Galaxy Watch 3 review: One charge, 12 challenges By CNET

So my watch is ringing totally psychedelic greetings and welcome. You just watched a Samsung Galaxy watch, 3 fall from the sky and land on this charger, and today we're going to review this watch together in a single battery life cycle. Now, before you get all up in arms and say, that's not enough time to review a watch know that my good friend Vanessa hand Brianna already spent a few weeks with this thing and made a really thorough and awesome. Video make sure and check that out. The link is in the description, but today we're going to set it up from scratch and go through its most fun features through a series of challenges and complete as many as we can before the battery dies. I'm hoping it's at least today and into tomorrow, but once this thing charges up to 100 we're going to go from zero to.

One hundred seems like it sticks up. A lot of watch paired bam baby. It says the software update is ready to install. Let's do it probably going to drain the battery ti zen all right. So after updating the software we're already at 97, I think the first challenge is changing the watch face.

Let's try that, so I picked this sort of 127 hours collection. I'm going to go with this one. I just got my first notification. It was bleacher report all right, we're getting Spotify going my boy Whitmer. I should probably connect some headphones, but cool that I can listen to it without headphones.

Maybe while I oh there's a bad word going to the galaxy store, baby calculator, no camera controller, that's kind of cool Tetris, okay, there's not a ton of apps on here. All right took about 30 minutes to set up download a few apps, listen to Spotify. Try out some other features right now we're at 89, and it says it has about a day and four hours left. So it sounds about right, but uh do I think it's going to last that long, probably not because we're about to put this thing through a lot, speaking of which, what's my next challenge, if you had five words to say about me wearing this watch, what would it be? Bro tech, two more flashy, too big, all right, that's six words heard it here. First now, it's probably the hottest part of the day I usually run in the morning, but obviously because I'm shooting this video had to push it back.

But running with this thing is something I'm looking forward to the most. I literally run carrying my phone, and now I can leave my phone behind and also get a lot more robust fitness tracking features with something like a smartwatch. But before I take off, let's do what I'm going to call the 81 stress test and see where all my health monitoring stats are right. This second all right here goes nothing. I'm getting stressed just watching this wheel, complete! Oh, I think, I'm bordering red that sounds about right now to go on this run, I'm leaving my phone behind and instead taking along this silly GoPro chest mount.

So let's do it, so I ran two miles I was hoping. My pace would be a little better because I was like showing off for the video, but unfortunately it was about the same, and I'm going to blame the heat and uh afterwards. My heart rate was pretty high, and obviously I'm not used to checking my heart rate, so I walked for longer than I normally would to get my heart rate down. So I'm going to keep walking for a while and uh we'll keep checking back in on it. There we go beautiful 89.

All right, I went on my run, been trying to bring my heart rate down with some Spotify my phone's inside we're at 50. So I think it's time for the 50 stress test holy sh. Oh my god, all right, you can see. My stress is all maxed out. I just did the breathing exercise.

Let's do it one more time. Oh yes, I'll be honest, the breathing exercise did make me feel better than I did right before it. So it's kind of like a 21st century brown paper, bag kind of sounds like a Connor o burst lyric or something, but I'm going to try and bring my stress down again for the next time we check in and that's going to be by skateboarding, I'm going to see if the automatic exercise detection picks it up. Just skating around the neighborhood, so yeah the first half didn't automatically register. Second half I read a shirt of cycling.

It got up to 15.5 miles an hour, so I wouldn't know that otherwise, good stuff, totally psychedelic, Samsung's, smart voice assistant Bixby, can talk to my wrist. Tell it to do things, so I'm going to do that and complete some challenges. Hi Bixby send message to Marta Franco hi Marta, how the hell is Boston, send yes, my watch is ringing. My friend mark is calling mark. Can you hear me yeah? Can you hear me I'm holding my wrist up to the microphone, so it'll pick you up? Are you playing overwatch? I'm also not talking to you on a phone.

It's a watch! Okay, bye, thanks! So much for your help. I hope you have a good night love that guy it's 5 46 the battery is 31. I hope I can make it to sleep tracking. It is 6.37 just got this message. Turning on low battery, it is 8 52 and the battery is saying 8.

I have power save mode on, but I don't think this is going to make it through the night to track my sleep, which I'm a little relieved about, because I really didn't want to sleep with this thing. So instead I'll probably just go another 31 years without ever feeling the need to track my sleep hallelujah. In the meantime, let's play some Tetris and watch a video. I move. Oh, no! This is terrible.

Oh, I made a cross total disaster, no YouTube app, so we have to use internet app. Internet app allows YouTube. Oh man, this is bad. Now I just want the battery to die now that I've seen this YouTube page. Oh my god YouTube on your wrist.

Is it great? No! Does it work? Yes, all right, I'm going to pause Jeff and that four percent battery. I think we should do one more stress test well. Well, maybe my stress is all the way up, because we got one percent battery or maybe because it's really hot in this little cubbyhole. I find myself in tonight, but either way my stress is off the charts. However, that's measured, I have no idea, but it thinks that I'm real stressed out which it might be right and that's all she wrote folks all right, I'm going to sleep on it.

Give me my thoughts in the morning. Okay, so I've had some time to gather my thoughts and I think the first thing we should talk about is the battery. Now nine and a half hours is far less than Samsung claims, but we kind of gotta take that with a grain of salt. Considering that I updated the software I downloaded a bunch of apps and overall was just very heavily using the watch in order to shoot this video, I think, in a perfect world, it probably lasts all night and is able to track my sleep, but I don't think it's going to be vastly different from that more than say two days. So it's just something to keep in mind after that stuff, like the interface and the screens on the watch, I think, are working really well.

All the native apps ran smoothly and weren't buggy at all, and even something like the heart rate sensor, even though it stressed me out, I was so thankful to be able to just take a watch on a run instead of lugging. This huge phone around being able to just glance at my wrist and see stuff like distance and pace, was really great and then navigating through the screens of the watch is also working really well. I like the combination of twisting the crown and the physical buttons and the taps it really kind of steers you away from touching the watch face all the time and covering it in fingerprints. The crown especially felt really solid and really practical, but obviously it wasn't all gravy. While the native apps worked really well, there were certain apps that I think are pretty essential, apps that were simply just not there.

Now you can push something like google map notifications from your phone to the watch, but there's not an actual Google Maps app that you can put on the watch at least right at this moment, and I think that's a pretty big bummer all right now. Let's talk about the fact that I've never worn a smartwatch before, and I just got all this data about my health and fitness that I've never looked at before now. I'm not sure if I need it or what I'm going to do with that data, but I have to admit looking at all these random stats of my life, for that day is more fun than I thought it was going to be. It's also a good time to point out that features like the electrocardiogram and blood pressure. Sensing that are going to be on this watch are not available as of filming this video, but are hopefully coming soon.

Another thing to think about considering this is my first time wearing a smartwatch is. I was hoping that having this on my wrist would reduce my overall screen time. Now again, I know I was making a video about it and using it heavily, so it's not a perfect example, but I know that this would not reduce my screen time. First off my wrist was buzzing all day long, even when I was just out of range of my phone and then getting notifications on it, you have to scroll to them, tap them and then scroll to read them. So it was taking up a lot more of my time than just grabbing my phone reading, the notification real, quick and putting it away.

Overall, I felt a lot more connected, not less. Now again, that's just me, I'm sure some people will get this and never look at their phone again. So will I continue to wear this thing? You know I want to keep taking it on runs because it was such a clear upgrade over my situation before hauling this giant phone around with me, but I can't see myself wearing it every day. I liked the health and fitness features a lot more than I thought I would, but overall I felt a little too connected all the time, not to mention this thing is bulky and top heavy, and I can't imagine sleeping with this every night also my wife called me, a tech, bro jock, so yeah that's kind of my worst nightmare anyway. I hope you had fun watching this video, I sure, had fun making it, despite my stress, test levels being off the charts, but here's another reminder to watch Vanessa's video.

It's perfect. Please watch it and let me know what other devices you want to see me test in a single battery life cycle. Until then, thank you so much for watching and as always be excellent to each other.

Source : CNET