Smartwatch

Samsung’s Galaxy comes with style and substance: ideal to track fitness, plus a better battery life and water resistance

IF YOU’RE anything like me, your New Year’s resolutions are already a fast fading memory. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a constant companion at your side to remind you of your fitness goals, keep track of your schedule and monitor how well you’re sleeping, among a myriad of other things that add up to a more motivated, better organised you?

Enter the new Galaxy Watch from Samsung. It’s the rebranded successor to the South Korean tech titan’s Gear line of smartwatches and introduces some cool new features and functionality. Unlike most smartwatches, it works with both Android and Apple phones, although it does lack some functionality when paired with iphones.

SIZE MATTERS

The Galaxy Watch comes in two sizes, a 42mm model in “midnight black” or “rose gold” and the decidedly chunkier 46mm model in silver coloured stainless steel. I got to spend a few weeks with a rose gold 42mm model which looked a little small on my wrist, but then I am partial to bigger watches.

Apart from being able to fit more information on to its bigger screen, the larger version boasts better battery life – a claimed four days compared to three for the smaller model. That said, the 42mm model is quite a bit lighter and I was regularly able to notch up two full days’ use between charges, significantly better than most other smartwatches out there.

I’d recommend trying both on before making a decision.

ROTATE THIS

For me, Samsung’s Gear line have always had by far the best user interface of any smartwatches,

ORIELLE BERRY

something the new Galaxy Watch inherits and takes to new levels of user-friendliness. It’s due in no small part to the clever rotating bezel that lets you flip through the many colourful, well designed apps and widgets as easily as dialling up the volume on your stereo.

Speaking of music, the watch now supports Spotify offline music playback. And thanks to a choice of 60 000 watch faces, you’ll never be bored with the “home screen” of the gadget you’ll probably be looking at dozens of times a day.

FIT FOR PURPOSE

Whether you’re a fitness fanatic or exercise newbie looking to shape up after a festive binge, the Galaxy Watch should prove a boon. Thanks to its better battery life, you won’t have to worry about it running out of juice halfway through a workout. And improved water resistance over its Gear predecessors means you can now take it swimming, both in the pool and sea.

The watch tracks 39 exercises, from running, walking, cycling, hiking and swimming to indoor activities like treadmill, various fitness machines and free weight exercises, as well as Pilates and yoga.

THE BAD

No gadget is perfect and the Galaxy Watch does have a few flaws. While Samsung’s core apps are excellent, the Galaxy Apps store is missing some important third-party apps, including Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Google Maps. The Bixby voice assistant is still a poor substitute for the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri.

Samsung Pay is built in, but bafflingly the company has removed support for Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology which was there in the Gear S3, so it won’t work with non-nfc credit card machines, a real pity given that these are still in the majority in South Africa, years after the introduction of this contactless payment tech here.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you’re looking for a stylish, user-friendly smartwatch with support for plenty of fitness activities and boasting significantly better water resistance and battery life than most of its competitors, be sure to check out Samsung’s Galaxy Watch line. Prices start at R5 999 for the 42mm model and R6 499 for the 46mm version.