IIswitched from an iPhone to the Google Pixel 2 a few years ago after thinking about the move for a long time. My Apple Watch had held me back. The watch is an expensive device, but it would be rendered a paperweight if I used a Pixel full time, because Apple doesn\u2019t allow it to work with Android phones. There were few alternative watches that would work with my Pixel \u2014 or at least few that seemed at all appealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, I still decided to change over to a Pixel, which had become compelling enough despite the lack of Apple Watch support, and gave up wearing a smartwatch altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now I\u2019ve finally found a smartwatch I\u2019m willing to wear again, from an unexpected source: Samsung\u2019s Galaxy Watch Active2. Awful naming aside, it\u2019s one of the strongest competitors to the Apple Watch I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Companies like Fossil and Misfit make wearables that run Google\u2019s Wear OS, while FitBit and Withings churn out smartwatches focused on fitness or aesthetics. For the most part, smartwatches like the TicWatch look decent online, but are thick and chunky to wear in real life. They feel more like knock-off spy watches than accessories. Worse still, Wear OS devices are notorious for poor battery life and aren\u2019t likely to get updates for the long haul \u2014 manufacturers don\u2019t make money from keeping the software up to date, so they simply ignore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Samsung\u2019s Active2, though, works with any device, looks great, and can make it almost two days on a single charge (not bad, given Apple targets 18 hours of battery life with its Series 5 watch).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s most surprising about the Active2 is an attention to detail that\u2019s rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The difference starts with its appearance. I have wanted a circular smartwatch ever since the Moto 360 debuted and ultimately disappointed back in 2014; the shape looks natural for a watch. The Samsung\u2019s Active2 is also slim enough to hide under a shirt or sweater, and small enough that it doesn\u2019t seem like a smartwatch at all. The always-on display, especially with circular analog watch faces, helps it blend in even better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s most surprising about the Active2 is an attention to detail that\u2019s rare. The edges of its round display, for instance, can be used as a way to scroll through the UI\u2014dragging your finger around the edge to the right scrolls down, and to the left scrolls up. While the bezel doesn\u2019t physically move as it does in previous generations of Samsung smartwatches, it understands touch, and it\u2019s more intuitive as a way to interact with a watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of the watch\u2019s other features take advantage of the round display. The \u201cMy Day\u201d watch face, for example, places reminders of the day\u2019s meetings around the edges of the display, which is a helpful way to see what\u2019s coming up for the entire day without jumping into an app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though not specifically targeted at fitness tracking like some of its competitors, the Active2 delivers on health features as well. While many watches require you to manually specify when a workout has begun, the Active2 automatically logs workouts, so that you don\u2019t need to explicitly indicate you\u2019re out for a run or cycle. After 10 minutes of activity, a little vibration notifies you the workout has started \u2014 which is so much better than fidgeting around with menus to get a workout kicked off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Active2 has other thoughtful fitness prompts, clearly inspired by the Apple Watch, like a \u201cheart\u201d that fills up (similar to the Apple Watch\u2019s rings) as you exercise and go about your day. But the Active2\u2019s prompts go even further than Apple Watch\u2019s prompts: Rather than pushing you to simply stand up hourly, the Active2 detects and shows inactivity, prompting a short walk or stretch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I tested the Bluetooth version of the Active2, but I\u2019m thinking of returning it for a refund so I can buy the LTE version, which would allow me to stream music, as well as get calls and notifications on the go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I most want from my smartwatch is the option to leave my phone at home entirely while I go for a run or cycle \u2014 or even just to escape scrolling through social media for a while \u2014 and Samsung might be the first brand to truly pull it off. The Apple Watch only allows Apple Music to sync offline. With the Active2, you can sync the device to Bluetooth headphones directly and use a Spotify integration to play play music offline while still doing GPS tracking on a run with the Strava watch app, finally free of wires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had worried that the Active2\u2019s battery life wouldn\u2019t be good enough. For the last two years, I\u2019ve worn a Withings Steel HR, which only needs charging once every month. The Apple Watch I wore before that needed to be charged much more frequently \u2014 about once every two days \u2014 and I rarely remembered to charge it before the battery died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite my fears, I was delighted by the Bluetooth Active2: Every night after a full day\u2019s use \u2014 including workout tracking \u2014 I dropped it onto the magnetic charger with a solid 60% of battery life leftover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Samsung didn\u2019t get everything right with the Active2. One of the biggest pain points is its app store. Samsung has its own entire ecosystem of apps, if you\u2019re noton a Samsung phone like the Note 10, you need to install three separate apps to even get started with the watch. That\u2019s notincluding the Samsung Health app, which you\u2019ll also need if you want health data on your phone andthe third-party syncing app for Google Fit if you want your data in there instead of Samsung\u2019s silo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike the Apple Watch, Active2 allows third-party watch faces, but almost all of them are terrible. And its app store does a terrible job of showcasing watch faces that aren\u2019t hideous. Instead, it shows a giant list of poor quality designs before you eventually find a good one buried at the bottom. That\u2019s a shame, really, because the included watch faces are really good\u2014 they show off interesting ways to take advantage of the display, and I found myself wanting even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Active2 has other minor quirks, like coming with always-on display disabled by default and burying the setting to turn it on yourself deep in a menu. Samsung did the same with the setting for the bezel-scrolling feature, which is also disabled out of the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there\u2019s Bixby, Samsung\u2019s voice assistant. Settings need to be disabled in multiple places to avoid accidentally triggering it on the watch. And Samsung wouldn\u2019t let me use a different, more capable assistant, like Alexa or Google Assistant. I found myself even wishing Siriwas on this watch, something that I\u2019ve never wanted any other time in the past \u2014 Bixby is that bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, amongst all of these quirks and annoyances, the Active2 is surprisingly delightful. It delivers a good smartwatch alternative for anyone who is notdeeply invested in the Apple ecosystem (it works with an iPhone too, but has limited functionality due to Apple restrictions), at a fraction of the price \u2014 and with great aesthetics on top. I went in with low expectations, but was delighted to find myself enjoying wearing a smartwatch again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re in the market for a watch that isn\u2019tthe Apple Watch, the Galaxy Active2 is what you should get. Samsung has delivered something for everyone, and the quality is at the level you\u2019d actually wantto wear on your wrist, rather than hide it up to your sleeve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IIswitched from an iPhone to the Google Pixel 2 a few years ago after thinking about the move for a long time. My Apple Watch had held me back. The watch is an expensive device, but it would be rendered a paperweight if I used a Pixel full time, because Apple doesn\u2019t allow it to … Continue reading “There\u2019s Finally a Decent Smartwatch for Android”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[6,187],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronic-product","tag-android","tag-smartwatch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tech-battery.com\/batteriesblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}