No longer just a fashion accessory, smartwatches recently gained popularity as fitness trackers and step counters but really took off when they evolved into the smartphone’s younger sibling.
While Apple continues to dominate the smartwatch market with a 26% share, brands such as Samsung and Garmin have been working away to offer competitive products focused on the Android user.
I purchased a Samsung Galaxy Watch4 about 18 months ago after several years of using a Fitbit and it was an incredible purchase, very well priced and more useful than I could have predicted.
Over the past week and a half, I’ve been getting to know the latest offering from Samsung, the Galaxy Watch6, which has just hit the shelves.
It looks almost identical to my Watch4, but boasts a range of improved functions including screen size, brightness, charging speed and battery life.
The specs
The watch comes in two sizes: 40mm and 44mm.
The smaller has a 1.3-inch display and a 300mAh battery, while the larger knocks it up to 1.5 inches and 425mAh. Both displays are covered by tough sapphire crystal.
They have the same 1.4 GHz Exynos W930 processor, 2GB of ram and 16GB storage, and both are water resistant up to five atmospheres (approximately 50 metres).
The 44mm model comes in either graphite or silver, and the 40mm in graphite or gold.
Ease of use
Setting up the Watch6 is as simple as turning it on and pairing it with your phone.
In my case, it was with my Samsung Galaxy S21.
Using Samsung’s Smartshare App, I was able to transfer all my current watch settings over to the new watch.
However, first-time users will need to set up the watch from scratch by following some straightforward prompts on the device itself.
Oddly enough, I was able to select English (NZ) as a language but unable to select New Zealand as my region, instead of going with the United Kingdom, though I’m unsure what effect, if any, this had on my experience.
Being provided with only a USB-C cable for a charger was an annoyance. (Image: BusinessDesk)
The way the watch works alongside your phone makes it seem like a welcome buddy for a smartphone rather than a pointless extra.
It has two buttons on one side of the watch face for "back" and "home". The rest of the navigation is done on the touchscreen with the directional flick of the finger.
It’s incredibly easy to get the hang of and, once you learn the layout of the watch, to navigate the main functions.
Charging involves just laying the watch on a magnetised wireless charger.
I was provided with only a USB-C cable for my charger, which is the way USB is heading, but it’s frustrating not to be given the option when all my charging sockets are standard USB.
Customisation is simple yet diverse: users are able to choose and change the watch face with ease through the device itself or their phone.
There are a ton of free or paid options for digital watch faces, from old-school analogue to basic digital, and even battery-hungry animated or data-rich options.
Downloading apps can be done through the play store on the watch itself, and many of the first-party apps have great functionality.
Buyers have a huge range of face options available – even animated ones, though these chew through the battery power. (Image: BusinessDesk)
I enjoyed being able to play Spotify from the watch through my soundbar at home or get navigational updates from my device when using the GPS.
The ability to store cards through either Samsung or Google Pay means that leaving your phone or wallet at home isn’t the end of the world.
Fitness, health & sleep
Smartwatches are designed to make tracking your health easy and accurate.
The Watch6 has sensors designed to track everything, from your workouts to your sleep, and can measure your BMI and muscle density.
Setting your goals is done through the Samsung Health App or on the watch in the same way.
The watch was intuitive enough to know that I was in the water and to start automatically tracking exercise, however not intuitive enough to know that I was simply drinking a beer in the spa. Good to know I still burned 148 calories.
Once the device has an idea of your targets, it will automatically customise reminders to help you achieve them.
I was impressed by the way the reminders were able to motivate me without being too frequent to become annoying or too infrequent to be unhelpful.
The watch would remind me to get moving, to consider getting ready for bed, and let me know how close I was to my daily fitness goals.
Through the Samsung Health app you can view detailed data on your exercise, including GPS tracking, specific workouts, heart rate and how it affects fat burn and cardio, and view your sleep patterns and behaviours.
There is also the ability to set the vibration-only watch alarm to wake you up during a window of time that best coincides with you naturally waking, so you wake feeling as refreshed as possible rather than when in a deep sleep.
None of this is new, but Samsung has found a great balance of richness of data without becoming too complicated to understand.
The battery
One thing I felt always restricted how much I could get out of my Galaxy4 was the battery life. With what I would consider moderate use, the watch still had to be charged at least once a day to be able to use its features overnight, which means I always had to plan a charging window before bed in order to be able to track my sleep.
The Samsung Galaxy 6’s increase in battery from 247mAh to 300mAh might not sound like a lot but makes a surprising amount of difference.
Being able to wear the watch for a decent 24-hour period with fairly high use definitely makes this model more appealing than previous versions in terms of battery life; add to this that it charges extremely quickly and it makes it a lot easier to make the most of wearing it rather than constantly worrying about keeping it alive.
Samsung claims that even with the “always-on display” mode activated, the watch should last up to 30 hours, but I found this a fairly bold exaggeration when I was using it.
I would recommend sticking to the movement-based activation or the button-press activation, as always-on drained the battery over the course of a day.
Verdict
Overall, the Galaxy Watch6 is another solid addition to Samsung's smartwatch offerings.
It is as user-friendly as previous versions and has the improved offerings of a much brighter screen, slightly faster processing speeds and longer battery life.
Coming in quite a bit cheaper than its nemesis, the Apple Watch 8, it still offers a great range of customisation options and tracking features and is really user-friendly.
However, with the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 now several hundred dollars cheaper, the noticeable differences between the two models are fairly minor and so the budget conscious among you may find just as much enjoyment and usefulness in the earlier version.
The Watch6 wasn’t impressive enough to make me want to trade in my 4, but it is a really decent piece of tech at a fairly competitive price.
