Galaxy Watch Active is a mid-range smartwatch that offers a pretty premium package. The smartwatch market isn’t as popular as it used to be but Samsung is still a big player, and the biggest in the Android market. Samsung makes excellent products and their smartwatches are not looked over.
The smartwatch market has matured a lot in the last few years with many early manufacturers backing out and only a few continuing production. Samsung really has solidified their spot as a leader in Android smartwatches in just about all categories of design, functionality, user experience, and compatibility and with the new Galaxy Watch Active they upped their stake.
Design
The design on the Galaxy Watch Active is simple and elegant. As you can see in the picture above, it has a smaller 40mm circle (28.1mm display) with two buttons, home and back, on the side. There is no rotating bezel on their new watch, which is okay for me, but that might be a turn off for some Galaxy smartwatch fans. Samsung did create nice and simple navigation though so having a clean and slightly smaller round watch face is welcomed. Plus, at 10.5mm thick, it is one of the thinnest smartwatches out there. Samsung also didn’t skimp on colors by offering the Galaxy Watch Active in black, silver, rose gold, and green.
Tech Specs
Galaxy Watch Active comes with pretty decent specs in a small and mid-tier package. It sports a 40mm circle casing with 28.1mm(1.1″) display at 360×360 pixels. Inside the watch is:
- 230mAh battery which supports up to a few days battery life
- Exynos 9110 1.15 GHz processor
- .75GB RAM and 4GB storage
- IP68 water resistance up to 5ATM or about 50m of water
- Samsung’s Tizen OS 4.0.
The watch is no slouch and I have never had any real slow downs or hiccups while using the watch, but battery life hasn’t lived up to the hype. I could get 2 days at max with regular/light use which isn’t a huge issue, I just wish I could go at least 3 days considering it is advertised at “up to 4 days battery.”
Functionality/User Experience
My overall watch experience has been great. It is small, compact, sporty and is very functional for me. It has great workout tracking which can also automatically detect a workout and start tracking automatically for you which is a really handy and awesome feature I use all the time.
The watch faces are customizable and of course can be changed to anything that is available to download as well. Widgets can also be ordered in any direction and are accessible with just a swipe to the left. So you can put important ones you want to see quickly ahead of widgets you only want to look at once in a while.
Setup of the watch was easy-peasy as well. I have a Google Pixel 3 XL and Samsung makes it very easy to download the dedicated apps and background processes that are required to run the watch with a non-Samsung phone. Once the main Galaxy Wearable app is downloaded from the Play Store, it guides you nicely though the setup process and pretty much does it for you. It was very fool-proof. Plus, I do enjoy using Samsung’s Health application to track my fitness and, with a Samsung account, the app and the watch work nicely together.
Summary
All-in-all, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active is a very good smartwatch. It offers a lot of premium features at a mid-range price. Anyone looking to get a smartwatch should really give this one a look. It has a great look and design but is also sporty and great for workouts. You can learn more about the watch on Samsung’s website here.
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