- Ah, would you look at that.
Seems like it's time for another review,
and today it's all about this baby,
the Samsung Galaxy Watch.
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Galaxy Watch is the new name that Samsung
wants for their smartwatches,
possibly to align them more with the series
of flagship phones that they have like
the Galaxy S and the Galaxy Note.
The Galaxy Watch improves upon its predecessors
in the Samsung Gear series and doubles down
on its activity tracking while including
many more different workouts.
It's a great-looking timepiece and no doubt
the best wearable Samsung has produced yet.
It's available in two sizes,
a 46 millimeter at $349 and a 42 millimeter at $329.
Fun fact, this watch can be paired with iPhone.
If you have used the Samsung Watch before
you won't get too many surprises
with the overall user experience,
but you will definitely see a lot of improvements.
The design is really beautiful.
As far as smartwatches go, the Galaxy Watch really feels
and resembles a classic wristwatch.
The body is composed of stainless steel
while the bands are made of soft silicone.
It's quite comfortable but maybe not as light
as the Fitbit Versa, for example.
This one is 46 millimeter and it comes in silver,
but there's actually a smaller version
that comes in midnight black and rose gold.
The difference between the two sizes
can be narrowed down to battery life
and slight shift in design.
Other than that, both have the same specs.
It has two buttons.
One of them is a home button that
brings you back to the watch's face,
and the other one takes you to the main menu.
The idea is for you to navigate the watch
with the rotating bezel,
which takes you around to all the features.
The bezel has been a standard
in many previous Samsung Watches,
and I'm glad the company decided to keep it.
Actually, you can use the touchscreen to do everything,
but honestly, you'll end up using the bezel for everything
because it's so much more fun.
The companion app for the Galaxy Watch is called S Health.
It's a very robust app.
Aside from saving and organizing
all your data from the watch,
it has plenty of usable fitness tips and information.
It also ties in with other apps to expand on that.
Let me just say that the Galaxy Watch
has looks and it has power.
But when it comes to software and functionality,
there's some things to consider.
This watch runs in Tizen,
an operating system that runs
on a variety of Samsung devices
including some smartphones, a few cameras,
and all the watches on the Gear series.
Tizen is Samsung's alternative
to its other operative system, Android.
Now, the main problem with Tizen
is the availability of third party apps.
There are many Tizen compatible apps out there,
but the issue is not quantity, it's quality.
Many of the popular apps
don't support this operating system.
Sure, you can find some big ones like Spotify and Uber,
but if you're particular about the apps you use
you're probably going to have your reservations.
The other major issue that I see with Samsung smartwatches
is their virtual assistant, Bixby.
Bixby has never measured up to its competitors,
Google Assistant and Siri.
And although it's gotten a lot better on smartphones,
the watch version is still unimpressive.
It can hear you well and recognize your voice just fine.
But you have to be very specific
about your requests or it won't work.
If you ask something too big it won't know what to do
and will only throw an error message on the screen.
Now let's talk about something that really impressed me,
the battery.
The bigger version of the watch can bless you up
with four days of regular use.
You can extend that time even more
if you set the watch to power-saving mode.
You get a skeleton version of the watch's functionality,
but it'll stay alive for a while longer.
This watch comes with 39 different workout suggestions
and some of them will suck the life out of you,
but hey, no pain, no gain.
The Galaxy Watch is hands down
Samsung's best fitness tracker to date.
It has its own built-in GPS and automatically
starts tracking activities like running and biking.
The sleep tracking seems to be accurate for the most part.
It tracks your sleep based on movement and heartbeat.
So you have to take the results with a grain of salt.
Sometimes it wouldn't stop tracking my sleep
until I was up and walking.
Meaning, if you lie awake for a while
playing on your phone or something,
it will probably count it as sleeping.
There is no smartwatch that reads your brainwaves yet,
so let's cut it some slack.
The stress measurement is a neat idea,
but perhaps Samsung should have waited
to put that into practice.
Supposedly it notices when you're getting stressed
and then prompts you to do some breathing exercises.
The thing is, it measures stress through your heartbeat,
which is not the only indicator for stress.
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all in all, the Galaxy Watch
is the best timepiece to come from Samsung.
It has improved a lot upon the Gear series,
and it's a solid choice for most
of your fitness-tracking needs.
Unless you're very particular about the apps you have
on your watch and the versatility of the virtual assistant,
it does the job, and most of it, it's done well.
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So, according to the watch that's all the time we have.
I'll see you guys next time on Power Up
with another cool review,
and don't forget to watch our technology segment on
Telemundo's morning show, Un Nuevo Dia, every Tuesday.
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