Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 review

Samsung has a long history in the smartwatch space, having dabbled in everything from smartwatches with inbuilt cameras to smartwatches with digital bezels, but its best innovation in the smartwatch space is undeniably the rotating bezel that was a feature of models before Samsung decided it wanted to go down the virtual path with devices like the Galaxy Watch Active 2.

The good news – frankly, the great news – is that the bezel is back, and its reappearance makes the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 a genuine competitor in arguments around the best smartwatch you can buy, combining slick performance with decent battery life and LTE options for those who would rather leave their phones at home.

Design

Design

• 41mm or 45mm watch styles
• Different colour choices depending on size
• Rotating bezel!
• Always-on display option

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3's design

  Samsung claims that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 features, and I quote, "Top Refined Real Watch Design".

  I think what Samsung is trying to say there is that the Galaxy Watch 3 looks like a watch. It's a not terribly inspired dig at the Apple Watch and its rectangular display, which isn't entirely, for want of a better term, particularly watch-y.

  That's arguably a more important distinction than you might think, because smartwatches are very much a luxury option. There's a reliance, even for LTE models on the existence of a smartphone somewhere, and if you have a smartphone, you can tell time, play music and get notifications without needing a hunk of glass, metal and silicon strapped to your wrist.

  People wear smartwatches because they like wearing watches, period, and having a watch that looks like a premium design is actually a plus here.

  The Galaxy Watch 3 comes in two size variants, with either a 41mm or 45mm display. While they're designed to complement the styles and colours of the new Galaxy Note 20 phones, there's a strict colour hierarchy at play.

  If you want what Samsung calls "Mystic Silver", that finish is available across both sizes, but if you fancy the new "Mystic Bronze" – it's essentially rose gold, folks – that's only available on the 41mm model. Conversely, if you like a darker watch, the "Mystic Black" finish is a 45mm exclusive. That's the model that Samsung sent me for review.

  The 45mm model features a 1.4 inch 360x360 Super AMOLED display, while the 41mm model drops that slightly down to 1.2 inches while keeping the same resolution, which technically means it's slightly sharper in pure pixels per inch terms. The big new feature of the Galaxy Watch 3's design isn't a new feature at all, because Samsung had and then dropped rotating bezels a few generations ago.

  Rather like the digital crown on the Apple Watch, the idea here is that you can spin the bezel to quickly flick between menus or access other watch screens. It feels slightly looser to my touch than prior generations with less of a pleasing "clunk" between rotation notches, but it remains the single best way to navigate around watch screens bar none.

  By default, the Galaxy Watch 3's display will power off when not in use to maximise battery life, but you can opt to keep it with an always-on display if that's important to you.

  The watch itself is IP68 rated for water immersion, although I didn't really take it for any lengthy swims during my review period. Something to do with that whole "winter" thing, not to mention the coronavirus pandemic that makes me less keen on public swimming areas right now.

Performance

Performance

• More watch faces than you'll ever need
• Not quite as rich an app ecosystem as Apple
• Best new health features can't be tested yet
• Phone reviewers need more sleep, according to Samsung
• Samsung is not wrong

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3's performance

  Samsung's watches have for some time run on its own Tizen operating system, not that you'd automatically pick this just looking at the Galaxy Watch 3. Installation is a simple enough process across either Android or iOS platforms.

  Naturally, Samsung would prefer you to pair the Galaxy Watch 3 with a Samsung phone, and if you do that, there's no additional software to install. For other devices, you'll need to grab Samsung's Galaxy Wear app before you start Bluetooth pairing. If you opt for the LTE model you'll also have to set up an eSIM and compatible phone provider plan at extra cost, but I wasn't able to test that out for the purposes of review.

  The Galaxy Watch 3's circular watch face is very much a blank slate when it comes to watch faces, with 19 preinstalled but literally thousands of available watch faces to download from Samsung's Galaxy Store.

  You can browse the Galaxy Store from the Galaxy Watch 3 itself, but it's a much more enjoyable process via your paired phone, because you can scroll through more information at once. Either way, there's more scope here for watch face personalisation than on any other smartwatch you could name, and it's not even vaguely close. Yes, some watch faces look abominable to me, but your tastes could vary wildly, and more choice is no bad matter.

  Where there's a little less comparative choice, at least if we're comparing against the Apple Watch, is in pure app integrations. It's an area where Apple has been very aggressive in courting developers to produce adjuncts to their iOS apps, but Samsung, of course, can't apply the same pressure to app developers to make Tizen apps just for its watches. Still, there's a nice variety of additional apps in play, with music streaming service Spotify a notable highlight.

  Notifications and apps are one part of the smartwatch story, and the other is in fitness tracking. The Galaxy Watch 3 continues Samsung's generally solid story here, with a wide variety of inbuilt exercise tracking options on board, as well as systems for tracking calories, water intake and even stress rates if that takes your fancy.

  According to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, I'm rather stressed. I probably don't need the Galaxy Watch 3 to tell me this, because, well… have you met 2020?

  Likewise the Galaxy Watch 3 can handle sleep tracking, and it does so automatically as long as you keep it on your wrist when you snooze, detecting your motion and recording light, deep and REM sleep modes to give you a more complete picture of your overall sleep health.

  Again, my sleep health is pretty lousy, with low sleep "efficiency" and nowhere near enough deep sleep right now. Again, I blame 2020 and probably don't need a watch telling me this, but the value of that data is in building up a positively moving pattern over time anyway.

  That aside, the other big flagship features of the Galaxy Watch 3 are largely ones I've not been able to test. It features fall detection, which could be handy in an emergency, but no quantity of hurling myself at my sofa was able to set it off, and I'm not willing to dive headfirst at concrete to see how much force is really required. Call me fussy, but I hate breaking my skull, even in the name of tech reviewing.

  The Galaxy Watch 3 also features Blood Pressure and ECG features, but not outside South Korea at this point in time. Like the Apple Watch, there are significant regulatory hurdles to overcome for those kinds of medical-grade features.

  Apple reportedly hasn't even bothered to chase up the necessary qualifications in Australia, and it's unclear if Samsung will do so either. As such, they're features that the Galaxy Watch 3 might technically have, but I wouldn't buy one on that basis, because there's no clear timeline on when or if they might become available here.

Battery life

Battery life

• 2-3 days of battery life depending on usage
• Small disc watch charger

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3's battery life

  The 45mm model of the Galaxy Watch 3 I tested features a 340mAh battery, while the smaller model has to make do with just 247mAh. In phone terms that sounds desperately small, but of course, you're not using a smartwatch like the Galaxy Watch 3 all the time. I could only rely on anecdotal testing, but I managed between 2-3 days between recharges if I didn't have the always-on display option enabled, and around half that if I did keep the screen permanently on.

  Clearly, if you opt for the LTE enabled version, you'd see a bigger hit to battery life, especially if you used the Galaxy Watch 3 as a standalone device a lot of the time.

  Like recent Samsung smartwatches, the Galaxy Watch 3 ships with a small disc-shaped wireless charger for primary recharging duties. It's Qi compatible too, so if you're particularly patient you can use the reverse power share feature of recent Samsung phones to give the Galaxy Watch 3 some extra juice.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3?

The battle lines in the smartwatch war couldn't be more starkly defined between Apple and Samsung. If you're an iPhone user it's still a hard sell to suggest that you shouldn't buy an Apple Watch, because its integration into the whole Apple ecosystem is simply superb.

However, it's a watch that doesn't look that much like a watch, and what's more it's totally useless if you want to move outside the Apple ecosystem. That's not a problem that plagues the Galaxy Watch 3, which is just as happy to run within iOS as it is Android, has a more pleasing watch style design, and the single best control system for a smartwatch yet seen.

Yeah, I really missed the rotating bezel a lot when Samsung dropped it. You can tell, right?

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Images: Alex Kidman