Samsung Galaxy Watch review: our complete review – smart health connected Watches / Bracelet

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The smart health connected watches of Samsung change their name and the Galaxy Watch is the first representative of this new nomenclature. The product applies the same recipe that made the success of its ancestors by improving it. Make way for Review !

Technical sheet

Design

The Samsung Galaxy Watch is a watch with a really convincing design, provided that you like (or support) the slightly thick cases. Let’s not exaggerate either: the watch is neither bulky nor really heavy around the wrist (we tested the 42 mm model). And in return for this moderately imposing size (but less than the previous models of the brand), we are entitled to a very resistant watch. And to write that down, I didn't just tap the object on my desk.

Professional until the end, I gave myself up, despite myself, to the painful experience of falling on a bike on the cobblestones humidified by a late drizzle. After a poorly controlled pedal stroke, I discovered the brief but intense joys of gliding. Listening only to my courage, I protected my august facies with my forearms. This heroic reflex made it possible, on the one hand, to prevent my smile from going from dazzling to toothless, and on the other, to experience the robustness of the smart health connected watch tightly attached to my wrist.

The Galaxy Watch has therefore scraped off the rough asphalt on which I spread myself. Race results: no concern for operation or real sores for the watch (no cracked screen, no impact on the case). However, the striped borders on approximately 1/6 of the outer ring reveal light gray grooves. Such small sequelae are not expensive paid for the shock suffered.

Small sequelae after the fall.

For the rest, even if the watch's nomenclature changes from its predecessors, the Galaxy Gear, we find the famous rotating ring around the screen as well as the two buttons on the side. These three elements pose no problem in use.

As for the bracelet, the one supplied in the box is made of black silicone and is extremely sober. If it doesn't suit your taste, don't panic. Samsung had the good idea to opt for a standard fastening system. In other words, you can buy another one from a jeweler or online. Personally, I found that the one proposed by default was relatively comfortable, but tended to itch at the end of the day. When it comes to adjustment levels, there are enough to suit all wrist sizes.

Finally, the Galaxy Watch is certified waterproof up to 50 meters underwater (5 ATM).

Screen

The OLED always. This display technology is revered as cult by Samsung. And for good reason, the South Korean has mastered it perfectly on his devices. The Galaxy Watch is no exception. Here, it is a 1.3 inch screen that is offered to us with a definition of 360 x 360 pixels. The manufacturer makes the most of it through its interface where black is omnipresent.

However the black pixels are extinct and thus offer a very deep contrast – in addition to participating in good autonomy. If there's no point in watching a YouTube ehealth on it (even if the app exists), the screen on this watch is really nice to use. Clear dials can be dazzling in dark places. Personally, I opted for a classic, black main screen, so I didn't suffer too much from this concern.

use

Your first steps with the watch are perfectly accompanied by a few explanatory messages. There are four things:

• from the main screen, rotating the ring to the left leads to notifications

• right rotation to access applications

• the top side button is used to go back

• the bottom button returns to the main screen

This navigation system imagined by Samsung is really ultra intuitive – even for a user like me who is not very familiar with the watches marketed by the brand. Going from one screen to the next with the circular ring proves once again to be a very good idea and the muffled clicking that it emits has something satisfactory.

Several watch faces are available as standard on the watch, but you can download others (free and paid) from the Galaxy Wear app. Note in particular that the interfaces provided with a second hand are accompanied by a small tick-tock to simulate the noise of the second hand. Gadget.

The Galaxy Watch runs on the OS designed by Samsung, Tizen 4.0, which is much more frank and logical success than Wear OS as everything is simple to achieve on it. The only small detail that we could point out is that you still have to press the touch screen of the watch to open an application or launch an action. The two physical keys on the side unfortunately do not allow this. This is not a big problem at all, but a double press could have been interesting from this point of view (but this can be configured on a single shortcut of app). It would have brought a little more consistency, but we nitpick.

Several applications are available for download on Galaxy Apps. So you can watch YouTube (no interest), equip yourself with a flashlight (all white screen) or take advantage of a web browser (not at all optimized for this display surface). The most interesting is the Navigation application offered by Google Maps. Once an itinerary is launched on your smartphone, all the instructions are displayed on your watch. But beware, the service costs 3 euros.

One of the best features of the watch is related to music. On the one hand, a Spotify application is available, but for a Play Music user like me, there is a media player allowing to press Play / Pause, to change tracks or to change the volume (in particular with the rotary ring ) without having to take the phone out of their pocket. This player worked with my morning radio show (handy) or the YouTube videos displayed on the phone screen (less useful).

Aside from that, in the notifications section, the messages received are displayed in clear overviews (at scroller thanks to the ring). You can read an entire message fairly easily and even respond to it with a few preformatted suggestions. You can dictate your message or take the trouble to write it, but neither of these solutions can replace the accuracy of a smartphone, of course.

The vibrations of notifications are well balanced: powerful enough not to be missed, weak enough not to interfere. Handy if you want silent alarm clocks (set an alarm without ringing on your smartphone). I admit, however, that I did not attempt the fear of a prolonged pillow failure.

Note that you can use Bixby – but the assistant still does not speak French well – and that contactless payment is possible thanks to NFC, but Samsung Pay like Google Pay are still pending.

Activity monitoring

The Galaxy Watch is equipped with an array of sensors to be an excellent companion for sport (accelerometer, altimeter, barometer, gyroscope, GPS). Walking in town, hiking, running, cycling, gymnastics … The device is calibrated to recognize several types of activities and offers exercises in function. Like a coach, the watch sends you alerts to remind you to be a minimum active at least once an hour while offering to do a small handful of stretching, bending or even bust rotations .

The device is ultra optimistic and encouraging. So just standing up and barely taking a few steps is sometimes enough to get a message like, Very good, back on track ". When the watch detects that you've been cycling or walking for a while, it will start to encourage you by telling you to continue like this. It also activates a step counter and, once the movement is complete, warmly congratulates you with a " Well done, it was a great walking session ". The slightly overly cheerful tone might annoy some, but I found it rather a positive and welcome move.

However, this automatic detection can be wrong. Sometimes the Galaxy Watch felt that I was physically active while I was sitting at my desk. This is no doubt due to certain posturing during lively conversations which deceived the accelerometer. The most absurd moment will remain this time at the bar where the watch gave me a joyful " continue like that When I was drinking a few cannons of beer, which may not be very wise for a sports coach. Fortunately, these incidents are very rare.

You obviously don't have to wait for the watch to detect your physical activity. You can indeed decide for yourself to start an exercise. For example, just before a big walk, you can indicate that you are about to walk. The watch will record your heart rate, speed, number of steps, kilometers traveled, calories burned or the route traveled.

You get a detailed report right after the effort. The Galaxy Watch works in conjunction with Samsung Health, a health application that allows you to find all the data recorded by the watch on your phone. The service offers fairly simple to understand graphs of your activities for the past day or for the last week or last month.

The application thus sets goals to be achieved and congratulates you each time you reach or exceed a level (reward badges are also awarded). This can concern the number of steps taken or the number of stages climbed for example.

Beyond that, you can also measure your heart rate. The watch does this automatically throughout the day. When evening comes, a quick glance at the dedicated screen lets you see the gap between when our heart rate was lowest and when it stopped. Also, don't hesitate to start the process yourself. The measurement is precise and takes only a few seconds as long as the watch is securely attached to your wrist.

As a side note, calmly measuring your heart rate requires being seated for at least one or two minutes and being relaxed. Once in these conditions, you will then be able to see if the number of beats per minute of your heart is within the average.

The Galaxy Watch also offers to measure your stress level and offers a damn breathing guide. In it, you just have to breathe in and out at the same rate as the little animation on the screen. The smart health watch also wants to help you get a better understanding of your sleep. On the first few days of use, there were some hiccups (after a little more than 6 hours of sleep; the device estimated that I had slept only 1h04). Fortunately, after 2 or 3 attempts, the analyzes became much more precise and consistent.

Heart rate, stress levels or sleep tracking are all elements to find again on Samsung Health. The app will notify you every day of an activity briefing so you can quickly see how much time you have given to physical exercises.

Autonomy

When you're used to talking about smartphones, the battery capacity of a smart health connected watch sometimes seems paltry. Here, the Galaxy Watch is entitled to a 472 mAh battery. Samsung promises that it will provide 7 days of battery life. Really ? If I base myself solely on my experience, I would rather tend to answer in the negative without having been disappointed by the autonomy of the object.

During these two and a half weeks of use, the watch's greatest performance was to last just over 4 days without being charged. This is impressive as it stands, but some clarification needs to be made. During this period, I had voluntarily used the Galaxy Watch with some reserve. I was content to watch the time a few times and consult the notifications I received without using the interface to reply to messages (SMS, WhatsApp …) and without systematically consulting the alerts either.

Samsung Galaxy Watch wireless charger

In another period, I took the time to consult each notification in detail, reply to a few messages from the watch, use the navigation application twice and launch physical exercises myself every day. Under these conditions, the Galaxy Watch then held from Monday morning (100%) to Wednesday around 5.30 p.m. where it fell to 15% and switched to Energy saving mode.

For information, the Energy saving mode switches all screens to black and white. It blocks access to applications and widgets. You can continue to check the time on an extremely minimalist interface and your notifications are always accessible. Finally, the wireless charger delivered in the box allows to go from 10 to 100% of battery in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Communication

It is entirely possible to take a call on your watch. But the quality of the sound is poor, easily saturated and my interlocutors complained that they did not always hear what I said. The Galaxy Watch is smart health connected to your smartphone via Bluetooth 4.2.

Price and availability

The Samsung Galaxy Watch is available in two versions of 42 and 46 mm. In France, it costs 329 euros.

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