Five years since the first táo bị cắn dở Watch & a full seven years on from Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, we know what a smartwatch is. We know that it’s not going khổng lồ replace your điện thoại cảm ứng anytime soon, that it will need to lớn be charged every day or two, và that its best functions are for fitness tracking và seeing notifications when your phone isn’t in your hand.
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Samsung’s latest smartwatch, the $399-and-up Galaxy Watch 3, does not bởi anything lớn change those expectations. In fact, there isn’t much difference between the Galaxy Watch 3 và any smartwatch that’s come out in the past few years — at least in terms of bộ vi xử lý core functionality. If you’ve managed khổng lồ ignore or avoid smartwatches for the past half-decade, the Watch 3 isn’t going khổng lồ change your mind or win you over.
None of that is lớn say the Galaxy Watch 3 is a bad smartwatch or even a bad product. On the contrary, the Watch 3 fulfills the definition và expectations that we’ve accepted for smartwatches perfectly adequately. It does the things we expect a smartwatch to vị — track your activity & provide quick access khổng lồ notifications — just fine. And if you’re an app android (or even better, a Samsung) phone owner looking for a new smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 3 is a fine pick.
Our reviews of Samsung Galaxy Watch 3
Verge Score 7.5 out of 10
Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 specs
Size: 45mm (45 x 46.2 x 11.1 mm, 53.8g) or 41mm (41 x 42.5 x 11.3 mm, 48.2g)Strap size: 22mm (45mm) / 20mm (41mm)Material: stainless steel, Gorilla Glass DXDisplay: 1.4-inch (45mm) / 1.2-inch (41mm) 360 x 360 px OLED with full màu sắc always-on functionBattery: 340mAh (45mm) / 247mAh (41mm)Processor: Samsung Exynos 9110 dual-core at 1.15GHzRAM: 1GBStorage: 8GBWireless: bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, NFC, GPS / Glonass / Beidou / Galileo, LTE (optional)Color: “mystic bronze” (41mm), “mystic black” (45mm), “mystic silver” (41mm & 45mm)Compatible with apk 5.0 & up / game ios 9.0 and upPrice: $399 & upThe Watch 3 is also slightly smaller & lighter than the Galaxy Watch. But make no mistake, this is not a small watch. I’ve been testing the larger 45mm variant, & it’s big và thick on my average-sized wrists. Those with small wrists will also likely find the 41mm version too big to lớn wear. If you like big watches, you’ll be happy here, but if you’re looking for something sleeker & smaller, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 is a better choice.
Samsung did increase the form size of the display on the 45mm version lớn 1.4 inches, which is actually quite large and makes the watch look even bigger on the wrist. (The 41mm version has the same 1.2-inch screen as the 40mm Watch Active 2 & 42mm Galaxy Watch.) It’s a bright, colorful display with a sharp resolution that’s easy lớn see both indoors và out. My only issue is that it can be hard to lớn see the screen through polarized sunglasses, requiring me khổng lồ turn my arm awkwardly or lift my shades to check the time. It also has a full-color always-on function so you can read the time without touching the watch or waving your arm around, as all smartwatches should.
You can get either kích thước watch in Bluetooth-only or LTE-equipped versions for a reasonable $50 more; I’ve been testing the Bluetooth mã sản phẩm and haven’t had any major issues with it staying connected khổng lồ my Galaxy S20.
Perhaps the best advantage of the Watch 3 over the Active line is its physically rotating bezel, which you can use khổng lồ scroll through the interface. It’s extremely satisfying và easy khổng lồ use, và it’s the best way to lớn navigate a smartwatch that I’ve tried. I much prefer it lớn the touch-sensitive bezel on the Active & Active 2.
The face of the watch isn’t flush lượt thích on the Active models, however. Its bezel is raised, which makes it harder lớn easily swipe through the interface on the screen. It does provide a bit of protection from bumps & dings on the screen, but it also makes the watch thicker overall.
As Samsung’s most expensive smartwatch, the Watch 3 has nicer materials and build unique than the Active line. It features stainless steel instead of aluminum, metal pushers instead of plastic, Gorilla Glass DX on đứng top of the display, an 810G mil spec durability rating, và 5ATM of water resistance. Tolerances are tight, the buttons are satisfying, và the overall construction befits the Watch 3’s higher price tag. An even more expensive titanium model will also be available in the future.
In the box is a leather strap instead of the usual rubber options, which further indicates that this watch is meant for everyday use more than at the gym. The strap isn’t particularly high-quality leather, but it’s comfortable khổng lồ wear. You can easily change it out to a rubber one (20mm for the smaller version, 22mm for the larger model) for more active uses.
An area that Samsung could certainly improve is the vibration motor. Unlike the hãng apple Watch’s informative clicks and taps, the Watch 3’s vibrations are buzzy và annoying, with little variance to lớn differentiate a new message from an incoming call or hourly chime. Samsung’s phones have gotten much better haptics in recent years; it really should bring that system khổng lồ the wearables, too.
Performance
Like the last few generations of Samsung smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 3 has a fast interface that’s easy to lớn quickly swipe or scroll through. The Watch 3 has the same processor as the Active 2, but the RAM has been slightly increased lớn 1GB total. It also has twice as much storage (8GB) for saving music playlists directly lớn the watch.Compared khổng lồ a Wear OS watch, the Galaxy Watch 3 is much faster and easier lớn use, with performance on par with recent apple Watch models. It still can take a few beats to launch a third-party phầm mềm (which you probably won’t be doing often; more on that later), but Samsung’s own apps & the widgets load quickly and provide most of the info you’re likely khổng lồ need.
Samsung claims “up khổng lồ two days” of battery life, but in my tests, it was kicking the bucket at around a day và a half, sooner if it was a particularly active day with workout tracking. You can extend the battery life by disabling the always-on display & enabling battery-saving modes that dumb down the features, but doing that also defeats the purpose of wearing a smartwatch.
Overall, this is a watch that you’ll still be charging every day or so. That makes it hard to use for sleep tracking since the most convenient time to lớn charge it is when you’re sleeping. Charging the watch is also still a slow process, taking up khổng lồ two hours lớn fully fill the battery. Fast charging is a feature that’s been game-changing on smartphones for years, but it hasn’t yet come to lớn smartwatches.
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Software
Samsung’s watches all use its in-house Tizen operating system, which hasn’t changed much in the past few years. Not that it’s really had khổng lồ — its kiến thiết works well on the constrained size of a smartwatch screen, & the layout of widgets và notifications is easy lớn parse. The messaging phầm mềm will now display pictures và emoji as well as the conversation history on incoming messages. There are also a couple of new gesture controls: silencing alarms or incoming calls with a shake of your wrist or opening và closing your fist lớn answer a call. Both worked in my tests, surprisingly.Agree lớn Continue: Samsung Galaxy Watch 3
Every smart device now requires you to lớn agree to lớn a series of terms và conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us khổng lồ read và analyze every single one of these agreements. But we’re going lớn start counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” lớn use devices when we đánh giá them since these are agreements most people don’t read và definitely can’t negotiate.
Although what you need lớn agree lớn may vary depending on what kind of phone you’re setting it up with, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 requires you to lớn agree to:
The Samsung Privacy policyA Samsung end User License agreementYou also have khổng lồ give the Samsung Wearable ứng dụng on your phone access to lớn location, storage, phone, contacts, SMS, calendar, điện thoại tư vấn logs, và other permissions for the watch to lớn function correctly.
These agreements are nonnegotiable; you cannot use the watch at all if you don’t agree lớn them.
There are many other optional agreements. Some of them — lượt thích the agreements for health tracking và voice services — are optional, but they will keep the watch from doing the core things you bought it for, lượt thích tracking steps or voice search.
Samsung Voice services Privacy Policy Find My Watch and Find My Phone location services acknowledgmentHERE mapping Terms of ServiceHERE mapping Privacy PolicyReport Diagnostic Info consentMarketing Information consentSamsung Health Terms và ConditionsSamsung Health Privacy PolicyFinal tally: two mandatory agreements, eight optional agreements. (Full disclosure: there may be more, but as a Samsung user, I already had a Samsung account & whatever agreements were necessary to lớn set that up.)
Where Samsung continues lớn struggle is in app support. There’s no native mapping app on the Watch 3, và the options available in Samsung’s tiện ích store are terrible. If you don’t keep all of your to-dos in Samsung’s Reminders app & instead use another service, you won’t likely find an app to manage them on the Watch 3. I could keep going, but the point is that if you’re looking for a specific app, chances are you won’t find it for the Watch 3, và you’ll spend most of your time using the apps that are preloaded on the watch.
On the positive side, those apps are mostly comprehensive (outside of the lack of a mapping app, as mentioned). There’s calendar, weather, Outlook for email, messages, Spotify (including the ability to download playlists offline), Samsung Health for fitness tracking, timer, stopwatch, alarms, world clock, voice recorder, Samsung Pay for mobile payments, và so on.
If you are using a Samsung phone, you likely have all of the necessary phone apps khổng lồ make the Watch 3 work out of the box. If you’re using any other app android phone, be prepared to install about half a dozen apps and services khổng lồ use all of the features on the Watch 3, including fitness tracking và mobile payments. It’s a hassle, và Samsung really should consolidate these down lớn a single app. (If you’re hoping lớn use the Watch 3 with an iPhone, my suggestion is: don’t. The messaging experience is poor, và the watch will just bởi fewer things than when it’s connected lớn an game android device. Just get an apple Watch.)
In terms of watchface options, Samsung does a number of things well & falls short in others. There are a few good options on the Watch 3 out of the box, including new riffs on Apple’s Infograph face that lets you customize an analog or digital face with a bunch of informational complications, và there’s a new animated weather face that automatically updates itself based on the time và your location. The Galaxy Apps store also has thousands of third-party watchfaces you can download and install.
But the vast majority of those third-party watchfaces are low quality — I spent the better part of an hour just scrolling through the store’s options khổng lồ find something that matched my tastes — and the customization options on Samsung’s own watchfaces are limited lớn predetermined complications. Inexplicably, some faces give you more complication options than others, và there’s no support for third-party complications, so it’s tough to lớn find an option that matches both your aesthetic preferences & what information you want it khổng lồ display.
Finally, while both Google’s Wear OS và the táo bị cắn Watch have relatively fast và competent voice assistants built in, which are useful for transcribing messages, setting timers, controlling smart trang chủ gadgets, and so on without having to lớn touch the watch, the Galaxy Watch 3 relies on Samsung’s Bixby assistant. Bixby, in case you somehow haven’t heard, is terrible, with slow, inconsistent responses and limited capabilities. An example: I often use voice commands khổng lồ set timers on my smartwatch when cooking, but when I ask Bixby lớn set a two-minute timer, it often takes 20 seconds lớn process the request and start the timer, which doesn’t help when I need precise timing. It’s often just faster & easier khổng lồ skip the voice commands on the Watch 3 entirely.
Fitness tracking
Though the Watch 3 is clearly designed for more everyday use as opposed lớn the fitness-focused Active line, it still comes with a handful of new fitness tracking features. In addition to the usual activity tracking, automatic workout detection, and heart rate monitoring, the Watch 3 now has enhanced sleep tracking, blood oxygen (SpO2) monitoring, and VO2 Max reporting. It also has a feature to automatically hotline an emergency tương tác when a fall is detected, lượt thích the táo Watch.I am not a fitness guru, so I am not the best judge of how reliable Samsung’s fitness tracking is, but prior models have been widely criticized for inaccurate reporting. I did have some trouble getting the blood oxygen monitoring function lớn work — it failed lớn get a reading on my SpO2 levels about 50 percent of the time — and the step counting was consistently 20 to 25 percent lower than the Fitbit Inspire HR I wore at the same time.
If it feels lượt thích I spent the majority of this review comparing how the Galaxy Watch 3 is different or the same as prior watches. That’s because there really isn’t that much new lớn cover here. Samsung has refined some aspects of its smartwatches, & the Watch 3 is nicer to lớn wear & a better device than the Galaxy Watch it replaces. But it still falls short in a handful of areas và doesn’t really change the smartwatch experience. This isn’t a generational leap forward by any means.
The other thing you have lớn consider is the price: at $399 to lớn start, the Watch 3 is a full $150 more expensive than the Active 2 for what amounts khổng lồ largely the same functionality. It does have the stainless steel body and rotating bezels, but those may or may not be worth the extra expense for you.
Hopefully, Samsung’s next watch will provide a more substantial improvement over what we experience now, whether that’s through significantly better battery life, additional capabilities, or something else that I haven’t even thought of. But until that arrives, Samsung makes fine smartwatches, và the Galaxy Watch 3 is the finest of them all.
