Samsung Galaxy Watch Active
SAMSUNG’S SPORTY SMARTWATCH IS CHEAPER AND LIGHTER, BUT HAS IT CUT TOO MUCH FROM ITS POPULAR PREDECESSOR?
IN MANY WAYS the new Galaxy Watch Active smartwatch is extremely similar to the smaller Galaxy Watch that was released late last year. The sporty update features an identical Exynos 9110 Dual-core 1.15GHz processor, the same 768MB RAM allocation and an equivalent 4GB internal memory allocation as the 42mm Bluetooth Galaxy Watch. The Galaxy Watch Active also runs the same Tizen-based Wearable OS 4.0 software and keeps the 5ATM/ IP68 water resistance and MIL-STD810G resistance rating of Samsung’s earlier wearables. Yet however many similarities there are between Samsung’s most recent smartwatches, there are even more differences.
Samsung made the bold move of ditching the highly-regarded rotating bezel on its new Samsung Galaxy Watch Active, a distinctive feature that allowed its predecessor to quickly scroll between apps. While this move will immediately put many offside, Samsung did manage to balance the loss with some considerable space and weight savings. The Galaxy Watch Active has a diameter of 39.5mm, a thickness of 10.5mm and a 25g weight, which is 6% narrower, 17% thinner and 49% lighter than the smaller 42mm Galaxy Watch.
While much of the size and weight difference comes from the removal of the bezel, the fractionally smaller 1.1-inch (28.1mm) super AMOLED display presumably helped narrow the unit and a 40mAh battery cut from the 42mm Galaxy Watch would have made it much lighter. While the 46mm Galaxy Watch boasted around four days battery, the 42mm Galaxy Watch only gets around 2 days and the Galaxy Watch Active is lucky to last much more than 24 hours under moderate activity conditions.
Ironically, the Galaxy Watch Active’s battery cut is likely to hit active users the most with lifespan dropping to just 15 hours for continuous GPS tracking or 8 hours of Bluetooth music playback. Fortunately the Bluetooth 4.2 connection works exceptionally well with true wireless headphones, maintaining a consistent connection even in congested areas. When you pair this with offline Spotify downloads and onboard music playback functionalities, you get a device with unrivaled convenience for smartphone-less media playback.
Music playback even works relatively well when you are simultaneously location-tracking (only occasionally dropping channels) and Samsung has put a lot of effort into the Samsung Health app. While it doesn’t try to encompass features required by professional athletes, Samsung Health is one of the most comprehensive health and wellbeing suites for anyone wanting to manage a balanced lifestyle. Samsung Health monitors your exercise, food and water intake, sleep cycles, weight, heart rate and stress levels, and all of the data collected by the Galaxy Watch Active feeds directly into the one convenient interface.
Tizen OS misses out on Google Maps, but it does offer a decent third-party offline mapping application known as Here WeGo. And while we would prefer Google Now, Bixby was able to do all the essential digital assistant tasks we asked it to. Google’s Wear OS app store has much more content, but the Galaxy Store apps offers a much higher baseline for responsiveness and usability. Samsung Pay is also widely accepted and works well on the device, allowing you to leave your wallet at home without being inconvenienced.
Other than battery life there’s not a lot of sacrifices in the Galaxy Watch Active and yet Samsung have managed to shave 30% off the price tag of the 42mm Galaxy Watch. If you are happy to make the effort to charge it every day and you’ve got narrow wrists that suit a smaller smartwatch then there really isn’t a more appropriate device we could think of.