For many years, Samsung has been the only true challenger to Apple’s dominance in the smartwatch market. It used the same strategy that the fruit company does. Samsung controlled both the hardware and software of its smartwatches. The Galaxy Watch series has done very well but Tizen’s lack of third-party apps has always been a limiting factor.
Google tried competing but since it wasn’t making its own hardware the smartwatches that its partners, mostly fast fashion brands, made were not that great. For the past few years, it actually felt like Google hadn’t been paying attention to its Android-based smartwatch platform.
The Galaxy Watch 4 is Samsung and Google’s attempt to combine efforts and compete with Apple’s smartwatch – and it gets about 80% of the way there.
The Android smartwatch comes in two designs and four sizes, starting at £249 ($250) for the Watch 4 and £349 ($350) – as tested – for the Watch 4 Classic. They succeed the £269 Watch Active 2 and £399 Watch 3 respectively.
Design and display
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is a slimline smartwatch with a design that sits comfortably on your wrist. If you’re looking for something a touch chunkier, or you’d like a rotating bezel, you should opt for the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic.
Both versions of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 feature a redesigned frame that allows for gapless transition from the smartwatch chassis to the straps. The uniform set of crown buttons also sport an oblong shape, rather than one protruding round crown accompanied by a flush side button.
The Galaxy Watch 4 is made of aluminum, and the Watch 4 Classic has a stainless steel case. You’ll also notice the bigger overall footprint of the Classic model due to the rotating bezel for navigating around the interface. You can navigate around the regular Galaxy Watch 4 by swiping along the side of the watch case, but most users will likely just use traditional swipes and taps on the touchscreen.
Both models are made of aluminum. The dimensions of the 40mm model are 40.4 x 39.3 x 9.8mm with a weight of 25.9g, while the 44mm is 44.4 x 43.3 x 9.8mm and weighs 30.3g.
The screens on both Galaxy Watch 4 models look bright, and we found them easy to read. The resolution is also impressive, with the 40mm watch features a 396 x 396 resolution and the 44mm model taking that up to 450 x 450. That’s 330 pixels per inch for both models.
One unique feature of the Galaxy Watch 4 compared to other smartwatches is its ‘virtual’ rotating bezel feature. There’s no physical rotating bezel here – go for the Watch 4 Classic if that’s a feature you want – but you can run your finger around the black bezel of the screen to rotate through menus and access different features.
The Watch 4 and Watch 4 Classic both come in two sizes. The standard model can be configured with a 44mm case and a 1.36-inch display or a 40mm model with a 1.19-inch display. The Watch 4 Classic comes in 46mm or 42mm case sizes, with the same display sizes as the standard Watch 4. All displays in question are AMOLED panels, and they all offer higher pixel densities than their predecessors.
Each model is also IP68 water- and dust-resistant, which means you can take them into the water up to five meters deep. A word about the supplied watch band though – it’s made of a new material that may not handle intense workouts well, as we found it left something of a rash on our wrist.
The Watch 4 features Samsung’s own Exynos W920 chipset and 1.5GB of RAM. Throughout our testing time, we’ve found this to be enough power to run a variety of apps smoothly without any slowdown. This is one of the fastest smartwatches we’ve ever used.
The chipset is a big deal, though. Not only is this the first 5nm chipset in a Galaxy watch, but the company also says it’ll offer a 20% increase in CPU performance. The chip is made with two Cortex-A55 cores and a Mali-G68 GPU. Coupled with 50% more RAM, the Galaxy Watch 4 should have no problem moving through the new Wear OS software.
There’s 16GB of storage on both models of the Galaxy Watch 4. We found that about 8GB of this was taken up with the OS and preloaded apps, which leaves you with the same again for your own apps and music.
Its software is where the Galaxy Watch 4 shines. Samsung isn’t using its own Tizen wearables software here and is instead re-embracing Google’s Wear OS, although with its own spin.
You’d be forgiven for being confused here. Tizen has been the focus of Samsung’s software efforts in recent years, and the software running on the Galaxy Watch 4 looks similar to it.
Instead, this is Wear OS 3 but with Samsung’s own skin, called One UI Watch 3, on top. It includes a variety of Samsung apps that you’ll be used to if you’ve had a Galaxy Watch before, but this is primarily Wear OS.
That means you’ve got access to the Google Play Store, and while Wear OS isn’t the best-supported platform apps-wise, you’ve got more/a lot more/whatever options than you have on Tizen. The design, meanwhile, still feels distinctly Samsung.
The software on the Galaxy Watch 4 looks good and works smoothly, plus you’ll find all of the apps available on the Google Play Store are ready and waiting. This is a better solution than Tizen, but it keeps all the benefits that made Tizen software great.
Fitness
Samsung is using a new 3-in-1 health sensor on the Galaxy Watch 4 that sits much closer to the skin than individual sensors for more accurate readings. Many of the health and fitness features that you’ve come to expect from its watches are already present.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 comes with a whole host of health and fitness features, including GPS for tracking runs, an optical heart rate sensor, and ECG support.
Samsung says its body composition measurement tools enable you to see key fitness metrics such as skeletal muscle mass and body fat percentage. These scans are easy to run, although you’ll need to stay still in order for them to work.
The stats you’ll get include a body fat percentage score, skeletal muscle, fat mass, body water, and BMI. It’ll also give you a rough idea of the healthy range for your sex, weight, and height.
The Galaxy Watch 4 also makes use of hidden sensors in its two push buttons, as you hold your opposite middle and ring fingers to them whilst keeping your arms away from your body. I was curious to see just how accurate a smartwatch could be in determining all of those metrics, but as it turns out, the Galaxy Watch 4 exceeded my expectations.
Sleep tracking has been further improved with continuous blood oxygen monitoring and advanced Sleep Scores that provide more insight to improve the quality of your sleep. There’s even Snoring detection which works in tandem with your phone.
All of the health and fitness data is synced with the Samsung Health app. You can get it on non-Galaxy smartphones as well. So even if you’re on a different Android device you can still get the most out of this watch’s health features.
Battery life
The 44mm Galaxy Watch 4, is powered by a 361mAh battery, and battery life proved strong during our testing time - we found the smartwatch would last at least two days from a single charge even with intensive use, and if you’re not regularly using fitness features, you can expect the watch to last for a full three days.
The 40mm version comes with a smaller 247mAh cell, and we’ve yet to be able to test how well this performs. Our experience with previous Samsung smartwatches has seen a slight difference in battery life between the smaller and larger model, but you shouldn’t expect the 40mm variant to be dramatically different.
The Galaxy Watch 4’s battery life isn’t bad. It’s good enough. Even if you take full advantage of its functionality, the watch is going to last you throughout the day.
Post a Comment