTE

(specs via Samsung and GSM Arena)

Design: Samsung Designed a Watch

When you look at the Apple Watch’s design, especially the fact that it came out during Apple’s iPhone 6 era, it’s blatantly obvious that they tried to solve the problem from a smart device first, watch second prioritization. They asked, “How do we get a tiny iPhone on a wrist?” Samsung’s design is different. They asked, “How do we make a watch smart?” The latter is how you make something that looks like it actually belongs on a wrist.

The design of this watch talks. I don’t mean readouts during exercises (annoyingly, on by default), I mean it tells the intentions of its designers. It’s such a cool design because it can look so normal and natural, but has little details that shows its simplicity and intentions so well. The black versions may not show this as well, but any other color shows just how Samsung designed this. It’s a smartwatch in a watch.

The lugs flow into the sides of the case, giving the Samsung Galaxy Watch a traditional watch shape. They wrap around the center which is a circular piece of tech. It feels like how a watch case wraps itself around the movement, the beating heart, of a real watch. This is a circular smart watch core, wrapped in a more traditional lug design that flows into the framing of the watch. If not for the metal on the sides wrapping around, the Samsung Galaxy Watch would look as bad as Google’s Pixel Watch. It would look like any other smartwatch, a piece of tech they figured out how to add straps to. Instead, it’s a watch that happens to be very smart. I think that’s brilliant. I spent three paragraphs on it, but it’s such a simple concept. The Samsung Galaxy Watch creates the illusion of it being a real watch by borrowing design patterns from watches and making it work with a smart device. The end result is the best looking fully smart (non-hybrid) watch you can buy.

Well… the Samsung Galaxy Watch6 would be that, now that it’s out, but it’s basically the same design, with fewer color options, but a slightly larger screen area.

Controls

When Apple built the controls for the Apple Watch, they borrowed something from real watches: the crown. This is that little knob on the side of watches that lets you set the time. On the Apple Watch, it became a control for scrolling, so you wouldn’t have to scroll on screen. The Samsung Galaxy Watch takes after digital watches more, with two buttons, one on the top and one on the bottom of the right side. However, it wasn’t always that simple. Samsung also took something from analog watches: a rotating bezel. On dive watches, a rotating bezel can help you keep track of how long you’ve been underwater. Other watches will use them for countdown timers, simple timezone tracking, and other functions. Samsung used one like the Apple Watch used its “Digital Crown,” for scrolling. However, they replaced the physical bezel with a digital one. It was quite bulky, and, unlike real bezels, looked a bit out of place on the smartwatch. Design-wise, it was a good decision. Control-wise, it left a bit to be desired.

Activating Samsung’s software-based digital bezel isn’t what you’d expect. The bezel of the watch itself isn’t touch sensitive, so you’re not using the bezel at all. This is a real shame, but I understand the technical limitation. So, your finger still has to be slightly into the screen.  You still leave most of it to read as you scroll, but you also have to keep the momentum going. If you don’t, you’ll just start scrolling like normal, and, depending on where your finger is on that “digital bezel,” you’ll potentially scroll the wrong way. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of the watch. I feel like if the bezel had been touch sensitive, it would have worked better. I also think Samsung could have gone with a touch sensitive strip on the button side of the watch to give us that one finger control and scrolling without interrupting the view on the tiny display. I typically just scroll on the screen unless I have a lot of scrolling to do. I’d never use it for precise scrolling.

Buttons!

Oh, right, all this digital bezel talk and we didn’t talk about the two controls that actually do work pretty well: the buttons. There’s two of them, and they have a very “Android” feel to what they do. The top one is your “home” button, it takes you back to your watch face. You can also double press it to activate Bixby, the watch’s default digital assistant. The bottom one is your back button, which works as it does in Android, allowing you to travel up your back stack. These are pretty intuitive and get the job done. They’ve also got a nice click to them, in case you were worried about mushy pushers. They’re in the same location of buttons on digital watches like those from Casio or G-Shock, or the pushers on a chronograph watch, so they felt comfortable to use right away. This is another example of Samsung building off of existing watch designs to make something that still feels like a watch.

Display: A Flat Watch

You know, one thing that you see on real watches that you don’t see on smartwatches is depth. I don’t just mean past the crystal. Obviously a smartwatch is just a screen. You can’t see the shadows on the hands, the reflections, the height of the hands over the face. It’s just flat. However, many watches also have depth towards you. They have domed crystals that give the watch shape, character, interesting reflections, and play with the face. You just don’t get that with smart watches. Perhaps they’re trying so hard to make them thin that they don’t consider something like that. It’s a shame, it’s a nice touch.

This is a flat screen on a watch-like body. You can be forgiven for forgetting that it’s a smartwatch when you’re wearing it, but as soon as you look down at it, you’ll notice it’s a smartwatch. Some watch faces actually try to emulate real watches, but I find that the ones that look best lean into traditional watchmaking ideas, but in ways that only a smartwatch could display. If your vision is pretty good, you’re going to see the pixels on this watch, and photographic emulations of real watches just look terrible. It’s about the same pixel density, perhaps a bit better, than the Apple Watch, but not enough to hide that there are pixels.

The bezel combines with those pixels to remind you that this is definitely a smartwatch. The Galaxy Watch initially had a digital bezel you could twist for scrolling and other features. However, that’s gone, and the bezel remains. It’s quite obvious on the Galaxy Watch 5. This is why Samsung increased the size of the screen on the Galaxy Watch 6, out now. The screen looks a lot better on Samsung’s latest watch.

Burn-in Considerations

AMOLED displays like the one in this watch have a critical flaw. While they have very low electricity usage, making them great for smart device screens, they’re also susceptible to burn-in. Watch face designers have to constantly consider the possibility of burn-in, which is when an item on the display “burns in,” becoming a permanent part of the screen. This is why the display will try to turn to its “always on” or “ambient” mode as quickly as possible. As soon as it “thinks” you’re not looking at it, it’ll switch to this mode. This gets rid of items that don’t move on the screen, and reduces the number of lit pixels. Often they try to remove all color, though some still have a small amount of color accents. When designing my own faces, I do my best to ensure it passes their most strict policies, but not everyone does that.

On a long walk, my watch set itself to the highest brightness, and must have thought I was checking my watch often. Some elements of the watch face started to burn into my display. This was fortunately easy to fix, as I noticed it early, and I swapped to a different watch face. It’s certainly thing you’ll have to watch out for, and not something you’d have to worry about on a physical watch. Still, it’s a minor consideration, not an extreme annoyance.

Fingerprints Everywhere!

The display is covered by a sapphire glass. This is something you’d see on a nice watch too. Sapphire has been used in watches for a long time, and gives you a scratch resistant watch face. However, I tossed a screen protector on it anyway. There was certainly some fear of getting a scratch, but that wasn’t really a consideration for me. I wear watches all the time, almost never with any kind of protection unless it’s a sport watch I’m wearing during an activity like skating. I got it because the screen is a fingerprint magnet. The oleophobic coating on this is ineffective. I noticed I’d have to clean it often. I got a screen protector from the same company that made one for my iPhone, a film protector with an oleophobic coating. While fingerprints are still visible, they’re not as bad as they were without the protector. It really surprised me, I haven’t seen a screen become such a fingerprint magnet in a long time.

Customization: Purity through Freedom

Some watches are famous for their ability to look good on a variety of straps and bands. Whether it’s a bracelet, a padded leather strap, a thin leather strap, a rubber strap, or even a nato strap, they look good. The Omega Speedmaster, for example, is one of these watches. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 isn’t quite at that level, but it does work surprisingly well with a variety of straps. I used it with the silicone strap it came with, rubber straps in a variety of colors, all of which worked well with it, leather straps, and even an elastic band I got for sleep tracking. The curved lugs, traditional watch style, and slim feel of the watch means it works well with a wide variety of methods of strapping it to your wrist.

Compare that to other smartwatches. Yeah, the Apple Watch. Samsung designed their watch for freedom. They made the lug width one of the most common widths, 20mm, and gave it a flowing shape to those lugs. That allows owners to bring whatever straps they want to the platform. They gave users freedom, and, in doing so, retained control over the look and feel of the watch: it always looks good. Apple didn’t. They instead made their watch without lugs in an effort to retain control over the straps that end up on it. This backfired. As a result, there are many watch bands for the Apple Watch, and nearly all of them look bad in some way. The Apple Watch wasn’t designed for straps because, basically, it’s a shrunken iPhone 6. Your wrist wasn’t part of the equation, it was an afterthought.

The Faces

Wear OS actually lets you customize the watch face! As an Android developer, this was the whole reason I even got a Galaxy Watch, I wanted to make watch faces. And I have! I made quite a few watch faces, some I just use myself and others I’ve released. If you know how to work on an Android app and have some familiarity with services, it’s quite easy to code a Wear OS app, tile, or watch face. However, you can also use a tool Samsung made in partnership with Google called WatchFaceStudio, which makes designing custom watch faces super easy. All you need is a good eye for design and you can get to work on watch faces.

Unfortunately, most watch faces do not come from people with that good eye for design. There are watch faces that are just scans of real watches and look horrible, ones with information overload, and other mistakes that make a watch face hard to read or unattractive. But that’s okay! There’s something for everyone, every taste. From unique watch faces that couldn’t work on a real watch, to faces that reflect their analog roots. It’s wonderful to have this kind of choice and customization in your watch face. On top of that, you have the straps you can customize. I like using one of my colorful rubber straps with a color-matching watch face. It’s wonderful to have this level of control. Honestly? If I wasn’t into real watches, this may have been enough to make me happy with a smartwatch. I might not have gotten into watches as early or deeply as I did had it not been for how poorly the Apple Watch was designed. This is the kind of smart watch that can make even someone who loves watches take pause and think about whether or not they want to wear a smartwatch for the day or a real one.

Software: A Less Annoying Smartwatch

Chug coffee, take shower, put on makeup, get dressed, go out the door, check watch… and it just congratulated me on my fitness yesterday. Close those rings. I sign. I just wanted the time. Lock the door, put my keys away, free up my right hand, and reach over to press the crown in on my Apple Watch because I can’t see the time on my watch otherwise. Ah, yes, I’m running a bit late.

That was my morning routine every day. Every time I’d go to just see the time on my watch as I left for work, I’d have to first clear out whatever stupid, pointless message my Apple Watch sent me that I didn’t ask for, couldn’t turn off, couldn’t reschedule or change, and was just stuck with. Often, in the morning, I only have one hand free, so I can’t do something on my watch. I’m locking my door, holding my longboard, holding a subway rail, just using my hands for what they’re made for. I just want to see the damn time, but Apple has to encourage me to go walk more, or congratulate me on standing. I live in a city, Apple, I walk and stand plenty, stop.

That was a huge reason I left the Apple Watch behind for real watches. The other reason was the Apple Watch is ugly. The Samsung Galaxy Watch does away with those annoyances in so many ways. First, the only annoying message I’ve received was a stand alert after I had been laying in bed for nearly an hour after my alarm went off. Fair, watch, fair. I can also turn this off.

That’s been it. It was easy to tell it not to display every notification my phone receives, because that was the default. On Apple’s watch, you have to turn that off for each app individually, or turn off all notifications. Once again, a lack of customization makes the Apple Watch a slog. The Apple Watch demands you give it attention. The Galaxy Watch knows that’s not its job. Its job is to be your watch. To provide you data at a glance. It functions… as a watch. This makes it superior in every way.

As for the rest of the software? Actually using it? It’s pretty intuitive. Swipe up to get to your apps, down for controls and toggles, just like you’d expect on an Android phone. One button is a back button, the other takes you back to your watch face instantly. You can swipe to go through “tiles.” These are mini-apps, like widgets you’d have for your phone. They’re great for quickly looking at your calendar or the weather.

Everything in the software here feels like it was designed to be a watch. The Apple Watch feels like Apple was trying to make a tiny iPhone. Samsung made a watch, and that’s remarkable.

Performance: Mostly Unnoticeable in a Good Way

Usually you won’t think about performance too much with this watch. You look at it, the information’s there. Swipe up or down and the shortcuts are quickly visible. You can launch apps and even jump back to the previous app without much lag. It’s good. Occasionally, however, you’ll open an app that you had open not long ago, only to find that it completely needs to re-launch the app. The app is just gone from memory. The processor in this isn’t so fast that it can just launch apps without you noticing that it wasn’t in memory, and 1.5GB just isn’t enough to keep more than maybe one app ready in the background. The new Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 did increase that to 2GB of memory, and I think that would help a lot.

The other thing I noticed is that sometimes customizing a watch face will take a while to load. This could be due to the watch face code itself as well though. If the person who developed it added many images and custom options, then the watch will have to load all of those at once. For a large number of color options and perhaps images, that could take a second or two. Long enough to wonder what’s going on, but not long enough to be annoying.

For a watch that mostly just has to give me information when I glance at my wrist, the performance is enough, but don’t be fooled into thinking this could replace your phone.

Battery Life

My first smart watch was the original Pebble. I traded in a Fossil I wore daily for it. I only had to charge it about once every five days. After that was the Pebble Time, with a similar battery life. Then I got the Apple Watch. It would need daily charging and only lasted around 18 hours. Eventually, the Apple Watch 6 would last around 20 hours. I’d have to charge daily, no matter what.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch lasts around 28 hours of active usage. With the always-on display turned off, I can get around 32-34 hours out of it. If I put it in “Watch-Only” mode, I can get over 50 hours. But with normal usage, that is, at least one small workout tracked and sleep tracked, keeping blood oxygen sensors active all day, I’m seeing over 26 hours of battery life every day, usually around 28. This would often be without low power mode or using watch only mode. Even with full brightness and using my watch a lot to test it, I could not get this thing to drop below 24 hours of battery life, ever.

If you had to, you could easily stretch the battery life over days. But why bother? You can fully charge it during an hour or so while you get ready to work. Going out at night? Get enough of a charge to last you all night in just a few minutes. You don’t have to think about battery life. It lasts over a full day, and can charge so fast you can just go about your day without thinking about it. You can get 40% from 0% in just 20 minutes, and 100% in a around 80 minutes. Though you’re getting the first 96% of that in the first hour, the rest is just a trickle charge to top it off.

Even on standby mode, I found this can sit on my desk for days on end before needing a charge. The Apple Watch loses a little over 2% of its battery life an hour. The Samsung Galaxy Watch is half that. You could just sit this down and let it go for over four days without the battery completely draining. The Apple Watch couldn’t make it to the end of the third day.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 is a surprising battery powerhouse. Android devices have, for years, had a reputation of needing huge batteries to compete with Apple’s iPhones for battery life. The watches, as it turns out, are the complete opposite. Apple can’t keep up.

Health Tracking

The first thing I want to get out of the way is this: Samsung is as bad, if not worse, than Apple with the “walled garden” stuff. In fact, because its features are so locked away, I don’t even think you can call it a “walled garden.” With a garden, you can at least get an idea on what’s on the inside. I’ve been calling it the “plateaued pasture.” Like, I heard there was a garden at the top of that plateau, but who knows? Just to activate health features, I needed cellular service on my phone. Why? It doesn’t need cellular data to function, and can get my location in a variety of other methods. Then there’s the ECG features. These are completely locked to Galaxy Watches synced to Galaxy phones. I can’t unlock the ECG on my watch because my Android phone is a Pixel 5a. So, yes, there’s an ECG feature on this watch. And, for completely non-competitive reasons, Samsung has locked it out unless you have a Samsung phone. That’s it. That’s the only reason. It’s a lockout for marketing, to try to force a monopoly.

With Apple you at least know you need the whole ecosystem. Samsung likes to hide that you’re going to need to buy everything from them. This is what’s wrong with the Android ecosystem (and modern capitalism), but I digress. What about what I could test?

Exercise

I definitely don’t exercise enough, and the most exercising I do get usually comes in the form of methods that apps don’t track very well: longboarding. The Apple Watch does have a specific skateboarding activity, but it seems rather simple, estimating burned calories off of heart rate. The Samsung Galaxy Watch doesn’t even have that. Still, there are quire a few activities in here, and the watch can guide you through them too. I decided to take the watch up on its offer to guide me through some squats. I was happy to see that it kept track of the number I did. However, it couldn’t do this with push-ups. The Galaxy Watch doesn’t have quite as many activities as I’ve seen on the Apple Watch, but there are still enough to get fit.

I recently had to get off a train a stop early and walk. The walk would be a little over a mile. My Galaxy Watch picked up that I was going on a long walk, and offered to track the exercise. I allowed it. While it did track that I was on a walk, it, interestingly, didn’t get all the data I can usually get on a walk. For example, it didn’t calculate VO2 Max during my walk, despite the fact that it does track this if you specifically start a walking workout. It was odd that this workout didn’t seem to have all the standard info I’d expect.

One major annoyance I had was after the first time I decided to go on a long walk with the watch. Apparently, if you select a walking workout, it’ll use an audio guide. I wasn’t aware of this until I got home. I noticed that it had been buzzing me, telling me my pace on the screen, but, because I had headphones in, I didn’t realize my watch was shouting to everyone around me that I was on a walk and had now walked for two miles.

MILES.

THIS WAS HAPPENING FOR MILES.

Every quarter mile this damn thing was chirping. That was on by default, and I was never asked or warned about it. I’m still embarrassed to this day. Why the hell would anyone want that to begin with, especially for a walk? I could maybe understand for a run, and only if you had your headphones connected to your watch, but for a walk? Seriously?

Fortunately, I turned it off for all workouts. What a silly feature to force on users without warning.

Sleep Tracking

I have been using a sleep tracker on my phone for years now. Mine has a clever feature where it detects your lightest stage of sleep, then wakes you up. This is supposed to help you feel less groggy in the morning. I’m not sure how well it works, only coffee saves me from a terrible morning every day. The Galaxy Watch doesn’t have a feature like this. However, you can set it to a bedtime mode, where it’ll turn off the screen unless you push the side button and mute all notifications. Then, just go to sleep. The watch will figure out when you’re sleeping. In my experience, it’s actually more accurate than my sleep tracker app. It would catch times that I’d wake up and barely move before going back to sleep. My phone wouldn’t pick up on the fact that I woke up, but the Galaxy Watch did.

After a week, the Samsung Health app will have some suggestions for how you can improve your sleep. It’ll give you a “sleep animal,” that is, an animal whose sleep patterns you mirror, and then tell you how you can improve your sleep. It’s cute, but I can’t take advice like that. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each night. Yeah, thanks, tried that as a kid, do you know what it got me? Insomnia. Still, for most people without sleep issues, like me, advice like this can be helpful.

When I first got this, it was reporting some deeply troubling blood oxygen levels. However, my sleep trackers weren’t recording snoring or anything like that, so what was happening? Well, I got my first hint when I bought a cheap elastic band for the watch. The watch was making “estimations” based on limited or no data. These estimations showed extremely low oxygen levels in my sleep. However, once I started using an elastic band, it got more accurate readings through the night. I also noticed this improved with the latest version of watchOS for the Watch5. Between the elastic band and the update, my blood oxygen levels stay above 90% overnight, as they should. Quite the scare the first night though.

Other Fitness Features

Period tracking can be incredibly useful. Not just for planning out your life but as an indicator on your health. That said? With the laws the way they are in the United States as a fascist wing of the government cracks down on bodily autonomy, I don’t think it would be wise to give any company that data. They will not fight for your safety, they will hand that data over. With the latest OS update, Samsung has activated the temperature sensor features of the watch, which can help you automatically track this data. All of that is very useful if you’re never worried about your basic healthcare becoming illegal.

Outside of that, there’s a cool body scanning feature. This works like typical body fat percentage scales. It passes a small electrical current through your body to measure its conductivity. Fat and water have different conductivity than muscle, so, after you input your weight, it can tell your your fat percentage, muscle percentage, BMI, and other information about your weight. It does seem to suggest I am close to needing to lose muscle. I’m not a fan of the concept of being told to be more dainty, I like my workouts and my more athletic build. I’m not even very buff though. Most women who work out and whose Instagrams I follow for tips and inspiration are definitely more stacked than I am. I wonder how much Samsung’s watch would tell them to stop lifting weights? Maybe I’m misreading it. I do want to lose weight, gain more lean muscle, so maybe it would balance out? Outside of that, the feature is quite handy.

Finally, there’s “stress tracking.” It seems to work using heart rate variation, changes in your heart rate that you might not notice but can be signs of additional wear on your heart from stress. It’s definitely good to keep this under control. I did find that it seems a little low? I’ve been stressed during a job search and have anxiety. In fact, during a panic attack, it stated my stress levels were low. I just don’t know how accurate this actually is. However, while I was sick with round two of COVID-19, it was excessively difficult to get my stress levels below the halfway mark. I found I could lower the stress levels with meditation, so perhaps there’s definitely some truth to the measurement. It’s nice to see the physical benefits of meditation so quickly.

Accuracy

There are two big differences between the Samsung Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch when it comes to accuracy. The first involves my right arm. On my right arm, I have a tattoo that goes down to my wrist. The Apple Watch absolutely does not work on this arm, even when my tattoo was just line work. It doesn’t think my skin is skin, and frequently locks the screen, can’t get my heart rate, and just doesn’t work. The Samsung Galaxy Watch worked before I had my tattoo filled in more. When it was just line work, the Galaxy Watch worked when the Apple Watch did not. After filling it in, neither watch works. So, if you have tattoos on your wrists, you might be better off with a smart ring… unless you have finger tattoos too.

The second issue comes down to VO2 Max. My VO2 Max isn’t great. I can tell. I get out of breath from mild prolonged physical activity. Wear a mask, people, COVID can be devastating. Still, I’m a proper New Yorker. I can still walk for miles on end. That’s more than a lot of Americans can say, who spend their time sitting in an office, then sitting in a car, then sitting on a couch. So, my VO2 Max isn’t terrible, it’s just not great. If you ask my Apple Watch, I’m near death. If you ask my Samsung Galaxy Watch, I’m on the low end of the healthy range. I took some time doing research, and this is something many people noticed. According to other people online, the score for the Apple Watch is often about 10 points below that of other trackers and even actual VO2 Max tests. As far as accuracy, they report the Samsung Galaxy Watch is closer to the most accurate trackers, like the Garmin fitness watches. Your results may vary, but it seems to be true for me as well.

Comfort

When I wore the Apple Watch, I could really feel the sensor pushing into my arm. Some of the tighter straps I’d wear for fitness would really bug me. When I moved to actual watches, the instant jump in comfort was one of the first things I noticed. Compared to smartwatches, a lightweight quartz watch doesn’t feel like it’s even there. The Samsung Galaxy Watch can’t quite compete with actual watches. The sensor bump on the bottom is still one you can feel. Still, it’s easier to wear than the Apple Watch. The weight feels about the same as a steel or precious metal mechanical watch. I really don’t mind it, and can in fact sleep with it on comfortably. I found the Apple Watch would get quite uncomfortable if I wore it all day and night.

The watch is about the thickness of a standard mechanical watch as well, around the 10mm mark. It’s only ever so slightly thicker than the Apple Watch, but you won’t notice it. I’d say the size and shape of this watch makes it more comfortable than the Apple Watch. It’s generally something you could wear all day and night. You might need a break from it on occasion, but I think that’s true of just about anything I’d put on my wrist.

Digital Assistance

I can’t say I ever use digital assistants on Android. The fact is, I just don’t trust Google’s more lax privacy policies to allow anything on Android have microphone access. I let Siri function because Siri doesn’t send anything off to a server without a “Hey Siri” request. On top of that, Siri doesn’t collect personal data. I can’t be sure I can trust any other digital assistant, so I generally don’t use them. That said, for you, dear reader, I decided to test Bixby out a bit. I was disappointed. It often didn’t recognize the wake command of “Hey Bixby,” and when it did, would sometimes make mistakes confusing “seven” and “seventeen” minutes for the timer. It could have ruined dinner! You can always install other assistants on Android devices though, and the Galaxy Watch is no different. If you prefer Google or other assistants, you can activate them as well. I didn’t test these, as they’re not unique to this watch, but you’re free to try out whatever assistant you’re most comfortable with… besides Siri, of course. Siri is only on Apple devices.

Durability

In my testing, I didn’t damage the watch at all. That’s surprising because, once, while swapping out watch straps, I dropped it. It feel from about three feet onto hardwood floor. I panicked, and quickly backed up my office chair… onto the watch. This was bad. How did I mess up twice? And yet, the watch was unscathed. Not a scratch or scuff on it anywhere. It fell with no protection from straps or anything else and survived. I have a screen protector on it, but this is mostly to reduce fingerprints. The glass is sapphire, so it’s quite scratch resistant. I bought a simple TPU case for it so I can feel comfortable wearing it during activities that could lead to damage, such as skateboarding, but other than high-impact sports, I doubt these get much damage in everyday usage. I’m pretty impressed with the durability here.

Accessories

Forget searching for “Samsung Galaxy Watch straps,” there’s no need. You can use any 20mm watch strap. Most unisex or men’s watch straps will fall into the 18mm-22mm range, with 20mm being one of the most popular sizes. Unlike Apple, Samsung didn’t try (and fail) to reinvent the wheel. That means any 20mm watch strap is a Samsung Galaxy Watch strap.

I was able to find screen protectors, watch stands, and chargers from both Samsung and third parties. However, the accessory options here were far more limited. I was able to get the same screen protector brand I’ve been using on my iPhone for years for the Galaxy Watch (ArmorSuit, a film-based screen protector with a wet install), but finding a charger was more challenging. The charging cable the watch comes with is too short to even reach the floor from a slightly high desk. However, I found that, while trying to find a better option, there weren’t many. There were some third party cables from fly-by-night companies that would disappear at the first sign of any bad reviews or recalls, so I don’t trust them. The best option might have been a Samsung charger that had both a spot for the phone and the watch and took a USB-C cable, so you could just swap out the USB-C cable with a longer one. It was so frustrating I gave up. Outside of this issue, however, I could find everything I needed.

Compatibility: The Plateaued Pasture

When I first got this watch, I wondered if I would love it so much that I’d actually start using my Android phone, a Pixel 5a, more often. The long term answer is no, however, the fact that I had a Pixel phone instead of a Samsung phone presented a new problem. Samsung made a completely arbitrary lockout for the ECG feature. If you don’t have a Samsung phone, you can’t use the ECG. This is batshit insane. It’s a potentially life-saving feature locked behind an entirely unnecessary soft-lock. You can actually sideload the app and get ECGs working on the watch, but I didn’t try that for this test. Still, I cannot politely voice just how utterly ridiculous this is. It’s as though Samsung wanted to try Apple’s monopolistic tactics so badly that they decided to make the entire Android ecosystem just a little worse for their own benefit. They limited their market to “people who like Samsung phones” just because they wanted to create some incentive to buy all Samsung devices? Newsflash: many phones are better than Samsung’s offerings, but, if the Samsung Galaxy Watch didn’t have this stupid soft-lock, it would be the undisputed best smartwatch. Instead, it’s crippled because Samsung has a braindead idea that people would rather buy a potentially worse phone to get a feature on their watch. Samsung won’t even let me download the app to see what I’m missing. At least you can see what’s in a walled garden! Samsung hid their features where we couldn’t see them, some kind of plateau, featuring a nice pasture, or something.

A FitBit, despite being from Google, will work for any device. It’ll work for your Android phones, your iPhone, a Samsung phone, a Pixel, anything. The Galaxy Watch is crippled unless you buy a Samsung phone, and that’s a worse experience for everyone but diehard Samsung fans. I’d love to be able to natively use this with my iPhone. In fact, in the past, you could. However, Samsung halted support for iOS, and now iOS users are stuck with Apple’s subpar and outdated Apple Watch. Nine generations in and that thing still looks the same! Ridiculous. Actual watches change more often than that, Apple!

Samsung doesn’t want to play nice. They want to force people into their arbitrary ecosystem. With Apple, it makes sense. Technologies are engineered from the silicon up to work together. For this? It’s infuriating and pointless. There’s no actual reason for this other than Samsung’s monopolistic aspirations. Personally, I don’t support Apple’s right to lock Android users out of the Apple Watch, iMessage, or other exclusive services. It’s the kind of thing that has allowed the company to maintain a duopoly. It just hurts consumer choice. That goes for Samsung, Google, and anyone else too.

Other Software Woes

My first annoyance was that I had to turn off my VPN to sign up to Samsung. Samsung didn’t even alert me to the issue, it just made my signup attempts hang forever. Next, I found that I needed a SIM card to sign up for Samsung Health. Why? This is another one of Samsung’s arbitrary locks. They wanted to force country-specific regulations, and a SIM card registered to a carrier is one way to do that. However, Samsung could have just used my statement of location and perhaps my GPS location for the same thing. Yes, you can spoof these, but Samsung’s off the hook, legally speaking, if you do that. They’re under no obligation to go this insane for all of their users. I signed up for a Google Fi trial for a week just to be able to sign in to Samsung Health. It worked, and I didn’t lose access after I let my trial to Google Fi run out, so it seems this little workaround worked. I only use my Android devices as wifi-only test devices for app development. This, once again arbitrary, requirement was yet another annoyance. Samsung tends to hold themselves back with mindless business decisions.

Value

The Samsung Galaxy Watch5 cost me just $200. Now, this was a few weeks before the reveal of the Galaxy Watch6, so it was promotional pricing. How much does the Galaxy Watch6 cost? It starts at just $299. You can go for the Galaxy Watch6 Classic, which has a larger case and rotating bezel, for $399. In fact, the most expensive Samsung Galaxy Watch6 you can buy is the 47mm Galaxy Watch6 Classic with 4G LTE for $479. Most people will pay around the $299 to $329 mark, depending on if you want the comfortable 40mm size or the screen real estate the 44mm provides.

Now, compare that to the Apple Watch. The base flagship, the Apple Watch Series 9 in 41mm with an aluminum body will cost you $399. That’s a full $100 more than the Samsung Galaxy Watch, and that’s just for the base model. Let’s say you want stainless steel. That starts at a whopping $699. An Apple Watch Ultra 2? $799! Hermès is known for their rich leather. But you won’t find that on any Apple Watch from Apple anymore, you’ll have to get that straight from Hermès. Instead, a cloth band will start at $1,249. It’s the same stainless steel watch too, just with some Hermès faces and a cloth band from the company. Their leather models can go up to $1,539. Again, it’s the same watch.

You could buy two Galaxy Watch6 smartwatches for the average price of an Apple Watch, and, if you ask me, it’s a far better watch. It’s a great value.

Conclusion 8/10

This is the best smartwatch. However, the watch is held back by software. Because Samsung dropped support for iOS, it’s not the best smart watch if you’re expecting full integration with your iPhone. Also, because Samsung blocks features if you don’t have a phone they like, you can’t use the ECG feature, which any other smartwatch will just give you. It should have been easy to suggest this watch to anyone looking for a smartwatch. Instead, thanks to a few poor decisions at Samsung, this might not be the smartwatch for you. Apple touts their Apple Watch’s features saving lives all the time. One of them is ECG. Unless you have a Samsung phone, you can’t use that potentially lifesaving feature. It’s just turned off on your watch… for no reason. It degrades this watch by so much.

Samsung’s idiotic and anti-competitive decisions aside, the hardware on this watch is fantastic. It looks great, is responsive, features a large amount of customization, and has battery life for days. Literally. It’s a fantastic smartwatch, and it’s at a bargain. It’s a shame Samsung crippled it to try to sell more phones though, it really is something special. There’s nothing else like it. The Samsung Galaxy Watch combines everything you’d want to see in a smartwatch, even the look of a classic watch. It does so at an affordable price too. It’s a shame you don’t get the full experience unless you have a Samsung phone though.

Pros:

• Best looking smartwatch on the market
• Great customization options
• Fitness and sleep tracking works well
• Fantastic battery life

Cons:

• Samsung cripples your watch if you don’t have a Samsung phone
• Could use more memory (fixed in the Galaxy Watch6)
• Even 40mm for a watch, the smallest option, is a bit on the large size
• Really wish it had rudimentary iOS support