**Smartwatch Review: Samsung Galaxy Watch 5**

In this review, we'll delve into the features and capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, a smartwatch designed specifically for Android phones. With the latest wear OS 3 software, this watch offers a seamless experience that integrates perfectly with Samsung's ecosystem.

One of the standout features of the Galaxy Watch 5 is its compatibility with specific phones. According to Samsung, FDA approval is based on pairing the watch with specific phones, which explains why some features only work when paired with a Samsung phone. However, this means that users of other Android phones may not have access to these features. Fortunately, most everything else will still work, but users will need to use Samsung's app, such as Samsung Health, to get the full experience.

Another interesting feature is sleep tracking, which works surprisingly well. The watch can track your sleep patterns accurately and provides detailed insights into your sleep habits. Once you've accumulated a week's worth of data, you can access advanced analytics that include sleep coaching. This feature assigns a cute animal representing the type of sleeper you are, such as "Sensitive Hedgehog" in my case, which aligns with my actual sleep patterns.

The battery life is also noteworthy. While Samsung claims to have improved charging speeds, I found that 30 minutes of charging on its included charger provided only about 45% capacity, resulting in around 24 hours of usage time. However, this was still a significant improvement over the Galaxy Watch 4, and I was able to get an extra day out of it with moderate use.

**Workout Tracking and EKG**

The watch features advanced workout tracking capabilities, including support for popular fitness apps like Google Fit. While Google Fit is available on other devices, its performance on this watch is somewhat limited. Sleep tracking works well, but some advanced features like sleep stages are not supported. This limitation may be addressed in future software updates.

One notable feature of the Galaxy Watch 5 is its EKG monitoring capabilities. The watch can track heart rate and detect irregular rhythms, which is a significant improvement over previous models. However, the specifics of this feature were not fully explored in my testing.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 offers an excellent smartwatch experience for Android phone users. While compatibility with specific phones may be a limitation, most features still work well, and advanced sleep tracking and EKG monitoring capabilities make this watch stand out from its competitors. With its larger battery and rugged design, this watch is also a great option for those seeking a more durable device.

As I continue to test this watch, I'm excited to see how it performs with future software updates, particularly the upcoming Google Pixel Watch. Until then, users who want a top-notch smartwatch experience will find plenty to like in the Galaxy Watch 5.

**Additional Notes**

For those interested in exploring more Android tech, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell on our channel. We'll continue to test and review various devices as they become available. In the meantime, don't forget to explore our "More" section for exclusive content, where we share hands-on experiences with the latest gadgets and innovative technologies.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign another day another real world test today we're doing it on the Samsung Galaxy watch 5 and the Samsung Galaxy watch 5 Pro we'll kind of test both of these devices I'll talk about some of the differences even all while we explore as per the usual but first things first okay so now we have two models of the Samsung Galaxy watch five we have the Samsung Galaxy watch 5 and the watch5 pro now last year instead of the pro we had the classic which was essentially the same thing as the watch5 but it had a physical rotating bezel instead of the digital one that we have now that apparently is done you can actually still buy it on Samsung's site but it's the watch for classic and that tells me well they're not making a new one now I know there'll be plenty of people out there that are going to miss the physical rotating bezel I also really liked it but I found myself kind of always gravitating towards the more minimalistic smaller lighter watch four instead of the watch4 classic I found that that virtual rotating bezel kind of worked well enough anyway and that is here on all of these watch 5 models so bye now the watch five is very similar looking to the watch four you'd actually have a hard time telling the difference even with them side by side and they come in basically the same colors one of them has a different name but it's very similar Samsung did however change the glass on the top from Gorilla Glass to Sapphire which is a welcome change as it'll scratch a lot less easily we also have a larger battery but about 12 to 14 the smaller one has a 14 larger one the larger one is a 12 one and we now have a supposedly improved set of sensors the sensors and that battery will test out soon enough now the watch 5 Pro actually has the largest battery of all of the models by a decent chunk it's 30 or so larger than the already larger watch 5 battery we also supposedly have better GPS tracking and a titanium case to go with the sapphire glass instead of the aluminum one on the regular watch five so the case should not scratch as much when banged around a bit now both these new watches take 20 millimeter quick release bands just like the watch Ford did and as with the last watch I got the largest size for the watch 5 and think it's perfect in spite of my you know daintier wrist I will say though that the band that the larger one comes with when you get the smaller size just fits on my wrist I'm on the second to last sometimes the last notch on it so just something for you to know you might need a different band when the watch arrives now they both come in Wi-Fi only models and LTE models are available for fifty dollars more and lastly there are some golf themed versions of each model that have a green home button and some custom straps I'll apparently help you track some golf stuff they do also apparently come with an unlimited membership to the smart caddy app and as far as I can tell they don't actually do anything specific for golf other than that membership like it'd be more interesting to me if they tracked your golf swing because they're on your wrist and somehow they figured out a way to have an algorithm help you do that and improve that or whatever but you know let's get out of here so I'm not late for my appointment and let's test out some of the fitness stuff with the watch okay and now we're at my local gym called Grindhouse and I'm here with Vince here because my trainer's been working me for a bit he's a nice guy but I really think he enjoys watching me in pain this is honest so first I loved Samsung's new body composition feature that they introduced with the watch for that lets you scan yourself using the watch to get a body fat and a muscle mass estimate the idea here is that it's better than just measuring your weight as someone with 10 body fat versus 30 even at a similar weight will look very differently and be different levels of healthy even it's a metric I always like to have when working out is it tells you more than just your weight and can help you adjust your diet or workout accordingly for your goal so first let's get a baseline from this body scan machine in my gym which is a six thousand dollar machine that measures exactly that and see how close we get now the number itself doesn't exactly matter unless you're gonna perform in some sort of body weight competition what really matters is that you just want it to be consistent so that this way you can see if you're going up or down and then adjust according to your goals like I said okay now let's get into our actual workout and track it on the watch foreign okay so I selected weightlifting on this watch as a catch-all since I didn't really want to stop and choose each workout separately but it does have a decent amount of choices if that's how you prefer to do it but it did track my heart rate the entire time and calculated my calorie burn accordingly and it gives you all the data you can expect from a smartwatch thank you for hurting me enjoy okay now let's test how it tracks cardio using one of the cycling machines here in the gym all right so after a quick 10 minutes on the stationary bike the watch got very close heart rate wise to the handle based tracker of the exercise bike so that's pretty impressive it also gives you data on what heart rate zones you were in and when and now gives you the heart rate recovery information to see how quickly your body recovered from the workout which is nice to know okay ready now let's head to a park nearby my house so we can test out some of the outdoor workout tracking stuff and let's take a bike on the way there because I want to test something else out real quick though before we head out while we're talking about Fitness I've been trying to cook more at home but I just never feel like I have the time and so that's why sometimes I use today's sponsor hellofresh hellofresh delivers meals with easy to follow recipes to your door you select what your goals are I chose fit and wholesome tell me not negate all those workouts I'm doing and then you choose from 30 plus weekly recipes that you can also even customize further if you want don't want chicken swap it for fish don't like the sides change those two I started using hellofresh and honestly well before they asked to sponsor a video because I wanted to force myself to get better at cooking frankly in addition to the health benefits and budget benefits of not eating out every meal and the only way to do that is to practice I'm hellofresh makes it easy with everything Mison plus already for me which is a term for having all of your ingredients measured and ready to go before cooking which saves me time but also means less wasted food now I live alone and I travel a ton as you guys might know so I like that the plants are flexible and even when the meal is served for two I either invite someone over for dinner or as soon as I'm done cooking the second serving goes into a tupperware for lunch or dinner the next day so if you're interested in saving money on food eating healthier or just wanting to challenge yourself to cook more often like me go to hellofresh.com and use code unlocker 65 for 65 off plus free shipping thanks to hellofresh again for sponsoring this video and the thing I want to test is well the cycle tracking now I was a little disappointed that the Galaxy watch 4 lost the ability to auto track cycling whereas the watch 3 had it and well that's missing here on the watch 5 as well it'll do a lot of trekking of walking and running it just won't do biking for whatever reason I don't understand it but Samsung just won't do it now for walking and running essentially if you do something for 10 minutes like that it'll eventually notify you and go hey I think you're doing this you're walking would you like to track and you say yes and then it will track the workout it'll even track retroactively the last 10 minutes and then that's that for biking though we've gotta tell the watch that we're gonna do it and also you may notice I'm an idiot with two watches on I want to see how the pro does versus the non-pro with this I'll explain why in a bit all right and now welcome to McCarran Park originally built in 1903 it was called Williamsburg Park which is the name of the neighborhood that I live in but it's just south of the park basically and then in 1906 it was renamed to Green Point Park which is the neighborhood just north of here where actually my office is and finally in 1909 it was named McCarran Park after Patrick Henry McCarron who was a politician at the time it definitely feels like they changed the name because they didn't want the two neighborhoods to fight over the park probably smart all right now I wore both of these watches on that cycle and I'm still doing it now because I was curious if there's any difference between the GPS on both devices does not seem to be at least in this albeit not terribly difficult setting they did basically the same the routes are identical I'll try to do some loops and I stopped at one point just to see what they were doing they both frankly did a good job that is the route that I took the reason one of those because all the features on these two watches were based basically the same across the board the pro just has one feature for the most part that the non-pro doesn't and that's a route feature now this feature lets you follow a route using GPS data by installing a GPX file which is a GPS exchange format file basically this data is collected from my GPS Source turned it to this upx file when you load it on the watch it'll then literally give you a route to the like GPS coordinates that you can then follow it's usually used a lot for like hiking trails for example so you can actually either create your own route by selecting a workout that tracks routes like walking or outdoor cycling for example and then do the route and when you're done you'll actually be able to go in to the Samsung Health app on that route and download or export the GPX data another way you do is even go to popular apps for hiking or even websites and sometimes they have GPX data that you can download there's a couple of popular apps that do this but they require a subscription fee in order to get that type of data but that's another way to go about it as long as you have this data the watch can then import it from the wearable app and then the watch itself will actually guide you along that trail and the different markers for the DPX file the thing I don't understand maybe somebody can tell me why this feature Works only on the pro and not on the regular watch five okay now we have to talk about wear OS 3 which is the operating system on these watches now originally launched with the watch 4 and is a collaboration between Google and Samsung but Samsung clearly had some type of exclusivity because we haven't really seen another Ware os3 watch yet until Mont Blanc recently just launched one and so now having seen that and got to play with it for a little bit we have a better understanding what were OS 3 kind of really is and it's important when you're looking to buy a new wear OS 3 watch the long story short wear OS is a little more similar to how Android Works in a way it's basically the underlying operating system it has all the apis for all of the sensors that are in these watches and then manufacturers are kind of responsible for making their own UI on top and in addition to that it seems they're also responsible for making their own apps that tap into their specific watches for all of that Fitness data and everything else on one hand the section makes a lot of sense it means that unlike before with wear OS you had the basically the exact same operator system across all of the watch there wasn't really a differentiator there wasn't really a reason to buy Samsung's over Mont blancs or Google's over whoever they all just kind of did the exact same things now that the entire UI of the watch the look and feel is going to be very different between manufacturers also the algorithms that they use to grab the information from the sensors that Google has given them the API for and then use that to translate it into actual Fitness data and what it means is going to be different and now because of all this extra work that a manufacturer has to do it's kind of also going to limit who makes wear OS watches right it's only going to be certain people that have enough resources to do so and because it is an underlying same operating system again like Android you have a Play Store on it so developers who are making third-party apps only need to make it once and work on all of the manufacturers now I've been asked many times whenever it comes to wear OS 3 Samsung watches what features will only work on a Samsung phone paired with it versus any other phone and the truth is there's only really one and that is the EKG feature I remember back in the day the EKG feature actually was delayed on the watches and that was something to do with the FDA still needing to approve it but what it seems like to me is that FDA approval is based on the watch paired with specific phones maybe and so that's why that feature only works when it's paired with a Samsung phone because that's what they have the approval for that system together we're using it on any other Android phone they don't have that so they just don't allow the feature to work but other than that everything else will work on a non-samsung phone but as we mentioned you will need to use Samsung's app because that's kind of just how Ros is working so use Samsung Health on your Android phone paired with a Samsung watch and you're basically good to go again minus EKG now if you want to you can use Google fit but it just it doesn't know what to do with most of the data coming out of the watch it'll give you steps and heart rate and track some workouts but sleep tracking is po2 like all of the other features that aren't just like the basic core don't really work and I kind of wonderful actually see an updated version of Google Fit when the new pixel watch comes on foreign and the last things I want to talk about are sleep tracking and the battery now firstly sleep tracking works well it's accurate is getting it right when I go to sleep whenever I wake up and it's very kind of telling me that I'm terrible at sleeping one of the things I like about it is that you don't have to actually tell it to track your sleep if you're wearing it and you go to sleep boom cracked now Samsung has added some improvements to the sleep tracking it is going to probably also be available on the watch 4 as it is here on the watch five so like don't let this be a factory make a decision but I think it's interesting to at least address now once you have a week's worth of sleep data you can actually select sleep coaching and it'll use the data to assign a cute animal that represents the type of sleeper that you are I'm apparently a sensitive Hedgehog I'll try not to read into that too much but basically it tells me that I'm more active at night and wake up later and my sleep is sensitive to my stress all of which checks out now after you get that you'll be able to start a custom some four to five week program that will try and help you get better at sleeping something that maybe one of these days I'll actually commit to and see what it does okay now because of the fact that I do like sleep tracking I tend to wear my smart watches all day and then all night while I'm sleeping the only time that I charge them is when I'm taking a shower and I'm thankful actually that we have faster charging on the watch five than we did in the watch for you're supposed to get about 45 back in 30 minutes honestly all I care about is in the 30 minutes like I'm taking a shower and then I get ready I get enough power back to then last me another full day and so for a day like today with a workout in it that I tracked plus sleep tracking overnight I lost 45 in 24 hours charging it on its included charger for 30 minutes while in the shower and getting ready got that back up to 38 so not quite an extra 24 hours from 30 minutes like I ultimately want to see one day but if you left it on for a bit longer you'd get it and so that feels better than the Galaxy watch 4 by a bit to me in fact I recently went on a work trip and I forgot to bring the charger for the watch but I ended up getting four days just about out of it regardless now to be clear I probably worked out one of those four days it wasn't a workout every day so I was better working out that week but still that's pretty good and for the watch Pro 5 with its larger battery I tended to get maybe an extra day out of that watch compared to this one if you want a slightly more rugged watch because of that titanium case which will scratch less than the aluminum one a decent chunk more battery and or you just like the look of the larger watch which is totally fair then the pro might not be a bad option now either way both of them are probably up there for some of those best smart watches you can get for Android phones but I'm excited to see what other wear OS 3 manufacturers come up with I think we're all very curious to see what Google's own pixel watch will do with this if you want to see my video on that when it comes out please subscribe and ding the Bell next the word subscribe so you get notified when it goes live or subscribe and ding the Bell if you like this video a lot come Explore More plays with me while we test out more Tech as always though regardless thanks for watching\n"