Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Review

The Wear OS-powered Galaxy Watch 4 acts as the perfect equivalent of an Apple Watch but for the Android ecosystem. However, although it's a great wearable that would fit just about anybody, the Galaxy Watch 4 fails to deliver in one key aspect that's ultimately the most important feature of a smartwatch: battery life. It's not great, and if you're looking for a smartwatch that doesn't need to be charged every day, better look elsewhere.

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 is the second-best smartwatch to pair with a Samsung phone. Interestingly, the best one at the moment is the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic. If you can overlook the unimpressive battery endurance, then the Galaxy Watch 4 has all the bells and whistles to be an excellent companion for your Galaxy phone.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Design and Display

The display of the Galaxy Watch 4 is spectacular. The OLED display is very bright, with deliciously deep blacks and punchy colors, which has already become a signature feature of the displays of Samsung's top phones and watches. There's an always-on display functionality, which sadly greatly reduces the battery endurance of the Galaxy Watch 4 and isn't as efficient as the always-on display on Samsung phones.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Features and Functionality

For example, there's Google Maps, Google Pay, Spotify, Strava, Messages, VLC Mobile, Viber, Shazam, Lifesum, as well as many watch face apps.

However, the compatibility is a major flaw of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4. Indeed, you can't use the Galaxy Watch 4 with an iPhone (though an Apple Watch is a much better fit for an iPhone), and its best and most intriguing features, like the electro-cardiogram reading and the blood pressure measurement, are only available on a Samsung phone. Yes, you can use the wearable with any Android device, but pairing it with a Samsung phone is definitely the best way to use the Galaxy Watch 4.
You can use Google Pay on the Galaxy Watch 4 with no hassles, though the smartwatch really wanted me to use Samsung Pay instead. At the end of the day, both payment systems work great.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Health and fitness

When it comes to sport and activity, the Galaxy Watch 4 and the refreshed Wear OS offer a pretty well-rounded package. There are tons of available sports and activities to choose from, and all of these can be later tracked on in Samsung Health on your phone. While the data you get is pretty comprehensive, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 activity tracking isn't as complex or detailed as with those dedicated multisport smartwatches coming from the ranks of Garmin, Coros, or Polar.


Another cool feature is the body composition metric, which uses the new Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis Sensor and gives you an estimate of your body-mass index, as well as a breakdown of body fat percentage, skeletal muscle, and so on. Definitely one of the more interesting features of the Galaxy Watch 4, but somewhat gimmick-y.

Samsung Galaxy Watch 4: Performance and battery

The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 performs well for a smartwatch. With a dual-core 1.18GHz chipset, 1.15GB of RAM, and roughly 7GB of available storage, it's a pretty well-rounded smartwatch as far as performance is concerned. Yet, this probably isn't so important for a smartwatch.
There's a 361mAh battery inside the Galaxy Watch 4, and while Samsung cites up to 40 hours of usage, the watch never lasted me more than a day, which is a pretty middling battery life all things considered. Mind you, you probably won't get a much better battery life out of an Apple Watch either, but Samsung's previous Tizen-powered smartwatches used to squeeze three to four days of battery life. That's definitely one of the bigger drawbacks of the new Wear OS-powered line of Samsung watches.

While the battery endurance of the Galaxy Watch 4 isn't impressive, the charging speed is nothing to write home about as well. It takes under two hours to fully charge the smartwatch.