The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: A Wearable with Ambitions

As I put on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. The watch's design is sleek and modern, with a rotating bezel that adds a touch of elegance to its overall look. However, as I started using it, I realized that my enthusiasm was tempered by some omissions and limitations.

The watch feels great in the hand, with smooth animations and a responsive interface. It's clear that Samsung has put a lot of effort into making this watch feel premium and high-end. The performance is solid, and the fitness features are deep and well-implemented. I appreciate the integration with Google Wear OS, which provides access to a wide range of apps and features.

One thing that sets the Galaxy Watch 4 apart from other smartwatches on the market is its ability to integrate seamlessly with Android devices. This means that users can access their notifications, music, and other apps directly from their wrist. The watch also supports Google Assistant, which I was looking forward to using. Unfortunately, it's not available on this watch, at least not yet. Instead, Samsung's own Bixby is the default voice assistant.

I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of Google Assistant on this watch. As someone who's deeply invested in the Google ecosystem, I would have loved to be able to use my favorite virtual assistant directly from my wrist. However, Bixby is still a capable assistant in its own right, and I've found it to be useful for tasks like responding to messages.

The fitness features on the Galaxy Watch 4 are also worth mentioning. The watch includes a built-in ECG monitor, which can track your heart rate and rhythm. It also has a blood oxygen level sensor, which can provide valuable insights into your overall health. I've found these features to be really useful, especially when it comes to tracking my running performance or monitoring my overall fitness levels.

One area where the Galaxy Watch 4 falls short is in terms of battery life. I've been wearing this watch for a couple of weeks now, and I'm still getting about two days of use out of it. This is acceptable if you're not using too many features at once, but if you're an avid user who likes to stay connected throughout the day, you may find that the battery life starts to dwindle.

The watch does come in different sizes - 44mm and 46mm - which affects its battery life. The larger size will likely have a shorter battery life than the smaller one. However, this is something to consider when choosing between the two sizes.

In terms of design, I'm not entirely convinced that the Galaxy Watch 4 is particularly original. While the rotating bezel is a nice touch, it's also been seen on other watches before. The watch itself feels solid and well-built, but I don't feel like it stands out from the crowd in any way.

Despite this, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 still feels like the best Android watch available right now. It's a solid device that offers a lot of value for its price. However, as someone who's eagerly awaiting Google Wear OS 3 and the integration of Google Assistant on this watch, I'm left wondering when - or if - these features will ever arrive.

Ultimately, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is a watch that feels like it's missing something. It's got all the right pieces in place, but it's just not quite complete yet. With its solid performance, deep fitness features, and sleek design, this watch has a lot to offer. However, without Google Assistant on board, I'm left wondering if it's truly the best wearable out there.

As I take off the Galaxy Watch 4 and put it aside, I'm left thinking about what Samsung and Google could have done differently. Would it have been better to include Google Assistant from the start? Could they have come up with a more compelling design that sets this watch apart from its competitors?

For now, the Galaxy Watch 4 is a solid choice for anyone in the market for an Android smartwatch. It's got all the right features and feels premium in the hand. However, as I wait to see what Google has in store for Wear OS 3, I'm left wondering if this watch will ever truly reach its full potential.

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is a watch that's worth considering. While it may not be perfect - or yet fully realized - it offers a lot of value and features that make it a great choice for Android users. With solid performance, deep fitness features, and a sleek design, this watch has a lot to offer. However, without Google Assistant on board, I'm left wondering if it's truly the best wearable out there.

One final note - the Galaxy Watch 4 is available in two versions: the classic model with a fixed bezel, and the Galaxy Watch 4 Classic with a rotating bezel. The latter comes at a higher price point, but offers some premium features that make it worth considering for those who want a truly unique smartwatch experience.

Ultimately, whether or not the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is right for you will depend on your individual needs and preferences. If you're looking for an Android smartwatch with solid performance and deep fitness features, this watch may be worth considering. However, if you're holding out for Google Assistant, you may want to wait a bit longer.

For now, I'm left to wonder - what's next?

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensamsung just released its latest smart watches the samsung galaxy watch four it comes in two different flavors the watch for classic and the watch four i'm wearing both of them on my wrist i've been trying them out for two weeks are these the ultimate android watches well let me talk about it samsung's newest watches are here the samsung galaxy watch 4. is this the ultimate android watch have we finally gotten to the point where there's one perfect watch to recommend for android phone owners well it's a little complicated but this watch is pretty good i do have a few thoughts about it though so samsung's new watches launch before when the apple watch is expected this fall that doesn't factor in though because the samsung galaxy watch 4 is for android phone owners it's not for iphone owners it's designed to be the ultimate connected watch and what is new this year in particular is a partnership with google the os on this watch is new it's google wear os 3. this is google's operating system and app store now but it's also collaborating with samsung what does that mean exactly i had high hopes for this watch and i still have high hopes for this watch because samsung has made some great smart watches in the past i've covered them for years and years but they've had limitations as far as how hooked in they feel to the rest of the android and google ecosystem samsung loves to make its own apps and its own platforms well google's partnership with this suggests that there's going to be a solution there but it might end up being a lot more like the way that samsung phones currently work which is that they run android but samsung also has all sorts of specialized software that's designed for samsung phones that's good on a phone but when you get to a watch then you start having expectations that maybe the phone and the watch will be working best together samsung has designed a lot it turns out that is really meant to be used with a samsung galaxy phone even though these work with android phones there are some things i'll get into that you're probably better off getting a samsung phone for first of all the health ecosystem you don't need a samsung phone for that but it is samsung health based so everything that you do on this watch and there's a lot of health and fitness features these are all funneling into the samsung health app now samsung's had a really good health fitness ecosystem over the past bunch of years you may not choose to use it though maybe you want something like fitbit or you want to use google services google has not really made it clear how this is all going to shake out because google has google fit then there's also fitbit which google acquired samsung is kind of standing off over here saying we've got samsung health which has everything from calorie tracking to steps to activity goals and puts in some sensor readings things like blood oxygen readings ecg which is electrocardiogram that's available on the samsung galaxy watch 4 and a new sensor that's a bioimpedance sensor this body analysis sensor is totally new to samsung watchers but it's been on other things before if you have a scale that does any sort of water body fat measurement has like a metal contact similar type of tech way back i saw it on the jawbone up 3 but it didn't do anything then here you hold your two fingers to the two buttons on the side of the watch for 15 seconds and you get a spot readout on well how your body fat is your body water percentage your bmi your skeletal muscle mass it's a lot of data points and how accurate are they well i've not been comparing it against an actual professional body analysis service so i don't really know they do seem to be somewhat consistent in that i need to lose weight and none of the numbers look good and that's pretty stressful so i get a whole bunch of numbers that go from this green to red end of the spectrum and i'm in red and the numbers all seem i guess not good what do i do with that though that's where it's a little less clear samsung collects that charts it out and you can see how you're doing hopefully getting better but there's not a lot of guidance as to what to do next but all that stuff lives in the samsung health app so if you want to take that data and let's say pick another ecosystem you can't really right now so consider that when you're getting a samsung galaxy watch 4. you can load google fit and eventually you should be able to load some apps from fitbit who's going to be making a move into wear os which is on this watch but right now while you can put google fit on the galaxy watch 4 it's kind of riding alongside it's not the main experience okay another thing you need to know is that ecg and blood pressure are things that you need a samsung phone for so it turns out that electrocardiogram and blood pressure where that's approved blood pressure features on this watch are not approved in the u.s yet not cleared by the fda those run in a samsung health monitor app that you can only get on samsung galaxy phones i really hope that changes because it means that if you have another android phone you can't use the ecg feature that's a big downer so let's talk about this watch the watch design is very familiar and very nice samsung has a bunch of really beautiful watch faces i love these old crazy animals that pop up and these interesting animations a lot of dynamic watch faces things that you see on the apple watch you don't see a lot on android watch faces and it's a great sign of where samsung's processor and google's new os could maybe take watch faces but i find that the customization of them goes on a wide spectrum some of them have a lot of room for complications little bits of data that pop up from other apps like the weather or fitness others don't have any at all i'd love them all to have complications because i'm complicated i like to check all that data the other thing about this watch is that the interface is pretty cool samsung always had this rotating bezel that's back on both models one is an actual physical bezel that's super clicky pretty addictive to use kind of like a fidget toy the other one you have to touch the edge of the bezel and you get this buzzing haptic response it works but it's not good when wet and it's not quite as easy to activate those you don't even need that because move around the interface really you're swiping which is a google wear os thing google's operating system factors in and feel when you look at how you swipe down swipe up left and right for notifications and get your apps tiles come up as these little quick view kind of mini apps that pop up when you swipe over to the left and they're really useful for quickly accessing a lot of health things checking maybe your ecg or blood oxygen or checking that body analysis thing again i'd love to see more mini tiles like that pop up that's how i tended to use them so the watch feels great but the things i was looking forward to were really all the googly things and google play is the app store that runs on this watch not samsung's own app store which means you can access all the wear os apps for the most part that you would be able to get on google's wear os watches but it kind of stops short in one area google assistant bixby where's google assistant i didn't understand that google assistant is not here on this watch right now i don't know why it's a little baffling hopefully that will change so the default voice assistant on this watch is samsung bixby launch google assistant that app couldn't be found that could be your deal breaker now look i'm not trying to attack bixby too much beck's bixby is actually kind of functional when it comes to voice dictation things like responding to a message i actually found that that worked pretty well but bixby is now hooked into the rest of the google ecosystem so if i want to be able to use like something i would want to check on google assistant or hook into an app or find out certain information i feel like it's just not aware of that stuff and that's where bixby's biggest failing is i would have expected that you would have had google assistant on this it's just not there yet and that's kind of where i get to do you want to jump on board this right now because this is the first google wear os 3 watch and it's a samsung partnership there are going to be more google wear os watches including a fitbit one that could be coming next year samsung's looks pretty great but it has some strange omissions and i don't know if those are going to be addressed on other watches or not which leaves samsung writing in the front as probably the best watch right now i think it's the best android watch i can't think of a better one because the performance feels great the animations look really cool the fitness features are pretty deep it's got google wear os support it's a pretty good set of features battery life i would have liked to have been better so far i've worn these back and forth alternating and i've gotten about two days of battery life i've never gotten better and that's with the display off when i'm not looking at it if i do always on display it's really a day and then if you get into some features like running with gps or you get an lte equipped phone model which i don't have that turns it basically into a phone on your wrist battery life is going to dip even further and keep in mind i've been wearing the larger size these are the 44 and 46 millimeter if you get the smaller ones battery life may be even worse do i like the design yeah i like it but i kind of feel like i've seen it before i don't feel like it's wowing me with the look of the round watch i kind of prefer the one without the bezel because i think it's a cleaner look and you save a hundred dollars it's 250 versus the classic which is 350 so you're kind of paying extra 100 for that rotating bezel and not much else i like to save money and i would go with the original galaxy watch for the non-classic one then again if you really like the rotating bezel and the thing about the bezel is it recesses the display a bit so it could protect the gorilla glass amoled screen which could be good for durability but i don't really know i haven't worn this more than two weeks the display looks fantastic all the hardware looks really sharp the watch feels good i just don't know how much more hooked in it's going to feel with the rest of google and we don't know yet so right now i think it's the best android watch but i have a lot of questions about where samsung and google are going to take this how much of this is samsung's how much of this watch is google's we're only going to find that out over the next year or so but the samsung galaxy watch 4 does feel like an overdue step for finally knitting together the entire kind of complicated android wearable picturesamsung just released its latest smart watches the samsung galaxy watch four it comes in two different flavors the watch for classic and the watch four i'm wearing both of them on my wrist i've been trying them out for two weeks are these the ultimate android watches well let me talk about it samsung's newest watches are here the samsung galaxy watch 4. is this the ultimate android watch have we finally gotten to the point where there's one perfect watch to recommend for android phone owners well it's a little complicated but this watch is pretty good i do have a few thoughts about it though so samsung's new watches launch before when the apple watch is expected this fall that doesn't factor in though because the samsung galaxy watch 4 is for android phone owners it's not for iphone owners it's designed to be the ultimate connected watch and what is new this year in particular is a partnership with google the os on this watch is new it's google wear os 3. this is google's operating system and app store now but it's also collaborating with samsung what does that mean exactly i had high hopes for this watch and i still have high hopes for this watch because samsung has made some great smart watches in the past i've covered them for years and years but they've had limitations as far as how hooked in they feel to the rest of the android and google ecosystem samsung loves to make its own apps and its own platforms well google's partnership with this suggests that there's going to be a solution there but it might end up being a lot more like the way that samsung phones currently work which is that they run android but samsung also has all sorts of specialized software that's designed for samsung phones that's good on a phone but when you get to a watch then you start having expectations that maybe the phone and the watch will be working best together samsung has designed a lot it turns out that is really meant to be used with a samsung galaxy phone even though these work with android phones there are some things i'll get into that you're probably better off getting a samsung phone for first of all the health ecosystem you don't need a samsung phone for that but it is samsung health based so everything that you do on this watch and there's a lot of health and fitness features these are all funneling into the samsung health app now samsung's had a really good health fitness ecosystem over the past bunch of years you may not choose to use it though maybe you want something like fitbit or you want to use google services google has not really made it clear how this is all going to shake out because google has google fit then there's also fitbit which google acquired samsung is kind of standing off over here saying we've got samsung health which has everything from calorie tracking to steps to activity goals and puts in some sensor readings things like blood oxygen readings ecg which is electrocardiogram that's available on the samsung galaxy watch 4 and a new sensor that's a bioimpedance sensor this body analysis sensor is totally new to samsung watchers but it's been on other things before if you have a scale that does any sort of water body fat measurement has like a metal contact similar type of tech way back i saw it on the jawbone up 3 but it didn't do anything then here you hold your two fingers to the two buttons on the side of the watch for 15 seconds and you get a spot readout on well how your body fat is your body water percentage your bmi your skeletal muscle mass it's a lot of data points and how accurate are they well i've not been comparing it against an actual professional body analysis service so i don't really know they do seem to be somewhat consistent in that i need to lose weight and none of the numbers look good and that's pretty stressful so i get a whole bunch of numbers that go from this green to red end of the spectrum and i'm in red and the numbers all seem i guess not good what do i do with that though that's where it's a little less clear samsung collects that charts it out and you can see how you're doing hopefully getting better but there's not a lot of guidance as to what to do next but all that stuff lives in the samsung health app so if you want to take that data and let's say pick another ecosystem you can't really right now so consider that when you're getting a samsung galaxy watch 4. you can load google fit and eventually you should be able to load some apps from fitbit who's going to be making a move into wear os which is on this watch but right now while you can put google fit on the galaxy watch 4 it's kind of riding alongside it's not the main experience okay another thing you need to know is that ecg and blood pressure are things that you need a samsung phone for so it turns out that electrocardiogram and blood pressure where that's approved blood pressure features on this watch are not approved in the u.s yet not cleared by the fda those run in a samsung health monitor app that you can only get on samsung galaxy phones i really hope that changes because it means that if you have another android phone you can't use the ecg feature that's a big downer so let's talk about this watch the watch design is very familiar and very nice samsung has a bunch of really beautiful watch faces i love these old crazy animals that pop up and these interesting animations a lot of dynamic watch faces things that you see on the apple watch you don't see a lot on android watch faces and it's a great sign of where samsung's processor and google's new os could maybe take watch faces but i find that the customization of them goes on a wide spectrum some of them have a lot of room for complications little bits of data that pop up from other apps like the weather or fitness others don't have any at all i'd love them all to have complications because i'm complicated i like to check all that data the other thing about this watch is that the interface is pretty cool samsung always had this rotating bezel that's back on both models one is an actual physical bezel that's super clicky pretty addictive to use kind of like a fidget toy the other one you have to touch the edge of the bezel and you get this buzzing haptic response it works but it's not good when wet and it's not quite as easy to activate those you don't even need that because move around the interface really you're swiping which is a google wear os thing google's operating system factors in and feel when you look at how you swipe down swipe up left and right for notifications and get your apps tiles come up as these little quick view kind of mini apps that pop up when you swipe over to the left and they're really useful for quickly accessing a lot of health things checking maybe your ecg or blood oxygen or checking that body analysis thing again i'd love to see more mini tiles like that pop up that's how i tended to use them so the watch feels great but the things i was looking forward to were really all the googly things and google play is the app store that runs on this watch not samsung's own app store which means you can access all the wear os apps for the most part that you would be able to get on google's wear os watches but it kind of stops short in one area google assistant bixby where's google assistant i didn't understand that google assistant is not here on this watch right now i don't know why it's a little baffling hopefully that will change so the default voice assistant on this watch is samsung bixby launch google assistant that app couldn't be found that could be your deal breaker now look i'm not trying to attack bixby too much beck's bixby is actually kind of functional when it comes to voice dictation things like responding to a message i actually found that that worked pretty well but bixby is now hooked into the rest of the google ecosystem so if i want to be able to use like something i would want to check on google assistant or hook into an app or find out certain information i feel like it's just not aware of that stuff and that's where bixby's biggest failing is i would have expected that you would have had google assistant on this it's just not there yet and that's kind of where i get to do you want to jump on board this right now because this is the first google wear os 3 watch and it's a samsung partnership there are going to be more google wear os watches including a fitbit one that could be coming next year samsung's looks pretty great but it has some strange omissions and i don't know if those are going to be addressed on other watches or not which leaves samsung writing in the front as probably the best watch right now i think it's the best android watch i can't think of a better one because the performance feels great the animations look really cool the fitness features are pretty deep it's got google wear os support it's a pretty good set of features battery life i would have liked to have been better so far i've worn these back and forth alternating and i've gotten about two days of battery life i've never gotten better and that's with the display off when i'm not looking at it if i do always on display it's really a day and then if you get into some features like running with gps or you get an lte equipped phone model which i don't have that turns it basically into a phone on your wrist battery life is going to dip even further and keep in mind i've been wearing the larger size these are the 44 and 46 millimeter if you get the smaller ones battery life may be even worse do i like the design yeah i like it but i kind of feel like i've seen it before i don't feel like it's wowing me with the look of the round watch i kind of prefer the one without the bezel because i think it's a cleaner look and you save a hundred dollars it's 250 versus the classic which is 350 so you're kind of paying extra 100 for that rotating bezel and not much else i like to save money and i would go with the original galaxy watch for the non-classic one then again if you really like the rotating bezel and the thing about the bezel is it recesses the display a bit so it could protect the gorilla glass amoled screen which could be good for durability but i don't really know i haven't worn this more than two weeks the display looks fantastic all the hardware looks really sharp the watch feels good i just don't know how much more hooked in it's going to feel with the rest of google and we don't know yet so right now i think it's the best android watch but i have a lot of questions about where samsung and google are going to take this how much of this is samsung's how much of this watch is google's we're only going to find that out over the next year or so but the samsung galaxy watch 4 does feel like an overdue step for finally knitting together the entire kind of complicated android wearable picture\n"