Track Your Runs (and Everything Else) on Samsung’s New Galaxy Watch Active – runnersworld.com
Track Your Runs (and Everything Else) on Samsung’s New Galaxy Watch Active runnersworld.com
The Galaxy Watch Active is lightweight and loaded with wellness-oriented features for $200.
Price: $200
Weight: 46g (with strap)
The right watch for: Runners who fastidiously track their wellness and prioritize phone-less music playback
The new Samsung Galaxy Watch Active presents a holistic approach to fitness and wellness tracking. With built-in GPS and an accelerometer, the device automatically detects walking, running, and cycling, and users can manually track 39 different activities. In conjunction with the Samsung Health app (available for Android and iOS phones), the Galaxy Watch Active sends you personalized notifications related to your stress levels, sleep habits, and overall activity level (it’ll tell you to get off your butt if you’ve been sitting too long). The watch itself is thin and lightweight—our test model weighed 46 grams with the 20mm rubber straps attached—and the smooth glass screen doesn’t get caught on clothing, so the device effectively disappears on your wrist.
It’s competent as a running watch, too. During testing, it automatically detected and tracked my runs (it was hit or miss automatically detecting my bike rides, if that matters to you). You can also start a run manually, and although there are only two buttons, the touch screen works well enough with sweaty hands. It wouldn’t be my pick for intervals, as there’s no “lap” feature and the running-specific data fields can disappear and require some touch screen navigation to retrieve, but the auto-pause feature makes the watch perfectly convenient for regular stop-and-go efforts. At press time, Strava had just become available for the watch, but we haven’t had a chance to test the feature (we’ll update this review with our Strava compatibility impressions soon). An optical heart rate sensor tracks your ticker while you’re running and resting, and a blood pressure feature is currently in beta—users will be able to sign up for the trial on March 15.
Spotify premium users can download songs and playlists onto the watch’s 4 GB internal storage and listen to music sans phone—a big feature for a $200 watch. Samsung claims the watch battery is good for 24 hours of normal use; using WiFi, Spotify, GPS, and doing general fiddling, I averaged closer to 15 hours of battery life over five days of testing (low power mode limits the features you can use but increases battery life to 45 hours). The Galaxy Watch Active is probably best for runners who want to track and interact with every available health and wellness metric. For everyone else, it’s still a sleek smartwatch that plays music without a phone, which is tough to beat for $200.
Paired-Down Hardware and Lots of Tech
Compared to the Samsung Gear Sport, the brand’s previous non-LTE smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch Active maintains a smooth, low profile. The Gear Sport’s rotating bezel is gone in favor of a slightly smaller AMOLED display, which makes menu scrolling a bit slower. You control the watch with two buttons and the touch screen, which worked 90 percent as well with sweaty fingertips. Inside, there’s 4 GB of memory, connectivity to Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, and NFC (for Samsung Pay). The watch comes with a wireless charger, and Samsung Galaxy S10 users can charge the watch from the back of their phone. Sensors include an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a barometer, an optical heart rate sensor, and ambient light monitoring. And there’s GPS, courtesy of Russia’s GLONASS satellite network.
What’s in It for Runners
Starting a run isn’t as quick as it is on a dedicated running watch: You have to wake up the watch, open Samsung Health, select “Record your workout,” hit a button that says “Work out,” select “Running,” and then you’re on your way. Once you’ve begun, real-time data fields report your run time, distance, heart rate, and calories burned. The auto-pause feature doesn’t let you linger at rest too long before stopping the watch, so although it’s not the quickest to navigate, you generally don’t have to touch the Galaxy Watch Active until you’re done with the jaunt.
Workouts automatically sync to Samsung Health once you’re near your phone, and you can track your runs either in the app or via third-party apps like Strava, Endomondo, and Under Armour Record. Post-run, you can also see your average pace, cadence, and max heart rate. The auto-record feature will realize you’re running after a few seconds and start a run if you haven’t done so manually; it’s good for forgetful runners and reliable enough to use in lieu of manual input, which makes starting runs a lot easier.
What the Galaxy Watch Active shares with more expensive watches like the Apple Watch and the Garmin VivoActive 3 Music is the ability to bring your tunes on the run without your phone. Granted, you must be a Spotify Premium subscriber, but the streaming service worked flawlessly when I downloaded my playlists via the (included) Spotify watch app. Playing music did seem to drain the battery faster, and the power-saving mode doesn’t allow you to start runs or play music.
Wellness-Oriented Features
To get the most out of the Galaxy Watch Active and the accompanying Samsung Health app, you have to be someone who’s into tracking health and wellness. The watch’s heart rate monitor tracks your sleep (although then you’ll have to find another time to charge it), and you can input and edit your food intake within the app. Samsung has also partnered with the subscription-based wellness app Calm, which sends you vibration notifications to breathe when the watch detects rising stress levels. (There’s a 1-week free trial for Samsung phone users, if you’d like to explore the app’s guided meditation exercises and bedtime stories by Matthew McConaughey.) If you put the work in, the watch and app offer a holistic picture of your physical state and help you track your progress over time.