Galaxy Watch Active 2 review: A runaway success

Hey this is hi anta with Android Central and this is the Samsung Galaxy watch active – it's a bit of a mouthful I know but look this is one of the best smartwatches you can buy if you use an Android phone so part of that is because Google's where OS is such a mess right

Now but even ignoring that this is genuinely a good watch the Galaxy watch active 2 has a round watch face just like the previous gen model that came before it and you can get it in one of two sizes and with optional LTE the

Design is a little plain but it's nicely built out of aluminum and while I don't love the silicone band that it comes with the watch active 2 uses standard watch band sizes so I was able to swap it with the leather strap from my old

Gear s2 classic speaking of the gear s2 something I really miss about that watch was the rotating bezel that made navigating through Tizen OS kind of fun but the galaxy watch active 2 does the next best thing you can slide your

Finger along the glass surrounding the screen to emulate the same function complete with haptic feedback clicks the feature isn't enabled by default for some reason but it works really well it feels great to use and it's one less

Moving part now you can probably tell that I'm not the most active guy and if you want detailed thoughts and the watch active twos Fitness features you should go read and remark Nick's review over at android central.com but here's the short

Of it the watch has everything from GPS to heart rate monitoring sleep tracking and automatic samsung health tracking when you start a workout some of these features work better than others and in particular the GPS tracking is pretty

Inconsistent but as a total package you're getting a fairly full-featured experience that should work with basically any active lifestyle if you're like me though and you really just want quick notifications at a glance and the

Occasional music controls the galaxy watch does that too you can also take phone calls with either the built-in mic and speaker or a set of bluetooth headphones check the weather talk to Bixby if you really want to I guess the

Galaxy watch active 2 basically does everything and it does most of it pretty well it can even connect to an iPhone but since Apple still doesn't give third-party watches access to things like iMessage you're still probably

Better off by Apple watch instead now how about battery life well it's actually pretty good too with the always-on display enabled I've been able to get two days of battery life between each charge and

You can stretch that out even longer by letting the display turn off when it's not in use the watch active too comes with a magnetic charging puck but I've just been using reverse wireless charging it comes on basically every new

Samsung phone and it means that I don't have to worry about remembering another cable to pack in my bag so let's talk about pricing to wrap things up the galaxy watch active 2 starts at 279 right now which is $80 more than the

Original galaxy watch that came out earlier this year but for that money you're getting something that works really well as both a SmartWatch and a fitness tracker not just one over the other that's pretty hard to come by on

The Android side of things so if you're looking for a new SmartWatch and you don't mind paying a bit of a premium I say go for it hey everybody thanks for watching if you enjoyed this new direct to camera format

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Tuned throughout the week we're gonna have plenty of pixel for coverage from the made by Google event on Tuesday see you there