Samsung Galaxy Watch Active
As a smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch Active ticks every box; as a fitness tracker, plenty are left blank
SCORE ★★★☆☆ PRICE £188 (£225 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/299watch
Say what you like about Samsung: the company knows how to design stylish electronics. And this is a fine-looking timepiece. Its 1.1in watch face is circular, with a thick black bezel around the side. This manages to look like an intentional throwback to traditional watches, rather than a tacit acceptance that the race to end the bezel is less advanced on wearables than it is on phones.
If that design sounds familiar, you’ll be thinking of the Samsung Gear Sport, which the Galaxy Watch Active updates. It has the same 360 x 360 OLED screen, GPS and heart-rate tracking built in, plus that round face. But there are changes. Firstly, the rotating bezel has gone, meaning it’s only controlled by the touchscreen and two side buttons. Secondly, it’s considerably lighter, and a touch smaller, coming in at 23g to the Gear Sport’s 50g.
While it has a slightly faster processor (a 1.15GHz dual-core Exynos 9110, compared to its predecessor’s 1GHz Exynos 3250), the Galaxy Active sacrifices battery capacity, shipping with a 230mAh cell – 70mAh down on the Gear Sport’s specs. The battery typically lasts two days before needing to return to its charger: a standard wireless block. When the watch is low on power, it turns into a nice greyscale display with limited functionality to eke out the last bits of juice, while ensuring you don’t miss out on any steps being added to your total.
As a smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch Active functions very nicely. There are plenty of watch faces to choose from, and notifications come through with a friendly buzz, displaying crisply on the screen. It’s easy to find what you need on the watch, and there are plenty of customisations you can add: a remote control for music, or even a widget where you tap it every time you drink water. Unlike Fitbits that suggest you take a stroll after you’ve been inactive for a while, the Galaxy Watch Active picks out quick
exercises you can do in the office with instructions on screen.
You can also add Samsung Pay and make contactless payments right from your wrist, and Spotify is built-in with support for offline playlists within its 4GB of onboard storage. Add the built-in GPS and you’ve got a watch that’s all you need for a long run. It also theoretically has blood-pressure tracking, but in such a limited way that we weren’t able to test it – a pity as it’s one of the few differentiators between this and the original Galaxy Watch.
The two buttons on the right-hand side are a sensible move. While tapping at such a small screen is tricky at the best of times, it becomes a living nightmare if you’re dealing with sweat or rain. For that reason, the straps are easily changeable, meaning you can stick to the rubber defaults for a run, but then put on something more dressy for a meeting. A smart strap won’t mask the watch’s 10.5mm thickness, but it feels comfortable on the wrist and is barely noticeable after you’ve put it on; handy given it also tracks sleep.
As a running watch, though, it’s a mixed bag. Let’s get the good out of the way: in my tests, it proved far more accurate than the Gear Fit 2. While Samsung’s excellent fitness band was consistently 0.2km off the pace, the Galaxy Watch Active was close to being bang on. Just don’t rely on it for heart rate data as its numbers are questionable, and note it doesn’t support ANT+ external chest straps, either.
Most people won’t care about missing support for third-party sensors, but I have two issues that prevent this becoming my go-to tracker. The first is the “running experience”. Samsung puts three data fields on each screen, and you can swipe between three screens in total. But it doesn’t let you customise these, so you’ll mostly find yourself looking at the default, which shows average pace, time and heart rate. For me, current pace and distance travelled are far more important metrics, but unlike Garmin and Polar watches, there’s no way of rearranging the data.
The second issue is the need to use Samsung Health to view your data once the workout is over. This comes preinstalled on Samsung devices but is another thing to download if you use any other manufacturer’s phone, alongside the Galaxy Watch software. Bluntly speaking, it’s not a good product. There’s no supporting web version, and the app isn’t intuitive. Third-party app support is also weak, with only Strava listed.
Which leaves me in two minds about recommending the Galaxy Watch Active. For serious runners and cyclists, it doesn’t feel like the right choice: you’re better served by the superior battery life and data field customisation options of Garmin and Polar devices. On the other hand, it’s a greatlooking and feature-packed wearable that’s fine for casually keeping an eye on your fitness, especially if you’re tied into the Samsung ecosystem. But in that case, you might be better off spending a little more on a Galaxy Watch, which is just as much of a fitness tracker – with the exception of blood pressure monitoring – and also has longer battery life, a rotating bezel and optional 4G.
That’s the main issue with the Galaxy Watch Active: as a smartwatch, it’s fabulous, but as a serious sports watch, it falls flat.
SPECIFICATIONS 1.1in AMOLED display, 360 x 360 resolution 4GB storage 1.15GHz Exynos 9110 processor 768MB RAM 802.11n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 accelerometer barometer gyro sensor light sensor optical heart rate sensor 230mAh battery Tizen OS 4 39.5 x 39.5 x 10.5mm (WDH) 25g 1yr RTB warranty
“The Galaxy Watch Active is a great-looking and featurepacked wearable that’s fine for casually keeping an eye on your fitness”