Samsung launched its new foldable smartphones just a few weeks ago, and with them came its new wearables as well. The new Samsung Galaxy Watch6 comes at a base price of Rs. 29,999 for the Bluetooth-only 40mm model and goes up to Rs. 36,999 for the Bluetooth + LTE 44mm model. Does the new Watch6 have enough to justify being your wrist accessory to go with your phone? Let’s try and find that out.
Design: The Galaxy Watch6 comes in an aluminium finish with crystal sapphire glass on top of its 1.5-inch circular display. The back houses all the sensors that would rest against your wrist area. The watch has standard 20mm silicone straps that you can remove with just a press of the small buttons located at the back of each strap (default ones) and use any other such strap to go with it. You can buy such straps from Samsung, too, including ones made out of fabric. This isn’t a very heavy smartwatch (about 34 grams), but it has sufficient heft to be felt on your wrist. It’s an IP68 water and dust-resistant device and should withstand light rain and showers, and of course, gym use. The watch didn’t catch any scratches on the glass or on the sides during my few days of usage, but I would expect it to show more scratches with rougher use when used daily for a longer period. The watch is comfortable to wear and not rough on the skin so far, as I have tried. The 44mm size I tried required being hooked to the last hole in the strap to be snug enough.
Display: the 1.5-inch AMOLED (480x480) circular display is a little brighter than before and is usable under direct sunlight or gloomy conditions outdoors. The text and graphics on the display are clear and sharp enough for you to read your notifications, check map routes or write a short reply to a message.
Software and features: The Galaxy Watch6 runs on Wear OS 4 with One UI 5 on top and the June security patch in place. It looks and feels rather different from any other non-Samsung WearOS smartwatch but very much like the Watch5. On the inside, you get the Exynos E930 chipset (1.4GHz dual-core processor) alongside 2GB of RAM and 16GB (only 7GB available) of internal storage space. The watch is responsive to touches and swipes while also not showing too many drops in animations.
You can swipe down one the Home screen to get to connectivity shortcuts; swipe from the left to right to get to notifications; swipe up to get to all your apps; and swipe to go to different watch modes and fitness measures. You can add more tiles to the right side Home screen. Paired with a Samsung phone, you can pay over NFC using the Watch6. You would need to have Samsung Wallet set up, which is exclusive to Samsung phones. You can pay with Samsung Wallet on an NFC-enabled PoS machine (need to add your debit or credit card in the app beforehand), and it does work well.
You can also control media playback including on any Galaxy Buds from the watch.Another thing, you can reply to a pending message using the on-screen keyboard, if you’re okay with typing on the display.
With the Watch6, you can keep track of your body measurement and any changes made regularly. You can also tag different measurements done, such as if it was done pre exercise or post, etc. You can track the hours of your deep sleep, step counts (which I found fairly accurate) and also take a note of stress measures in your body at a time.
The watch supports rotating on its display’s edges to navigate between screens (compared to a physical rotating bezel on the Watch6 Classic) and it seems to work just fine. You can assign the Home button for going to the most recent app or go to an exercise mode. Same way, the back button can be assigned to either go back or show the recent apps. Noticeably, the ability to do ECG reading (with AFbi) is still missing from the Galaxy Watch6 in India, which was the case with earlier models, too. I found the haptics on the watch to notify you to be pretty strong and reliable even when commuting.
Battery life: The Watch6 44mm sports a 425mAh battery unit, which lasted me a little above a day most of the time. With LTE switched off, I found it required to be charged the next day every time. But with LTE (using your phone SIM card’s data), it is needed to be charged again within the same day. The Watch6 took about 80-90 minutes to charge from 1% to full.
Verdict: The Watch6 would make sense if you’re ready to splurge on a high-end, well-performing smartwatch that needs to be paired with your Samsung smartphone (not for any other Android phone either). With a slightly improved battery life and display and added Samsung Wallet feature, the Watch6 is a worthy contender if these points satisfy your requirement and budget. Having said that, I would suggest looking out for deals, especially during the festive season, since Samsung’s wearables (along with others) might pop-up with some nice deals during that time.
