In all my years testing smartwatches, I've landed on a few favorites. At that place was a time when the Fitbit Versa claimed ownership of my wrist, and for a spell the Wear Bone-based Skagen Falster ii was my get-to. But lately, I've found myself returning to Samsung'south Galaxy Sentry Active. Over the years, Samsung has refined its smartwatch into a stylish, comfortable and capable wearable. And Tizen Os tends to exist more responsive, proactive and useful than the software on many other watches.

Pros

  • Upgraded sensors are fast and accurate
  • Tizen OS is useful
  • Touch-sensitive bezel works well
  • Offers a lot for the price

Cons

  • Disappointing battery life
  • Conditioning tracking could be more comprehensive

With the Milky way Watch Active 2, Samsung continues to ameliorate its health- and workout-monitoring tools as it explores other applications like translation and video playback. Most intriguing of all (to those familiar with Samsung's sentry lineup anyway), the Sentinel Agile 2 brings dorsum the company'due south hallmark spinning bezel. Sort of.

Bezel controls return (sort of)

When Samsung introduced the Galaxy Lookout man Active without the rotating wheel, I have to acknowledge I was shaken. The bezel fabricated it much easier to navigate the interface. Just Samsung had to continue the Active serial uncomplicated, and the wheel added to the weight and cost. The company found a compromise with the Picket Active 2 by making the bezel touch-sensitive, so you tin ringlet through widgets and notifications past dragging your finger around the face up. There'southward also satisfying haptic feedback hither that mimics the feel of it clicking into identify.

Gallery: Galaxy Watch Active 2 review | 16 Photos

But while I used the physical bezel to interact with previous Milky way watches more half the time, I barely used this virtual one at all. When I did, it was more for the novelty cistron and to feel the haptic response than to get whatever improvement in speed. Eventually, I only rearranged my widgets then the ones I used most oft were within two or 3 swipes from the abode screen. This is by no means a ding on Samsung. Information technology just means Tizen's OS has become like shooting fish in a barrel enough to utilise that I don't feel the demand to zip through endless pages of apps to find the one I want.

Display and controls

Information technology's as well possible that I discover information technology easier to navigate the Lookout man Active ii considering of its slightly bigger screen. The original Sentinel Active's one.i-inch screen felt cramped, and though the 40mm Agile two's one.2-inch screen is just a teeny bit larger, it feels a lot roomier. The new Agile besides comes in a 44mm model with a 1.4-inch display, which is fifty-fifty more spacious.

Samsung besides tweaked the button on the top right of the watch, making it a little bigger with a textured outline and then it'due south easier to press. This lets you jump back a page, or if you long-printing it, it brings upwards a shortcut y'all can define. By default this launches Samsung Pay, though I adopt to put music controls hither. The smaller, more-recessed button below this takes you to the home page or turns the device off.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2

The new back push didn't brand a huge difference in my experience. If anything, it was a little besides easy to accidentally hit and would suspension my workouts when I aptitude my wrist back a little likewise much, say when I was getting into backbends or handstands in yoga.

Improved fitness tracking

What felt like a more meaningful improvement were the upgraded sensors. Samsung used twice as many LEDs in the Agile 2's heart rate sensor, making it faster at reading your pulse. It too has an accelerometer that's supposedly twice every bit sensitive equally before. I tin't tell y'all exactly how much more precise these sensors are, but I did notice the speed improvement. It was not but quicker but also more than accurate at recognizing when I'd stood up from my desk-bound and taken a stroll, promptly congratulating me when I'd done and so. The Active 2 was also better at automatically detecting when I'd embarked on a brisk walk than whatever other lookout I've tested, showing a screen that tracked my stride and distance traveled one time I had been walking for longer than ten minutes.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2

I similar how proactive Tizen is at encouraging yous to motility more than and automatically charting your activity. I wish its conditioning-tracking tools were a bit more sophisticated though. When I started a yoga session, for instance, all it did was measure out the duration and my pulse throughout the class. Competitors like Garmin are starting to log things like respiration and stress levels for similar activities. Samsung is communicable upward a fiddling by adding a pacing omnibus that will tell you to either speed up or tedious downwards as you're running to striking your stride or fourth dimension goals. I liked getting the existent-fourth dimension reminders while I jogged, though I recommend you connect your headphones over Bluetooth to hear the suggestions. I could barely hear the Active 2's speakers over the audio of traffic, fifty-fifty when I put my wrist to my ear.

But what the likes of Garmin, Fitbit and even Article of clothing Bone lack are the breadth of tools offered by Tizen. It packs a robust pick of health-centric features like proactive motion reminders, stress detection, calorie tracking and sleep monitoring, and information technology also enables things like smart abode control, ride hailing, music playback and messaging. It even lets y'all turn your watch into a controller for your PowerPoint presentations, if you desire. Wear Bone and Fitbit OS back up these things, certain, only frequently you'll need to install apps to do them. On Tizen, many of these functions are built in.

Music and entertainment controls

Samsung continues to improve Tizen in both big ways and pocket-sized. One of the smaller simply actually useful tweaks the company made is improving the login feel for the Spotify app. Just sign into your Samsung account and when you open the app on your sentry, it's ready for use: You won't have to enter passwords all over again. I was surprised at how seamlessly this worked. All I did was sign into my Samsung business relationship at the start of the Active 2's setup procedure. I wish this would spread to all other apps on Tizen.

The visitor as well fabricated apps to ameliorate the experience for YouTube and Twitter on the watch, called Lookout man Viewer for YouTube and Watch Viewer for Twitter, respectively. I wasn't able to detect these in the Milky way app store and wish they had come up pre-installed. I do think information technology's a bit airheaded to endeavour to sentry a video on your wrist, just perchance this is helpful for people who simply tin can't wait till they go off a crowded train to pull out their telephone for, say, a Marvel movie trailer that just dropped. All in an effort to avoid spoilers, perhaps? Frankly, I can't detect a solid apply case for this feature.

Another new tool that I institute underwhelming is the My Fashion watch face. It generates a bunch of wallpapers for your home screen based on photos you take. Say you're wearing a pastel pink outfit and want a watch face that matches your wait. You tin can snap a selfie and select a section of your shirt. The app generates nigh six geometric patterns in the color you pick, and you lot can prepare them as your background. The thing is, I didn't like whatsoever of the patterns, and often the colors in the picture were a few shades darker than in real life.

Performance and battery life

The practiced news is, you can choose any other spotter face up that suits your taste and ignore My Mode altogether and information technology won't ruin your feel with the Active 2. Information technology'south a capable device that was speedy during my testing and more often than not lasted about a mean solar day before needing a charge. Only I was expecting more, honestly. Pretty much every non-Wear OS smartwatch clocks in with at least two days of battery life. Plus, I'm using a non-LTE version of the Active 2. The cellular model volition probably have even shorter runtime.

Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2

Wrap-upward

That'south my biggest gripe about the Watch Active 2, which is otherwise a well-rounded smartwatch. At $280, information technology's cheaper than most Wear Bone watches and Garmin's new Venu series, but it costs more than the Fitbit Versa ii. Samsung's sentry does a lot more than the Versa 2, though, and doesn't take the connectivity issues that plague Fitbit'southward devices. If you're looking for a smartwatch that volition keep you motivated to stay healthy as well equally serve every bit a reliable companion to your phone, the Lookout man Active ii is a solid pick.