Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review 2024: for fitness enthusiasts

The Galaxy Watch 6 is the best Samsung watch to date as a result of upgrades to its design, updated built-in applications, and more health tracking features. In recent years, most of the updates made to Samsung’s smartwatch series have been minor improvements known as incremental updates. However, the Galaxy Watch 6 features some significant advancements.

With not one but two wearable devices, Samsung maintains its position as having one of the most extensive collections of smartwatches available on the market. The Galaxy Watch 6 strikes a balance between being elegant and sporty, while the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic takes design to the next level by adding the much-loved physical rotating bezel to the watch. The design is also more user-friendly as a result of the larger displays and the redesigned mechanism for the replaceable bands.

Having said that, the performance specifications and features of both Galaxy 6 watches are identical. The Galaxy Watch 6 devices interface with the larger Galaxy ecosystem and offer certain updated app experiences. These devices are powered by a customized version of Wear OS developed by Samsung. As part of its strategy to market the Galaxy Watch 6 as an all-encompassing fitness tracker, Samsung has placed a particular emphasis on the wellness features related to sleep and heart health.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Specifications

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic stands out due to the return of a physical rotating bezel, early reports from briefings and hands-on sessions suggest that the regular Watch 6 is only a minor enhancement to an already solid wearable.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review: Design and Screen

Although the 40mm and 44mm sizes are identical, there are very slight variations in the actual proportions, and Samsung will not be deviating from the circular form. The body of the Watch 6 is marginally more svelte, and it features a bezel size reduction that enables it to accommodate a screen that is twenty percent more expansive.
We like how extremely lightweight the Watch 6 is, and the fact that the smaller 40mm version that we tested for this review is really comfortable to wear. This is something that is very crucial when it comes to tracking both your workouts and your sleep. We believe the round shape and thin profile provide an air of sophistication to this, but it’s possible that your tastes go in a different direction.

The Apple Watch 6 has a screen made of sapphire glass, much like its predecessor had, and the bottom of the timepiece is also made of sapphire glass. This is excellent news, as sapphire is reported to be approximately sixty percent more resistant to scratches than conventional glass. It has been our experience that sapphire does not become scratched even after years of wearing a watch, which makes the upgrading to sapphire a very desirable one.

Features and Fitness Tracking

The memory capacity of the Galaxy Watch 6 has been increased from 1.5 gigabytes to 2 gigabytes, and Samsung has implemented the most recent version of its Exynos W930 central processing unit, which the company claims would increase clock speed by 18 percent. During our first encounter, the watch demonstrated outstanding speed; nevertheless, in order to determine the full impact of these adjustments, we will need to do more in-depth analyses.

The capability of these wearables to monitor a user’s health, fitness, and sleep patterns is the key selling point for purchasing one. Even while the Watch 6 doesn’t bring about any substantial reorganizations, it does bring about some modest improvements. The sleep monitoring feature tracks your body temperature while you are asleep and gives you access to optional sleep coaching, snore detection, and a sleep score.

It also makes use of endearing animated creatures to depict your sleep quality, which is similar to recent changes that have been seen in Apple’s WatchOS revisions. The general improvements that have been implemented into the Galaxy Watch 6 indicate to a continuing of Samsung’s dedication to improving the health and fitness tracking capabilities of their wearable devices.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6: Software

We were somewhat aback when we learned that the Galaxy Watch 6 would be releasing with WearOS 4, as the user interface is virtually identical to that of last year’s models. That’s because it runs WearOS behind the company’s own shell, OneUI 5 Watch, which will feel familiar to anyone who has previously owned a Samsung smartphone. The UI is intuitive because it includes well-defined icons, contrasting colors, straightforward navigation, and convenient keyboard shortcuts. Widgets can be flipped between with a left and right swipe of the watch face.

If you’d rather not use the touchscreen, you can always resort to the two buttons on the side. Different watch faces are readily available, and so are Samsung’s in-house applications. That features Samsung Health, which compiles data from the optical and electrical heart rate sensors to provide you a complete picture of your health and fitness. If you have a separate monitor to calibrate it with, it may record your electrocardiogram (ECG), blood oxygen levels, skin temperature, heart rate, and even blood pressure. In addition to a dedicated mode for track running, users may also customize their own heart rate zones to ensure they remain in the fat-burning or cardio zones throughout their workout.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review: Features and Performance

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and the more expensive Galaxy Watch 6 Classic are the first smartwatches anywhere to come with Google’s new Wear OS 4 platform right out of the box. More than anything, it’s great to see Google commit to regular updates for Wear OS, similar to how Apple updates watchOS once a year. This makes wearables like the Galaxy Watch 6 a better investment than smartwatches from the past.

One of the perks of Wear OS 4 is better sleep tracking, which uses the Watch 6’s temperature sensor to keep an eye on any changes during the night and can also give you information about the different stages of your sleep. Compared to the Whoop Strap 4.0, the Galaxy Watch 6 was right on the money when it came to how long I was in bed and how many times I woke up during the night. However, it always recorded me as having far more light sleep than I actually did, which messed up the numbers for deep and REM sleep.

It’s too bad, because the Samsung Health app has some great written information about sleep stages, and just like last year, it uses cute little animals to figure out what kind of sleeper you are. If you don’t care too much about the details and just want to improve your circadian rhythm as a whole, you should be fine with this, but if you want more accurate sleep tracking, you might want to try the Whoop Strap or the Oura Ring 3.

The Watch 6 can also keep track of your menstrual cycle. This was a great addition to the Apple Watch 8, so it’s great to see it here as well. All of these new features are made possible by the upgraded Exynos W930 chipset, which has a faster working speed of 1.4GHz and runs all of these new features. I’ll admit that the Galaxy Watch 5 never felt slow when I used it, so it’s hard for me to see a big improvement in speed. However, everything still runs smoothly, and Samsung’s UI may show Wear OS at its best, with the Pixel Watch coming in a close second.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review: battery life

A little improvement will be made to each and every battery that powers one of the devices in the Galaxy Watch 6 series. The smaller Galaxy Watch 6 is 40 millimeters in diameter and has a 300 milliampere-hour battery, while the larger Galaxy Watch 6 measures 44 millimeters and has a 425 milliampere-hour battery. The Galaxy Watch 5 with a 44 millimeter case has a battery of 410 milliampere-hours (mAh), but the battery on the Galaxy Watch 5 with a 40 millimeter case only had 284 mAh.

It has been determined that the two watches will each have a lifespan of 40 hours if the always-on display is disabled, but only 30 hours if it is enabled. People who want a smartwatch with the longest possible battery life can still purchase the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, which comes equipped with an 80-hour life for its battery.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6: Voice Calls and Haptics

The Galaxy Watch 6 is equipped with a microphone and may be used to make and receive voice calls. If you purchase the cellular version of the watch and sign up for a service plan, you will be able to make phone calls directly from the watch without needing to use your own phone. The haptics are OK, but the vibration input isn’t as exact as it is on the Apple Watch, and the haptics, in general, feel a little bit less clear than they do on the Apple Watch.

Final Words

While we applaud the addition of a rotating bezel to the Watch 6 Classic, we must stress that the standard Watch 6 is not in any way inferior. Since they share the same hardware and software, their functionality and aesthetic appeal should be equal.

Unanswered questions about battery life and fitness tracking necessitate a more in-depth evaluation. However, preliminary impressions suggest that Samsung has simplified an already superb smartwatch even further.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review: The good and The bad

The Galaxy Watch 6 has its own set of improvements and costs less than the Galaxy Watch 5. The screen is bigger and has more pixels. The chip inside is faster, and there’s also more memory and a bigger battery.

Questions and Answers