Samsung Galaxy Watch 42mm Midnight Black

Truly a fantastic digital clock with which you can do everything. It is a clock with a proactive attitude and positive feedback. Nice design and integration with phone is great.

It's a fantastic smart watch! intro I haven't worn watches for 20 years because I didn't like them (I always liked having the time to hand). My wife wanted a fitbit and I quickly fell in love with the 46mm galaxy watch in the store. The rotating bezel is THE way to operate a smart watch. Samsung has patented this and we will not find a Google Wear OS watch that has such a bezel for the time being (which is of course a shame for the competition). First use The watch is nice and the first thing I did was set up a watch face that shows my steps, stairs, heart rate and battery percentage (and then also something of date & time :o). This gave me a direct overview of my daily activity right from the start and because after 20 years I now have something continuous on my wrist again, I am also continuously working on my health (I have already lost a kilo after 2 weeks :D ). Battery The battery lasts 4 days with the following settings: - Display brightness at half - Heart rate tracking always on - Sleep tracking always on - Bluetooth always on and connected to my Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 - GPS is set to only turn on when I start an activity (cycling to work) or when the watch automatically detects an activity (such as walking). - WiFi is off - Notifications for whatsapp and mail are off (I know, but I prefer not to be disturbed, see next point) - Notification for receiving a call is on (since I always have my phone on silent, I sometimes miss a call) - Notifications from the samsung health app are on - Storm alarm notifications are on (super handy!) I stretch the battery life to 6-7 days by putting it on the fantastic wireless charger for 15-20 minutes in the morning when I shower. Nice detail, the display is then nicely rotated 90 degrees to horizontal. activity tracking Detection of an activity (cycling/walking/running) is automatic, but you need about 10 minutes with the activity for the watch to notice. Incidentally, this takes just as long on my wife's Fitbit charge 3. Software The galaxy watch has many apps installed. I use a lot of that too. For example, the stress tracker is a great app to visually see the heart rate. But especially the Samsung health app on the watch is fantastic. Unlike the Fitbit Charge 3, you can see all the information on the display of the watch itself. Not only in numerical form, but also visually in line and bar graphs. For activities such as cycling, the watch even shows the route on a map! Installing other apps is done via your phone and this works fine. The Samsung health app for the phone I would like to mention this app briefly as this watch can be used to a certain extent as a fitness tracker. Although a health tracker may be a better term, since during fitness or other physical activity the heart rate monitor drops off quite quickly (see next paragraph). The app gives a very nice overview and is easy to use. I personally like the Samsung app better than the other options available for this watch (I personally didn't like the Endomondo and record from Under Armor). However, the Samsung health app is slightly less pleasant than the Fitbit app when it comes to seeing the history (of, for example, my heart rate or sleep patterns). At Fitbit, these are all visually put together very clearly, with the Samsung health app I have to tap separately every day, which makes the insight into day-to-day patterns considerably more difficult. For the rest, the app is well put together and all reports are worded positively. Once I have failed to achieve a goal, I am not shown it guiltily, but more subtly and encouragingly. Then the negatives The heart rate monitor is nice, but it doesn't come close to the one on my wife's Fitbit. You put it on your arm and the heartbeat is detected within 1-2 seconds and is then apparently immune to hand/arm movements and sweat. This is NOT the case with the galaxy watch. Especially since I wasn't used to wearing a watch anymore, the first week I was checking my watch very often to see my heart rate and then it often took 5-10 seconds for the heart icon to start pulsing. In addition, I have tried everything to improve this: - Wear watch tighter - Wear watch more loosely - Clean the sensor often (every morning with some dreft and water) - Wear the watch higher on the arm. In none of the cases does the heart rate monitor really get better. During cycling it disappears almost immediately, unless it is smooth asphalt, then it takes 10 minutes. The best thing I've been able to do so far is wear the watch very high on my arm. While cycling, I now move my watch to about halfway up my forearm and wear it very tight. On top of that I let my left arm loose from the handlebars when the road surface gets a bit rough and this ensures that I have a heart rate measurement three quarters of the time. The second downside is that "deep sleep" is never actually registered while sleeping. It has only happened twice in the past 3 weeks that according to the watch there was 9 & 12 minutes of "deep sleep". When wearing my wife's Fitbit Charge 3, this is much more. This is apparently because the "deep sleep" threshold is determined by a heart rate level set by Samsung at a level much lower than my heart rate (and then I still cycle to work and exercise 2x a week). ). I hope that by reading this review you can make a slightly more informed choice. I am very happy with this smart watch myself. Although I would have liked it if the heart rate monitor had been a bit more robust, the enormous amount of features and the ease of use more than make up for it. In short, a fantastic smart watch!

In addition to a smart watch, I also use the device as a sports watch, or at least that was the intention. Registration of the heart rate is regularly lost, so that the results are too different after exercising for a while. This is the biggest annoyance. The fact that Wi-Fi is unstable and the device does not connect despite itself indicating that the signal strength is strong is also a clear drawback. For me things that spoil the fun of the Galaxy and I'm even considering returning it.