Galaxy Watch 6 review: better battery, better bezel, but is it enough?
so what’s new with the Samsung Galaxy watch 6 series well you can do this with the temperature sensor now it says the water is 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the cooking thermometer says 59 degrees so it’s just wrong cool very cold if you were looking for something to upend the entire Android wearable landscape these smart watches ain’t it Samsung’s basically taking the watches you know and repackaging them into something slightly better so for this review I figured we should address the main questions people have asked me about these watches namely what’s actually new how well do
these work with a non-samsung Android phone and has the battery life improved first here’s a quick run through of what Samsung’s change from the Galaxy watch 5 to the Galaxy watch 6. we’ve got the return of the rotating bezel oh thinner bezels on both the regular watch 6 and classic a new processor that’s a smidge better than the old one where OS 4 and one ui5 watch slightly bigger batteries minor health and sleep tracking updates and a new strap mechanism that’s about it Samsung is a bit like apple and that its products always work best
within its own ecosystem so in the past when I’ve tested Galaxy watches I’ve always paired them with Samsung phones but Google overtook Samsung and wireless Smartwatch
because you have the extra step of downloading two or three separate Samsung apps creating a Samsung account yeah this part is just a lot simpler on a Samsung phone 6 minutes versus 15. can’t really argue with that and that’s just for basic stuff I’m not talking about downloading your third party apps downloading all of that sort of stuff it’s just always a little better with the Samsung device you also miss out on EKGs and the new irregular heart rhythm notifications which passively monitor for afib in the background for that you’re gonna need the Samsung health
monitor app and that’s a Samsung phone exclusive Samsung’s camera controller app is the same way you need a Samsung phone to use it you can’t even download these apps from the Play Store on other Android phones my other pet peeve is reprogramming the bottom button which is unchanged from last year’s Galaxy watches a long press is hard-coded to bring up Samsung wallet and you can’t even switch it to Google Wallet that said these are minor issues setup is mostly a one-time thing if you don’t care about EKGs you’re not gonna miss the health monitor app
there are third-party camera controller apps in the Play Store it’s all just mildly and annoying last year Samsung introduced a temperature sensor on the Galaxy watch 5 Series at launch it did diddly squat but now you can use it for advanced period tracking but if you don’t have periods you can download the thermo check app it’s a third-party app that uses Samsung’s API so you can measure the temperature of things in your surroundings fun and very silly and not really all that useful so we have this cold soda can whoa well I can tell you
that as well I can just touch it and tell you that it’s low it’s 32. it’s not freezing 28 it’s it’s 20 degrees you okay watch hot ft 121 that’s pretty close a book 73.4 versus 70. still pretty close Okay as fun as this is this is more of a hey you can do stuff with the temperature sensor than a super useful feature it’s not that it’s wrong it’s just that are you going to use a Smart Watch to measure the temperature of these things probably not still I can’t deny that it’s fun and hopefully
other third-party app makers can figure out slightly more useful applications for the temperature sensor the big new thing is wear os4 but so far where OS 4 on the Galaxy watch 6 series looks fields and functions a lot like wear OS 3 on the Galaxy watch 5. Samsung says that the exynos w930 chip delivers 18 faster performance but I really didn’t notice much of a difference what Ware OS 4 brings to the table is cloud backups because finally you don’t have to factory reset your watch if you get a new phone and better battery which
Samsung has struggled with in the past I’m not gonna lie I was really cheesed last year when Samsung made a big deal about improving battery life and my regular 40 millimeter Galaxy watch 5 couldn’t even last the whole day subsequent software updates made it better but it was never what I would call amazing the watch5 pro fared better but still never really hit Samsung’s 80 hour estimate so with that in mind the Galaxy watch 6 series has improved but your mileage will vary this is true of every smart watch but your individual use is going
to heavily impact how much stamina you get off of a single charge and in Samsung’s case there are a lot of settings that can impact your battery for example the first full day I wore the regular watch six I still had 78 left by 5 PM but that was a sedentary day with barely any notifications enabled and the more battery guzzling sleep tracking sensors turned off once you turn on the continuous spo2 sensing overnight and all the other stuff it does take a hit I went to bed with about 35 to 40 battery and woke
up eight hours later with 15 I did notice a big Improvement on the 40 millimeters battery with GPS tracking I went on a 45 minute run and it only lost 12 percent of charge and that’s really good compared to last year it’s the same story with the 47 millimeter classic though because of the bigger watch size you do get an even larger battery and a little extra oomph yesterday I woke up with about 88 battery did a bunch of testing including a 30 minute GPS run got a ton of notifications reply to a few messages
and by 4 pm I still had 59 battery left I didn’t have to charge before bed and because I enabled the new sleep mode I woke up with 28 battery and just popped it on the charger while I got ready for the day overall I’d say I got pretty close to Samsung’s battery estimates on both watches but you’re still basically charging every day or at the very least every other day it’s now good enough for me that I’m a lot less anxious about the battery dying on me at An Inconvenient moment but you’re gonna have
to go with the watch5 pro if you really want multi-day battery life while not a ton has changed on these watches meaningful updates don’t have to be big or splashy there’s a lot to like about the Galaxy watch 6 series I really dig that Samsung didn’t have to turn either the Galaxy watch 6 or the classic into a hockey puck just to increase the display size or pack in larger batteries the 47 millimeter classic is probably the most comfy Big Boy watch I’ve ever tested I’ve already said a lot about how stoked I am to
see the rotating bezel come back so I’m not gonna repeat myself other than to say that if you’re a watch for classic owner I think you’re going to be happy upgrading if you have the regular watch 5 and are thinking about the standard watch six I mean it’s great that the bezels are 30 thinner on the six but the majority of the watch faces have a black background and just about everything else is going to be the same thing basically if you’ve ever had a Samsung Smart Watch before you already know what you’re getting here
depending on your perspective that could be a good or a bad thing personally I don’t know that Samsung can afford to Coast like this for much longer just as there are more foldables than there used to be there are a lot more wear OS smart watches too rumor has it that a pixel Watch 2 is coming and all it really needs to do is fix battery life to give these watches a serious run for their money so it’s okay for Samsung to stick with a tried and true formula this year next year maybe not so
much hey guys thanks for watching and yes I am always double wristing and guess what I have the double watch Tans to prove it occupational hazard
