Apple Watch 5 vs. Galaxy Watch Active 2 By CNET

Apple and Samsung makes some of the best smartwatches you can buy, but how do you decide which one is right for you? This is Apple Watch Series, 5, vs, Samsung Galaxy watch active 2. Now a lot of people have been asking for this comparison, so I'm going to dive into everything from Fitness features to Smart, Watch features and, of course, the all-important battery life. So, let's start with fitness tracking, because both of these smartwatches also do double duty, as fitness trackers I've used them for several weeks across a variety of different workouts, and I've been pretty impressed with the results from both when it comes to heart rate, tracking I definitely found when I'd started a workout. The galaxy watches active was giving me BPM readings that were maybe 10 or 15 BPM more than the Apple Watch, and a little higher than I would have expected when I was pretty much doing nothing at the start of the workout. However, once the workout had been going on for a couple of minutes, the galaxy watch active and the Apple Watch will both fairly consistent within about 5 BPM of each other. So I was pretty happy with that results.

Both have lots of different workouts that you can track, and I really appreciate that there is a wide variety of exercises available on both the galaxy watch. Active was a little over enthusiastic when it came to Auto, detecting workouts now both say that they kick in after around 10 minutes and say walking or running. If you forget to start the activity I found that when I was looking at the workouts in this Samsung health app, there were definitely more Auto Detective workouts from the Galaxy watch. Then there were from the Apple Watch in the activity and health apps. Both have some tools to help you, when you are doing outdoor, runs to keep an eye on your pace and your general metrics, the Galaxy watch active, has a running coach that gives you both on-screen cues and in-ear cues to let you know your pace and your BPM.

The Apple Watch also has pace alerts to let you know if you're falling below a desired pace that you want to set yourself at the start of the run I like both of them. They both work pretty well, however, the Galaxy watch active has this super robotic voice that speaks in your ear. It's the s-health voice, and it's just like it's just very nice or the s voice. I think it's called not great, doesn't sound very appealing, so for that reason, I probably just prefer having an alert on the wrist like the Apple Watch, but it's nice that it's there both these watches have built-in GPS. So you don't need to take your phone with you when you are on a run, to get your pace and distance information and both of them work pretty seamlessly a few updates.

Later after the Galaxy watch, active first came out, and I found, it's definitely a lot more consistent. It's a lot quicker to lock onto a GPS signal as well. Now a lot of people had spoken about the Galaxy watch active too, and the GPS accuracy, so I decided to test this out. So I took out a phone with Strata on it. Recording then I was recording the activity on both the Apple Watch and the Galaxy watch active in the workouts out separately, and then I sync them all together with instar and looked at the activities and I have to say the GPS was fairly spot-on for both of them.

So I don't think there were too many issues there. The Apple Watch uses a ring based system to keep an eye on your activity, whereas the Samsung Galaxy watch active, has a heart based system. This is really a personal preference. I like the Rings a little more. It just seems to be a little easy to interpret than the heart based system when it comes to the apps, though Samsung does win this one, because it's just a lot easier to find that data, rather than looking in the two different apps that the Apple Watch has, so Apple Watch has the health and activity app, and it's just a little hard to work out where you need to find your workout data in the Samsung health app.

It's really easy to find it's fairly consolidated, and you also get a nice breakdown of your heart rate zones which I really like, and you don't get that in the first party Apple Watch apps. Let's talk about some other health features that these watches can track. The big one is that the Galaxy watch active two. Does sleep tracking natively and the Apple Watch Series? Five doesn't? Yes, there are third-party apps, but I want to see it natively on the Apple Watch. The Galaxy has stress tracking I, don't know if you find that useful I, definitely don't and the Apple Watch has sound detection gives you an alert if the environment is too noisy, and it also has a decibel reading in it.

So I guess if you want to find out the sound level of something else around you do that the Apple Watch also has full detection and the ability to call emergency services plus high-low and irregular heartbeat readings. The Galaxy watch active also gives you those high and low heartbeat readings, although you do need to set the heart rate monitor to be constantly reading. In order to get that information now, let's talk s e-g, because both of these watches technically have it. On the Apple Watch Series five, its FDA cleared and available in several countries, including the US, the galaxy watch, active 2 has ECG, but it's invader, and it doesn't work. There's no way for you as a customer to actually see how it works at the moment.

Samsung couldn't give me a timing about when to expect it either. So don't hold your breath both of the watches come in two different sizes, either a forty or forty-four millimeter watch faces and square versus round. I guess is the next question that you need to ask yourself which one of these do you prefer I think it really depends on the application. I think that the Galaxy watch acted, looks gorgeous and premium on the wrist and looks more like a traditional watch, whereas the Apple Watch. For me, it's actually easy to read notifications on a square screen, so I guess there are trade-offs there I, don't like the look of the Apple Watch as much as I.

Do the galaxy watch active, but there are advantages that it has in different ways. Both of them also have an always-on display, and it's color, although if you do turn it on, so you will be able to see the time on your wrist all the time without raising to wake it will affect battery life, and I'll talk about that shortly. Touch bezel or digital crown. Now those are the two main ways that you can navigate around these watches. Apart from using the touch screen, of course, I really like the galaxy watch active and the touch bezel, you move your finger around the outside honor that bezel, and you'll be able to feel some haptic feedback, and it will actually let you know on the screen.

Of course, what settings you're changing the digital crown on the Apple Watch is tried and true. It just works all the time and I really like how you can use it to not only adjust things like changing between menu settings, but also the volume when you are on a workout, for example, and listening to music in the app, so I think they both have their advantages. In terms of actually a quick feature, digital crown wins it to me, but I, just like playing with the touch bezel. It's just a lot of fun. The Galaxy watch active comes in an aluminum or a stainless steel finish, whereas the Apple Watch has a couple more, it adds ceramic and titanium, although the cost does go up.

If you choose those more premium finishes both our water-resistant to track your swims and let's talk about watch faces because for me this is a very important part of the design in terms of making the watch feel more like your own. The galaxy watches. Active 2 has a lot more watch faces, including third party watch faces, whereas the Apple Watch is a lot more limited. Yes, you can customize and add complications and change colors, although I find myself quickly getting bored with those stock watch faces that are on watch, OS, 6 I would just love to see a third party watch face or some extra options, whereas the Galaxy watch active also lets you do this cool thing where you can take a photo of the outfit you're wearing, and it lets you match. The watch face colors to the colors of your outfit.

Maybe you think it's gimmicky, but I kind of like it. It's kind of my thing when it comes to Smartwatch features. Both of these Watchers do a great job. They receive notifications from your phone. You can be really granular and choose which ones come through.

You can accept and reject calls install apps lots of different things. Furthermore, you can do with them. The main differences come down to the operating system and the selection of third-party apps. So when it comes to third-party apps, I definitely think that the Apple Watch has a couple more in terms of the selection that you can get the galaxy watch. Active 2 does have quite a few third-party apps I'll.

Give you that, although there's a lot of them that don't work that well compared to what you can find on the Apple Watch watch OS on the Apple Watch vs. Ti zen on the Galaxy watch. Active ? I think both are really fully fledged Smartwatch operating systems and I like how Ti zen gives you the option to customize widgets, really get quiet granular in what you can do with it compared to watch OS 6, although I think that the Apple Watch and watch OS 6 is just a lot smoother, and it just has fewer problems overall in terms of some bagginess and things like that, compared to the galaxy watch, active Bixby or Siri. Do you care about the digital assistant, because both of them live on your wrist? If you want to be able to use your voice to send messages or start workouts I, don't think either of them of that great. But overall Siri is a little more responsive and just understands my voice a bit better than Bixby does both that you store music on your wrist, whether that's music, you own all, being able to store music for listening offline from a music streaming service such as Spotify or Apple Music, and it really comes down to which of those services that you use.

If you're a premium subscriber on either Apple Music on the Apple Watch, you can do that or Spotify on the Galaxy watch active I'm, a Spotify person, so the integration on the galaxy watch active is really nice. For me, both of these watches also have an LTE option, which comes at a premium price, of course, and you'll need to use obviously an iPhone with the Apple Watch. It's not Android compatible whatsoever and on the Galaxy watch. Active you'll need an Android phone at the time that I recorded this to use. LTE and you'll also need to double-check what your carrier supports.

So some carriers will only support LTE on galaxy phone, not an Android phone in general so make sure to check this table, and I've linked. It in the description below just so, you can double-check that you'll be able to use LTE on your watch and, of course, if you're not interested in LTE on your wrist to make calls and things while you're on the go. They both come in a regular Bluetooth option with GPS mobile payments are available on both either Apple Pay or Samsung pay, and it is NFC only. Unfortunately, you won't get that nice. Samsung pay feature of being able to use your phone anywhere at any terminal, even if it doesn't have contactless payments.

It's just NFC tap to pay on both of these watches. I'm going to be the bearer of bad news and tell you that the battery life on both of these watches is not that great. The galaxy watches active 2 overall has a little better battery life than the Apple Watch. Although there are a couple of caveats there, so let's talk about the always-on display. This obviously affects battery life and with the Apple Watch, if you have that turned on you'll only get an entire day's worth of use out of it.

That's around 18 hours before you'll need to recharge on the Galaxy watch, active 2 you'll get about one and a half days with the always-on display turned on with the display turned off. However, it's a little of a different story: I managed to get almost two days out of the Apple Watch and the same on the Galaxy watch active 2 if you're doing an outdoor workout, while listening to music and with the always-on display turned on the Galaxy watch active, will take a bit of a beating when it comes to the battery life. It won't be a pretty sight. After 30 minutes, your battery will deteriorate probably from 40 to 15%, which is not that great. The Apple Watch was a little better in terms of managing battery life during a workout and listening to music.

It didn't decrease as rapidly, and it still kept pretty consistent overall in terms of that all-day battery life that I mentioned, and it wouldn't be a comparison without talking about price, because there is a fair amount of difference between these two. These series, 5 Apple Watch, is $400 for the non LTE version $500 with LTE in the US, and that's just a price. Of course. If you want different finishes, the price goes up. The galaxy watch active is two hundred and eighty dollars for the base, forty millimeter versions without LTE, and there goes up to around four hundred and thirty dollars, plus, if you are choosing the LTE version and in a larger size overall I think the decision really comes down to which one is right for you dependent on which phone you have, because if you're an iPhone user yeah, you can use the galaxy watch active to, but you won't get as many features and the experience is just going to be a lot better if you use an Android or specifically a Samsung Galaxy phone, if you have an iPhone, obviously just get the Apple Watch, it's going to be the better overall experience thanks so much for watching, and let me know which one you choose down in the comments below or leave me a comment with any questions that you have about.

Either of these two watches and don't forget to check out the full reviews of the Apple Watch, Series five and the Samsung Galaxy watch active two over there.

Source : CNET