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Samsung Galaxy Watch first impressions: Best features and what it's missing

2018-08-24
this is the Samsung watch a fresh take on the old gear SmartWatch that feels like a hybrid between last year's s3 and gear sport with a slightly different look new paint job larger battery and toned down version of Samson paint okay so first starters you're gonna have to take this with a grain of salt because I haven't even had 24 full hours with this watch but here's kind of what I've learned so far also my main concern for my SmartWatch is actually the Fitness features for this video now let's start with the obvious this watch looks pretty sleek with the same round watch face and rotating dial it comes in a 46 millimeter screen option and this 42 millimeter version that still looks kind of large on my wrist but it's a big improvement over its clunky manly predecessors the rose gold finish obviously helps but it also comes in black and silver with swappable bands so this is the first gear watch that I as a woman would be comfortable wearing all day it actually looks really nice I'm a huge fan of the round watch face and the dial as a means to control it it still looks kind of chunky from the side but I'm actually ok with that and the straps are swappable but it's not that easy to swap them out so say if I'm going for a run it's not like I could swap it out for a sports band very easily you kind of have to take some time with it and you have to have very delicate fingers which I personally don't the next big improvement is supposed to be the battery life samsung says it can last up to three days on a charge or up to four days for the larger model but that might be optimistic given our experience so far though in theory you will be able to wear it all day and all night so I've been wearing the watch now for about 20 hours and it's already at 11% this is a watch that's supposed to last three whole days now keep in mind I've been shooting with it all day so the screen has been on a lot and I did use it to track my sleep so I would say that I used it more a little bit more than the average consumer but still it's barely gonna make it to the 24 hours and if you are really into sleep this is an important feature so check back with us about the battery life because it could be a pain point for me personally and then extra juice is key for sleep tracking which the watch does as well it counts the time and quality of each session based on heart rate and movement full disclosure I hate tracking my sleep mainly because I don't get enough of it and seeing that I don't get enough of it it's kind of depressing but I did sleep with this lot and I was happily surprised that it was not that uncomfortable to sleep with it did track my not only the quantity of sleep as its supposed to but also the quality and I get I guess some the information was semi helpful what I didn't like was that it didn't give me contact so it says okay I've slept four and a half hours in deep sleep but it doesn't tell me what that compares to is that normal is that good is that bad is that terrible I have no context for that it also uses heart rate to detect stress levels which is new to the watch Simpson says it sends you a notification when it detects a spike in stress levels based on heart rate during a period of inactivity and suggest you take a breather apparently I haven't been too stressed out in the last 20 hours because I haven't received a notification about it but I have taken my stress test manually and I don't know that it's all that accurate it's so subjective that I feel like this feature feels a little bit gimmicky I like that they're trying to be proactive about using your heart rate for the different things and telling you to relax but like I said it's there's just so many factors that play into stress that I don't know that it can get it right TBD in fact health seems to be a big part of this refresh the Samsun watch checks all the marks when it comes to sensors heart rate barometer and GPS it can measure up to 39 different activities and detects six of those automatically running being one of them and this time it's good to track your swims both in the pool or in saltwater what's also cool about the watch is the level of customization you can reach on the interface you can pretty much program anything from your shortcuts to the layout of your workout app it also has its own watch face store which means endless design options on your screen so I'm definitely looking at the fitness features when I look into buying a SmartWatch and and this one was pretty good I liked all the activities that it offers I can't really speak to the accuracy of it because I've only taken it on on one run and I kind of had to be clicking through to find the stats that I wanted to see during my run but I suspect that if I spend a little more time just kind of adjusting and customizing the data to what I want to see that would be solved and that's a huge plus of this watch is that it's super super customizable everything from the shortcut screen to the workout screen you can select what you see first and and I really like that about it the amount of control I have over what I see in the way that I use it but the sleeker design and larger battery come at the expense of MST the technology that allows Samsung pay on the Galaxy phones and gear s3 to work on older credit-card machines this watch is NFC only like most other mobile payment systems out there I was really disappointed to find out that this watch didn't have the MST like the gear s3 had so that would have really differentiated this watch and it doesn't have it according to Samsung it would have made it a lot more bulky so they prefer to add the larger battery to it the watch starts at 329 dollars for the smaller Bluetooth connected model with an increase in price for the larger watch face and LTE connectivity which will vary from carrier to carrier what's clear is Samsung is broadening its reach with the Samsung watch giving consumers especially the female kind a few more reasons to buy it as you can see this was a very very early first impression I'm gonna keep testing it out I'm gonna take it on more runs I'm gonna workout with it I'm gonna test out more smart features and the connectivity so come back in a couple of weeks maybe a month to see our full review and in the meantime let me know what you think of the sim so watch what's your first impression hit me up on the comment section below or on Twitter and remember to like and subscribe before you leave
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