Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Review: Finally an Apple Watch for Android

Those on Apple’s side of the fence in the Apple vs. Android rivals have had a clear decision when choosing a wearable. Get an Apple Watch. Even if you wanted to defect, you’d be hard pressed to find an outside brand that was worth the betrayal. Android users on the other hand have been spoiled with choice, but none of them have stood out enough to undeniably grip the market. 

Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of good smartwatches to use with Android devices. FitBits work a treat, Suunto products are great (if not expensive), and both Realme and OPPO have tried their hand at wearables. Each of these manufacturers have carved out a space for themselves with wearables but none have been able to mirror the excellence of the Apple Watch. The Galaxy Watch 4 does.

According to research done in 2017, activity tracking is one of the primary reasons consumers purchase smart watches. Smart watches really are an extension of a pedometer that rewards you for hitting goals with a little vibration, and some serotonin. They really just Pavlov us into taking better care of ourselves. 

With such a heavy focus on fitness tracking it makes sense that you’ll want that feature to be front and center, and accurate. The Galaxy Watch 4, like the Apple Watch, uses a ring system to show how you’re progressing on your daily step, activity, and calorie goals. All goals are entirely customisable within the app - that is all pretty basic and what we’ve come to expect from smart watches.

Accuracy with wearables can be tricky. There is no real way to determine just how accurate your calories burned are as it is all based on things like BMI and your heart rate - both which are not reliable indicators of health or fitness. As such, all data that you get from any smart watch should be taken with a grain of salt. Think of it more as a guideline or a motivational tool rather than gospel.

In saying that, the Galaxy Watch 4 has had what I would consider to be the most reliable fitness tracking of any Android watch I've used to date, or at least the one I trust the most. According to the Mayo Clinic, an hour of low to moderate exercise for someone a bit heavier than me will burn between 200 to 600 calories. My moderate to high intensity training sessions usually yield around 400 to 550 calories according to the Galaxy Watch 4. It is well within the realm of accuracy. There are also no standout anomalies that should be cause for concern, no reading too high or too low for the activity that I'm doing and the number value of calories burned feels like a true reflection of the effort exerted. 

Of course you can have the most accurate tracking in the universe, but if you’re trying to track with a dead battery it’s all for nothing. Initially I had concerns about the Watch 4 battery - I needed to recharge it by around 8:00pm every night for the first week. Samsung however stepped in and released an update concentrating on battery efficiency and since then my watch has lasted without using power saving mode, or turning off any notifications until around 11:00pm. A full day of wear from a comprehensive smartwatch is solid.

The only place where the Watch 4 is lacking is the design. While it has a lovely display, and the spinning dial to navigate the home screen is a fun play on the analogue watch aesthetic, the device itself is just not attractive. It’s black on black, with a simple silicon strap which can be subbed out for other colours and materials, or you can opt for the stainless steel looking silver design instead. Either way, when compared to the Apple Watch it is nowhere near as sleek or refined. In a way, it looks more like the kind of watch you’d see on a teenager rather than one I would want to wear consistently as an adult. Design is never a deal breaker for me, especially when the Watch 4 has such great tech going for it, but if you’re concerned with aesthetics then it is worth noting.

Along with the usual fitness tracking, notifications, and solid battery life the Watch 4 has a few tricks hidden up your sleeve. First of all the device has NFC which you can set up using Samsung Pay or Google Pay. You won’t be able to choose Google Pay as your default or create shortcuts to be able to access it quickly, but you can move it to the top of your app list and get to it in a couple of swipes. There is also sleep tracking, and ECG.

Interestingly enough the watch tracks your snoring as you sleep. Snoring can be an indicator of underlying health conditions, but for the most part if your snoring doesn’t affect your sleep or your partner or dog’s sleep then it isn’t of high concern, and yet it is a new sleep tracking feature cropping up in smart devices. Google’s latest Nest Home device has a similar function which I found to be wildly inaccurate for me since I either sleep in a bed with my dog, or with my dog and my partner. Either way there are competing snorers vying to be picked up by snore tracking. The Samsung Watch seems to be somewhat more accurate than the Nest, or perhaps it’s just not as sensitive because it is on my wrist as opposed to surveying the whole bed. It is another metric to track, but not something I'd encourage you to use as a deciding factor to buy this watch.

ECG is another feature that smartwatch manufacturers like to add onto devices. Ultimately an ECG or EKG is supposed to record the electric signal from your heart and check for different heart conditions, and the Galaxy Watch also checks blood pressure. To check your blood pressure you’ll need to buy a traditional cuff separately and calibrate it with your watch every 28 days. This is not something I would trust a watch to do for me, so any measurements should be side-eyed pretty hard. Samsung agrees on this stating that:

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 - Final thoughts

Android smartwatches tend to have a few issues, it might be compatibility, or tracking accuracy, battery, or maybe the software is clunky. This usually means that Android options fall short when compared to the alternative of an Apple Watch, but the Samsung Watch 4 is bridging this gap for Android users.

While the extras like ECG and snore tracking are interesting additions to the device, they are by no means the selling points for the Galaxy Watch 4. The backbones of the Galaxy Watch 4 being performance, battery life, and accuracy are all strong. Day-to-day usage harbours no complaints, which for an Android watch has, until just now, been something to aspire to. 

Anula Wiwatowska

Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram

Anula is the Off-Site Editorial Lead for WhistleOut Australia, and an award winning tech journalist. She has been writing about the Australian telco industry, and consumer technology for over five years, and has been known to tell her Uber driver which phone they should upgrade to next.

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