Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 40mm
Samsung Galaxy Scout Agile
MSRP $200.00
"The Samsung's Galaxy Spotter Active is an affordable smartwatch that offers everything you'd need."
Pros
- Practiced fitness-tracking capabilities
- Excellent display
- Beautiful, elementary design
- Comfortable and lightweight build
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Limited capabilities when used with non-Samsung phones and apps
- No rotating bezel
- Limited 3rd-political party apps
Editor's Annotation: Samsung has released the Galaxy Picket Active2, which includes ECG and LTE support. Read our Galaxy Spotter Active2 review here. The original Galaxy Lookout man Active is now sold at a discounted price, so information technology remains a skillful choice if y'all're on a upkeep.
Smartphone prices are rising, simply smartwatches remain accessories we don't really need. Yes, you won't demand to pull out the telephone out of a pocket as much, but virtually people may not desire to pay $400 or even $350 for that luxury. At $200, however, a smartwatch is much more tempting. Samsung's latest Galaxy Watch Agile is a smaller version of last year'due south Galaxy Picket, and it won't break the depository financial institution. Information technology'southward also one of the best smartwatches out in that location.
It doesn't have the long battery life of the Galaxy Sentinel, and its screen isn't as large, simply you're getting many of the same great features. The compromises Samsung fabricated to cut the price from $350 to $200 aren't deal breakers, and you'll observe the Galaxy Spotter Agile still offers everything you'd demand out of a smartwatch.
Minimal design, great display
I've ever liked the pattern of Samsung's "sportier" watches more than than its flagships. The 2017 Gear Sport has a cute, minimal design, whereas the Gear S3 looks more masculine and busy. The same rings true with the Galaxy Sentry, which feels similar the sportier smartwatch over the newer Galaxy Watch Agile. The latter is free of visual distractions and looks uncomplicated, and that's what draws me to it.
I beloved its meaty size, and I honey how the glass on top feels bulbous. What I am bummed about is the lack of a rotating bezel, something Samsung is known for on its watches. The rotating bezel lets you roll through the interface swiftly, and there's a bully ticking sound that makes watches like the Galaxy Watch fun to use.
The Galaxy Sentry Active omits that for a lower price tag, and information technology'southward sorely missed. The interface is designed for a rotating bezel, so scrolling through widgets and notifications feels much slower. If you're coming from a Samsung watch that had this characteristic, then prepare to be a trivial disappointed. However, interacting with the Active feels much similar Wear OS. You'll tap and swipe a lot.
The edges of the scout are a little rounded, and any touch on the lookout man'southward screen feels smooth or, dare I say, sensual. You'll observe two buttons on the right side to aid navigation. The top is a back button and pressing and holding information technology tin can take y'all straight to Samsung Pay. The bottom is a home push, and pressing and holding it volition accept you lot to the ability off menu. Double tap it, and you can access Bixby, Samsung'south virtual banana. The buttons are clicky and responsive, and they have a slim profile.
The Galaxy Scout Active is free of visual distractions, and that's what draws me to it.
The 40mm aluminum case is calorie-free. It doesn't await pocket-size on large wrists, or big on pocket-size wrists. It'due south besides piece of cake to forget this scout is sitting on your wrist, which makes sleeping with it quite comfortable (information technology tin runway your sleep). Information technology's sparse and will never actually get caught on shirt cuffs. The 20mm straps are interchangeable, and the default silicone strap, which feels quite nice, comes with two sizes in the box.
There's a thick bezel around the one.one-inch OLED screen, which leaves me thinking about how Samsung could have outfitted a rotating bezel here (alright, I'll terminate bemoaning about it). The screen is a little small-scale, merely information technology'due south still to glance at data on it. I accept noticed it doesn't testify equally much data on select screens every bit an Apple Lookout man, which has more screen real estate.
The screen quality, however, is close to perfect. Colors are well saturated, blacks are so deep that the screen blends in with the bezel around it, and text is sharp thanks to a 360 ten 360 resolution. It can get vivid enough to encounter in directly sunlight. It's fantastic, and 1 of the highlights of the sentinel.
Watch faces, on the other hand, are a downside. There're a handful of solid options (press and agree the main lookout man face up screen to alter it), and they're all customizable. Yous can cull different complications so you can personalize the data you see at a glance. I just never fell in dear with any sentry face. There are thousands more yous tin peruse through on the Galaxy store, so information technology may just accept some time to find one yous love.
Corking performance, Tizen four.0, and robust notifications
The Galaxy Watch Active is powered by a dual-core Samsung Exynos 9110 processor with 750MB of RAM. I had no outcome with functioning. Information technology operates fluidly, and I never found myself frustrated, different my experience with near Wear Os smartwatches. Opening and interacting with apps is speedy, though I did discover the watch occasionally had issues registering touch.
The scout runs Samsung's Tizen operating system, not Android or Wearable OS. It works with all smartphones but does work best with Samsung'southward phones. On other Android phones, you'll need to download diverse plugins to ensure a smoothen feel, but you get near of the promised features. On iOS, nonetheless, you'll observe some features won't work. For case, y'all can't respond to messages when the sentinel is paired with an iPhone. Samsung Pay and SOS alerts don't piece of work at all.
Screen quality is close to perfect.
You tin get all your notifications from your smartphone to testify up on the spotter, and if you lot don't want to exist bombarded on the wrist, you can toggle off apps you don't want to come across. Notifications arrive almost at the same fourth dimension every bit they do on the connected phone, and they're easy to read. Responding to notifications is a piffling clunky, which is the example for all smartwatches, simply you can use your voice, a cramped keyboard, preset responses, or you can scribble messages to write out curt messages.
The experience is much ameliorate if you use Samsung's apps, as they're all accessible on the watch. That means yous can jump into the Messages or Email app to see texts or emails and go along conversations from the watch itself. If you use apps like Android Letters or Gmail, you can only respond to notifications, as those apps aren't bachelor on Tizen.
There'south a decent repository of apps in the Galaxy Shop, but short of a scattering of third-party fitness apps similar Strava, there'south not much else I'd want to install. Even Wearable OS has a better selection, merely neither tin can come close to what you'll go on Apple's WatchOS.
Hither'southward one thing I don't like that more smartwatch-makers could improve — downloading music. You can download and transfer songs to the picket itself — it has 4GB of internal storage — but the process feels like I'm back in 2008, transferring music from my estimator on iTunes to my iPod. If you have Spotify, y'all're in luck as the app is available and lets yous download music for offline playback, but yous may not desire to bother otherwise.
I don't recollect at that place's much of a reason to use Bixby on the Spotter Active.
Then there's Bixby. I was able to start a workout just by request Bixby, but it took me three attempts earlier it could understand the iii words I was trying to say. It besides frequently asked me to go dorsum to the telephone when I asked it specific queries, like "when did the iPod came out." I don't think there's much of a reason to use Bixby on the Watch Active. Thankfully, it'southward difficult to accidentally trigger it (unlike on Samsung phones), as it requires a double press on the lesser push.
Samsung Pay is present, but unlike Samsung phones, it doesn't work at every shop that accepts a credit card (at that place'southward no Magnetic Secure Manual technology, or MST). Information technology only has a near-field advice scrap, and so you'll have to stick to stores that accept contactless payments, which means anywhere that supports Google Pay or Apple tree Pay.
Good fitness tracking
The Milky way Lookout Agile lives up to its name. In early testing, I saw some discrepancies with centre charge per unit and other data when compared to other devices — but subsequently an update, the Galaxy Sentry Agile'south accurateness greatly improved.
Using the Apple Lookout Serial 4 equally a criterion, the Galaxy Watch Agile delivered almost the same verbal results after a fifteen-minute run, from center rate and distance traveled to step count. On average, the Apple Lookout man had a slightly college daily step count, but the deviation was marginal (around 200 steps more than).
I similar how the spotter continuously measures centre rate, and then you tin can become a better picture of how it fluctuates throughout the mean solar day. There are also recommendations to practice trunk twists when it detects yous've been sedentary for a while, and information technology can alarm you lot when your middle charge per unit goes past a customizable threshold.
All this data resides in the Samsung Health app, which is feature packed, simply it could practise with a serious makeover. The interface is likewise cluttered for my taste. Nonetheless, you can log how much caffeine or water yous had in a twenty-four hour period, too as input calories from the food you ate. Yous tin can even rail stress, and on ane specially stressful day, the animate exercises the watch recommended me helped bring my heart rate down and fabricated me feel a lot amend.
There's slumber tracking also, which you won't find natively on the Apple Scout. It's striking and miss, though. At that place are times I'm surprised at how authentic the sleep data is, just there have been moments when I've been sitting at my computer late at night, and the watch idea I was asleep. Information technology's not the nigh reliable, but information technology works more oft than it fails.
The watch has a congenital-in GPS if you want to runway your runs, but the marquee feature is blood pressure level monitoring. This feature requires a separate app you need to download — My BP Lab 2.0 — and it seems one-half-baked. I installed it on the Galaxy S10 Plus, but the app on the watch didn't work, maxim I nevertheless needed to install information technology on the phone. When it does launch, it will yet be in beta, and even the app says its data shouldn't exist treated definitively.
Solid battery life
Battery life isn't the Galaxy Lookout Agile's forte, but it'southward better than most smartwatches than run Google's Habiliment OS operating arrangement. I often concluded a piece of work twenty-four hours (effectually half-dozen p.m.) with about 60 percent remaining on the watch. The screen was prepare to always off in this test. Wearable it to bed, and information technology will be able to track your slumber and go through half of the adjacent 24-hour interval before needing a charge. On days where I took the sentinel off my wrist when I arrived home and didn't use it to track sleep, I was able to get two full piece of work days out of a charge.
Keep the screen on, and the lookout man will hitting around 50 percentage by 6 p.m. Information technology will survive the night to track your sleep, but y'all will likely have to recharge information technology in the morn to get a 2nd day out of the picket.
It doesn't have the best battery life for its toll, but it'south enough to go by comfortably.
Throw in a workout or ii and life will be cut to most one full day. This isn't as skilful equally what yous'll detect on the Apple Spotter, the Samsung Galaxy Watch, or the Fitbit Versa. All the same, I usually dropped the watch on the charger when I arrived home and slapped it on when I went to bed to rail sleep, and the lookout never died on me.
If the watch is running low on juice and y'all're non near a charger, you can turn on ability saving mode to get a grayscale home screen that turns of many functions. There's another manner called "Watch Just," and this can give yous days of battery if you won't exist near a charger for a while. When I had seven per centum left, Sentry Only mode claimed it could give me two days and 12 hours more with the Watch Active. In this mode, you only can see the time, nothing else.
The 230mAh battery charges via a tiny puck wirelessly, and you can even use the back of Samsung's latest Galaxy S10 smartphones to charge up the lookout in a compression. Information technology doesn't charge on 3rd-party Qi wireless chargers, merely it volition work with Samsung's own Wireless Charger Duo. Information technology's a shame, every bit I have a portable battery pack that also supports wireless charging, and it'd be nice to use it to juice up the sentinel on the go instead of needing to deport an extra cablevision.
Price, availability, warranty information
Samsung's Milky way Watch Active costs $200 and is bachelor for buy now. The company offers a standard express one-yr warranty that covers manufacturer defects, and not much more than.
If you lot're looking for cheaper options, you can check out our lists for the best Samsung Galaxy deals and the best smartwatch deals.
Our Take
The Samsung Galaxy Picket pairs sleek and meaty design with fitness smarts and a robust notification system. It doesn't have the best bombardment life, but it's enough to get by. It's an excellent value at only $200.
Is at that place a better alternative?
Aye, but you'll have to pay more. The 46mm Galaxy Watch starts at $350. It has a rotating bezel too as much meliorate battery life (effectually four to five days). Read our comparison of the Samsung Milky way Watch Active and Samsung Galaxy Watch to know more. The Fitbit Versa is likewise a slap-up alternative at $200 (or even the stripped down Versa Lite at $160), but the notification system isn't as robust.
Want to stick to Google's Wear OS? The Fossil Sport is your best alternative, just let's be clear — the Galaxy Scout Active is definitely the ameliorate watch between the two.
If you own an iPhone, y'all really should simply look at the Apple tree Picket, as it delivers all the features you'd want. Any other smartwatch will take limitations due to how Apple controls iOS. Thankfully, the Apple Watch Serial iv is our favorite smartwatch, and it earned our Editor's Pick honour. It's the all-time smartwatch.
Check out our best smartwatches guide for more options.
How long will it last?
The sentinel is 5ATM and IP68 water resistant, classifying it as swim proof. I've worn it in the shower and saw no issues with watch afterward. The watch has great build quality and should last effectually two to 3 years before you'll see noticeable battery degradation.
Should you buy information technology?
Yep. At $200, the Galaxy Watch Active is a great value.
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Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 40mm,
Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/smartwatch-reviews/samsung-galaxy-watch-active-review/
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