Galaxy Watch 3 Review: Amazing Design With One Small Problem By Mark Spurrell

Hey guys mark here- and this is the galaxy watch three- the newest smartwatch from Samsung. Now I've been a long time user of smartwatches, and I've had quite a few of them in the past, including Samsung's own gear, s3 frontier, that I reviewed almost two almost three years ago. I think this galaxy watch 3 has some shiny new features which we'll get into in just a minute. But first I want to talk about the design of this thing, which is mostly unchanged and that's a good thing. Smartwatches aren't always designed to feel like a traditional watch. In fact, some watches, like my Apple Watch Series 5, feel much more like a tiny smartphone than a wristwatch, with some smart features and for some people, that's okay, but there's no denying that the galaxy watch 3 looks and feels like it's trying to blend in with the world of timepieces, and I love that it's got a rounded 360 by 360 AMOLED display, surrounded by a beautiful rotating bezel, with tactile clicks for easy menu navigation.

The buttons are now rounded, and the top one has some classy galaxy watch branding on it. The band is now made from genuine leather, which is a step-up from the ugly silicone band that I used to have on the gear s3, but it does feel relatively cheap overall. Luckily, you can easily swap it out for a standard, 20 or 22 millimeter watch bands depending on what size watch you end up getting mine is the 45 millimeter variant and by golly. This thing is huge: I'm six foot three, so I've got pretty darn big hands and wrists, and this thing still looks like an absolute unit on my arm. It is a slight bit thinner and lighter than past models, but it is still a thick watch with a triple c.

The galaxy watch 3 is ip68 certified water resistant up to 50 feet, which should please the swimmers out there, but you'll probably want to swap out that watch band for something made of nylon or silicone, because leather doesn't fare well in water. You know what else doesn't fare well in water cardboard, like the box that ups dropped on my door. This morning, with my note, 20, ultra and note 20 inside, even though it's pouring rain outside, and they didn't put a bag on it or anything now, luckily, the phones are fine because they are also ip68 rated, like the watch review on this guy coming soon by the way so subscribe. If you haven't already to find out when that video drops in everyday use, this watch has been great. For me, it does all the things that you'd want a smartwatch to do very well.

It's got very strong, but quiet vibration, motors for notifications coming through from your phone. The display gets plenty bright when outdoors and plenty dim when the lights go down and battery life is decent as well more on that later, even the microphone and speaker on this watch is good. You shouldn't use it for recording a voice over, of course, but for making voice memos or taking a phone call it's ideal. As with all tech products, the watch does have some drawbacks, though, and to talk about the first one. We first need to go to the spec sheet.

This watch is running a dual-core: 1.15 gigahertz Enos processor, a single gigabyte of ram and only 8 gigabytes of storage. Now this is a watch, so it doesn't need a lot of processing power and Samsung's proprietary software called ti zen is fairly light, so it shouldn't be a problem, but if you've been in the tech sphere for a while, you know that Enos processors can be a little inconsistent and that's been my experience here as well. For the most part, the overall performance of the watch has been good. It's snappy enough in the menus and although it could do with some improvement, it's fine for a watch. Every now and again, though, the watch will slow down and freeze for a few seconds, and it can get a little annoying, but that's not the biggest problem I have with this watch.

Let's compare the spec sheet of the galaxy watch 3 with the now 4 year, old, s3, frontier other than a little more ram and 8 gigs of storage. Instead of 4. They really haven't changed much in regard to hardware. Unfortunately, that holds true with the software as well. Ti zen feels more or less the same as it did when I had the frontier over two years ago, and this might be some personal preference coming in here, but I think it's starting to look a little outdated one.

Other downside to this watch is the app support like I said, this is Samsung's proprietary operating system, so you're only going to get the apps that devs choose to develop for it, which isn't many there's still no proper navigation apps to take advantage of the built-in GPS, and even something like strata, which is a very popular cycling, app, doesn't exist within the galaxy store. But even if this software experience is a little lacking, the galaxy watch 3 makes up for it with a great amount of personalization options. There are hundreds, if not thousands of downloadable watch faces on the galaxy store and a lot of them are free. Of course, there are paid ones too, that cost a dollar or so, and those tend to be a little more well-designed if you're willing to shell out just a few more bucks. I flip-flop between this classy analog one and this more information-rich digital one.

The galaxy watch, 3 debuted with a bunch of new health related features most likely to compete more in line with the Apple Watch, blood, oxygen level tracking, as well as EKG monitoring, are both new features that are coming to the watch, although neither of these are available in Canada just yet, so I wasn't able to test them out still the galaxy watch.3 has many other health features like exercise tracking and fall detection that will automatically send out an so if it detects that you took a hard fall. Samsung also has had sleep tracking on their watches for a long time as they so snidely pointed out during their keynote. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked and how little the battery drained overnight. I went to bed at 50 battery and when I woke up- and it only lost around 4 percent down to 46 and that's a great segue to battery life, something that continues to impress me on Samsung's lineup of smartwatches that could have something to do with the fact that the battery life on my Apple Watch Series 5, which I've been using for something like half a year now is not great, but either way the galaxy watch.3 keeps on chugging. After nearly two full days with the always on display mode turned on, you could obviously get more life out of it if you turn that mode off, but I usually charge my watch every night anyway.

So there's no real need to the charger that comes in the box is okay, but it does take a while to charge the watch, even though it only has a 340 William hour battery, which I find kind of strange. So, overall, the galaxy watch 3 is a decent smartwatch, but it is held back a bit by Samsung's lack of effort to continue to expand upon and develop ti zen OS. You can pick up the smaller version, starting at 3.99 USD or the larger version that I have for 430. You can also get LTE versions of this watch too, but they're going to cost you a pretty penny. Those prices are competitive with the Apple Watch Series 5, but they are a fair bit more expensive than many of the android wear.

Os models on the market today so shop around a bit more and do a bit more research before you pull that trigger. This is going to be my go-to watch for android phones going forward, but I'm having a bit of trouble deciding whether this is going to be the watch to replace my Apple Watch Series 5 for use with my iPhones, because this does have iOS support after all. So if you want to see a full comparison, video between those two watches, let me know in a comment down below and if you like this video, please give it a like and subscribe to support my channel and, as always, have a great day.

Source : Mark Spurrell