Quick review
The good
The not-so-good
Armed with Sapphire crystal and one of the biggest lists of health sensors you can find, the Galaxy Watch 5 gives Android owners something like an Apple Watch, even if it misses the mark in other ways.
As lovely as the Apple Watch is, it not only costs a pretty penny, it’s also unavailable for Android owners. If you happen to be one of those, bad luck, because any of the three Apple Watch models out of reach, and finding something as gloriously premium isn’t always as easy.
Huawei has models, and while big with a decently sized battery, they don’t tend to support payments locally or even a heap of customisation, missing out on some of those crucial features. Google’s Fitbit brand has some as well all with a focus on health, but the lack of customisation is often an issue, and meanwhile Google’s own Pixel Watch is great, but lacks the battery life.
If you’re looking for an Android-friendly smartwatch that offers it all — battery, customisation, looks, payment, and health features — it mightn’t be all that easy.
But that also might be where Samsung has found an area it can play in. For the past few years, that’s largely been what the Galaxy Gear and subsequent Galaxy Watch models have been about, and in the latest generation, it’s updating things again.
Is the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 the Apple Watch Android fans have been hankering for?
Design and features
Several generations into Samsung’s wearable journey, the Galaxy Watch 5 evolves what you might know from the Galaxy Watch Active range, though moves on from the look and feel of Samsung’s regular Galaxy Watch line.
If you’ve followed the wearables up until now, you may be familiar with Samsung’s rotational bezel, one of the original features ever since Samsung started dabbling with the circular form. It was there on the Gear S2, refined on the Gear S3, and even on the previous Watch 4 Classic. In fact up until this generation, it was one of those things that existed to not only make the Samsung watch models look different, but also more like a classic watch.
This generation, that is gone, and you’re instead left with a full touchscreen to swipe, touch, prod, and make gestures on. It’s a slick look, sure, and more like the Galaxy Watch Active, but it’s not quite as unique as what Samsung had going for it over the past few years.
However, the tech is at least similar to what Samsung has had over the past few, though there are some changes.
For starters, there’s the top, which sees Corning’s Gorilla Glass replaced with sapphire crystal, though the casing retains the same aluminium material. You’ll have a choice between 40mm and 44mm sizes, a display difference that also changes the screen resolution, supporting with either 396×396 or 450×450 dependent on that size shift, using AMOLED regardless of the size you get.
Either way, it’s all the same under the hood, using a dual-core chip, 1.5GB RAM, 16GB storage with just under half of that available to you, and support for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Near-Field Communication (NFC).
There’s also an assortment of health tracking sensors, with a 3-in-1 sensor offering optical heart rate, electrocardiograph (ECG), and a bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) able to look at your health by sending a weak electrical pulse around your body and measuring how long it takes for it to come back around again, a concept that has been around before, with TomTom using it at least once back when it did wearables. You shouldn’t use it if you have a pacemaker, medical implants, or are pregnant, but outside of those, Samsung has no other warnings about its BIA sensor.
The health sensor tech includes something from the Watch 4 before it, with SpO2 blood oxygen tracking, plus skin temperature, too.
Outside of this, the Watch 5 is a Google Wear OS smartwatch, supporting payment functionality, sleep tracking, GPS, though not necessarily back-tracking GPS functionality if you get lost. There’s a more expensive Galaxy Watch 5 Pro that does this if you need it.
Beyond the feature set, the Galaxy Watch 5 is also fairly durable, supporting IP68 water resistance and the military specification of MIL-STD-810H.
In-use
With the features all sorted, it’s time to get stuck into the watch, and with no control wheel in this generation, using the Galaxy Watch 5 is largely like using every other smartwatch out there: gestures on a touchscreen. That means you’ll swipe left and right to scroll through the various screens and extra health widgets, swipe down for a power menu, or swipe up for the full menu of apps.
There are two physical buttons on the right, and they can be mapped for things like the Google Assistant or Bixby if for some reason you want to do that, or even Samsung Pay, because that’s supported, too.
Assistant and payment are some of the main features, plus the health features, and yes, there are apps available for Wear OS, even if it doesn’t feel like they’re much more than extensions of what you can find on your phone.
We used the Watch 5 mostly for the time, notifications, and health features, checking our heart rate and ECG at times, with the assortment quite useful for folks who want to let Samsung’s apps explore what’s happening to your body.
The inclusion of bioelectrical impedance is handy, as you can get a look at muscle and fat and bone structure, though we’re not sure how often folks will jump into that feature. Neat, but not necessarily something we’d frequent.
Health Metrics
Measuring your bone, fat, muscle, and water is one part of the package, and you can technically do it without downloading the Samsung Health Monitor app, running it entirely on your phone. However, you probably should, because without it, the information is barebones.
Testing the Watch 5 while reviewing the 2022 Moto Razr, we obviously didn’t have Samsung software native on the device, and that made it a rather interesting test, showing us that running the apps and widgets from day dot on the watch didn’t actually trigger the notifications of setup screens on the phone.
They probably should have, and would have on a Samsung Android phone, but something made by another brand? Not so much.
It means the experience using the Watch 5 will be a little clearer with a Samsung phone than without, and one that may affect what features run. For instance, even with Samsung Health Monitor installed on our phone, we couldn’t run the blood pressure scanner from the watch. The two just wouldn’t talk.
It’s a similar situation with the ECG, which wouldn’t fire. We could record blood pressure manually, and SpO2 blood oxygen measurement would trigger via the stress measurement or while sleeping, but without a Samsung phone, we couldn’t seem to fire these up, which was a real shame.
About the only thing Health Monitor offers is reading of those sensors: we could see our bioelectrical impedance tests on the screen broken up a little more clearly, while our sleep screen detailed awake, REM, light, and deep sleep times, too. We just wish we could arm and trigger the advanced sensors the way the wearable seemed to suggest.
Performance
Armed with a dual-core chip, 1.5GB RAM, and a customised version of Google’s Wear OS, you probably won’t find a heap of performance issues with the Galaxy Watch 5. Things are largely solid in terms of using the wearable, with a hint of slowdown at times, but usability for the watch actually quite good.
Moments of lag are just that — moments — and while there aren’t a heap of apps to take advantage of, the watch’s notifications appeared quickly, as was flicking them away.
Battery
While the performance is up there, the battery could be better, especially given we’ve seen better from Samsung’s previous wearables.
First the good news: you’ll find a good day and a half of battery life from the Watch 5, which in fairness, is better than the maximum of a day we experienced on the Google Pixel Watch, and puts it within spitting distance of the ultra premium Apple Watch Ultra.
The bad news is that Samsung has done better before. Cast your recollection back to the Gear S3 and you might remember a Tizen-powered wearable capable of hitting two or three days with no problems.
That’s not this watch, and unfortunately, if you take advantage of all the health features and receive plenty of notifications, you will probably need to charge the Watch 5 nightly, or in the morning when you get up to shower.
Samsung also still hasn’t made the charger totally compatible with Qi, it seems, as our assortment of wireless chargers wouldn’t play nicely, and only the Samsung-supplied in-box wireless puck would. Most watches aren’t proper Qi, but we’re still surprised to see Samsung hasn’t quite jumped on board here.
Value
At least the value is about where it probably should be, given what everyone else charges.
In Australia, the Galaxy Watch 5 commands a price of $499 for the smaller 40mm model or $549 for the larger 44mm, both of which have Bluetooth as their connection technology. An extra $100 on either will get you the 4G and Bluetooth model, handy if you want to go for a run, though looking around might see you snag it for $50 off in either variation.
Given its obvious competitor in the Apple Watch Series 8, this isn’t a total surprise, and basically sees Samsung pitching much the same concept, but for Android owners out there. There’s similar tech on board, albeit without the temperature sensor and crash technology, and a shift in durability: Galaxy Watch 5 owners get Sapphire Crystal glass protection, Series 8 Apple Watch owners only get that if they spend into a thousand dollars.
We don’t have a problem with the value, overall. We’re always hoping for gadgets to be a little more economical, but at least things are relatively sound in the pricing world, even if they may not be with the battery.
What needs work?
Beyond those battery issues, though, the fact that the Watch 5 feels iterative is a problem, and it keeps the rather “meh” feeling you’ll find to the lack of creativity in the watch faces. At least you can get an assortment from the Samsung store, sure, and it’s not locked down. But at the same time, neither the app nor watch face selection feels remarkably inspired, and you could say the same about the design.
For the past few years, Samsung’s main point of differentiation has been the circular wheel around the bezel, providing not just a homage to the days of chronometer watches, but also an actual controller for using the watch. Yes, the old Samsung watches had a touchscreen, but the models that weren’t the Galaxy Active variation also had a physical controller, too, and it was handy.
Essentially, you had the choice of full touchscreen in one model, or full touchscreen and an extra physical controller in the other. It was something no one else offered.
And now it’s something no one offers in general, because Samsung has moved away from that excellent point of difference. What a shame.
We mean that: we loved the rotational controller on the old models, and it made the watches something different. If you didn’t like the touchscreen too much or wanted to quickly check out a widget, it was as simple as a rotation away. Not so anymore; now you need to touch your watch and swipe left and right, and there’s not a lot to separate the Watch 5 from other wearables.
It’s more like Apple in one other way: platform specificity. As in you have to have Android to use the Galaxy Watch 5, with no Gear or Galaxy Wearable app available for iOS, it seems.
I guess you have an assortment of great wearables on iOS already, but it’s a little disheartening to see Samsung shy away from platform agnosticism, and one that leans so heavily on owning a Samsung-specific Android phone. With any other brand of Android, good luck using those advanced health sensors, as they just don’t seem to exist.
Final thoughts (TLDR)
A relatively fast and slick device, the Watch 5 is a good looking piece of hardware that makes use of the foundation Samsung has built before, even if it feels it hasn’t gone anywhere, new or otherwise. This is mostly about minor updates and durability, because that’s what the Watch 5 brings.
Android owners looking for their version of the Apple Watch will find a solid little wearable here, even if lacks the platform versatility of a Fitbit or Withings, letting you go to either platform, something Samsung no longer supports. We’re also sad to see that point of difference missing in action here; this is now just a touchscreen wearable. That’s not a bad thing, but the Galaxy Watch is no longer much of a special thing.
The good news is what you get in terms of health features, and there’s a lot there. Blood pressure, ECG, electrical impedance to measure density of your body, and skin temperature, the Galaxy Watch 5 has more than you might expect. It’s very much for a picture of your health, and that’s great for folks who want that.
But it’s one that seems to want a Samsung device specifically, and that makes it a more difficult argument to make. You could argue that makes the Galaxy Watch 5 as close to an Apple Watch as you’re going to find on Android, given how specific a platform it wants and the premium approach to health sensors is handy, though we think Apple does a better job for the whole picture. But really, this picture of health could be better overall.
If you’re already in the Samsung ecosystem and want something like an Apple Watch that works for your phone, look no further than what Samsung is offering in the Galaxy Watch 5. But just be aware compatibility is no friend of this otherwise versatile gadget.
