Review – Samsung Galaxy Watch4
Consider the premium price point of a proper smartwatch, the idea of purchasing one never really crossed my mind. I’m talking about a full fledge smartwatch that’s running on either Watch OS, Android Wear or TizenOS with their respective App Store support, not any of those affordable smartwatch lookalike fitness band with customizable watch face.
That is until my colleague handed me a Samsung Galaxy Watch Active and I have been daily driving it for the past few weeks. Frankly speaking, I’m fine with a hand-me-down stuff as long as it is still perfectly usable. The Watch Active despite being an ugly watch, is still a very capable smartwatch and it has more features than what I need.
Then, Samsung offered me to try out the Galaxy Watch4. Yes, I did borrow the Watch4 from Samsung but they have no directives in the content of this article.
After wearing and using the Watch4 for three weeks, I can safely say this is Samsung’s best attempt with their smartwatch. Do keep in mind my opinion is formed after the 40mm Standard Galaxy Watch4, so your experience might vary if you opted for a 44mm Watch4 or the 42mm/46mm Classic variant.
Remember how I kept using the Galaxy Watch Active despite it’s ugly design? I chose practicality over aesthetics. Truth be told, I can live with it consider how we have less social activities nowadays. The arrival of Galaxy Watch4 has reminded me why wrist watch is categorized under jewelry.
I may have over exaggerating on this but the Watch4 simply looks better with its casing design unlike the toy-ish rounded Watch Active. The display is bigger at 1.19” for the 40mm variant and 1.36” for the 44mm variant. Despite just a 0.09” increment, the display is noticeably larger and feels better to navigate on. The higher resolution Super AMOLED panel provides crisp text and vibrant colors.
Samsung also made sure the watch is still compatible with the existing 20mm straps. Simply put, all your existing strap collection will work well on the new watch.
The Galaxy Watch4 family is a great milestone for Samsung since it is the first official collaboration with Google for the Wear OS platform. While I think Tizen Wearable OS is a decent platform, it is still constricted within the Samsung’s Android ecosystem.
The move to Android Wear OS is a significant direction as it leverages on the existing Wear OS developer community for third party apps and features.
Apart from the software, the hardware also received a long awaited upgrade from the dinosaur Exynos 9110 (10nm) to Exynos W920 (5nm). What you get is the improved performance and battery life. Even though I never really experienced any slowdown or lag with the old Exynos 9110, but any additional performance headroom is always welcomed.
Besides, the newer architecture has better power efficiency that supports the bigger display without affecting the battery life. In my use case, a single full charge of the Watch4 is enough to last for a maximum 2 days. To be safe, I’d say one and a half days until the low battery message popping out.
Conclusion
All in all, Samsung has done an excellent job in the creation of the Galaxy Watch4 family.
- Galaxy Watch 4 40mm (Bluetooth) – RM899
- Galaxy Watch 4 44mm (Bluetooth) – RM999
- Galaxy Watch 4 Classic 42mm (Bluetooth) – RM1,299
- Galaxy Watch 4 Classic 46mm (Bluetooth) – RM1,399
The pricing is reasonable, and most importantly, this is probably one of the best Android Wear smartwatch you can get for the starting price of RM899. I’m talking about great software support and build quality. Heck, even Samsung Pay integration alone makes it worth purchasing already. Consider how Apple Pay and Android Pay in Malaysia is still in limbo.
