Today we’re going to be taking a look at four of the Best smartwatches that are currently available right now we’re going to be talking about the
- Apple Watch Series 5 Smartwatch
- Fossil Gen5 Smartwatch
- Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 Smartwatch
- Fitbit Versa 2 Smartwatch
Now each of these watches runs on a completely different platform operating system and they’re different from the form factor style.
We’re going to talk about each one specifically what’s good and what’s bad.
If you’re interested in getting a new Smartwatch hopefully this will be helpful to some extent so without any further ado let’s get right into this comparison. now before we get into specifics let’s actually do a quick overview of each of the smartwatches we’ve selected first thing when it comes to the price point the Apple watch series 5 is certainly the most expensive the 44-millimeter version, can get the 40 millimeters. both the Galaxy watch active 2 and the fossil a Gen 4 watches are under $300 and the Fitbit Versa 2 is the cheapest at under $200.
Now in terms of compatibility
Most of these smartwatches will work with both iOS and Android without any major issues of course the Apple Watch is specifically designed around the iOS Apple ecosystem although there are hacks and tweaks where you can make it work and kind of function with an Android phone but it’s up optimal, to say the least and you’re not going to get many of the key features that you are going to get with an iPhone connected to an Apple watch.
Now apart from that there’s actually a lot of commonalities between all four of these watches they all have OLED displays that have always-on capabilities they have fitness and heart tracking a built-in by the optical heart rate monitor they have sleep tracking although the Apple watch does not have native support for that but you can use third-party applications like sleep watch to track your sleep.
Furthermore we have NFC payment options available on all four watches as well as voice assistant and when it comes to battery life you’re looking at version 2 a Fitbit having the best battery life of up to 6 days possibly and the Apple watch with the worst battery life have typically a day or even less based on my experience
Now with the basic fundamentals out of the way let’s talk about each part specifically to find out how they kind of compare against each other what the advantages and disadvantages
Fossil A Gen 5 SmartWatch
The fossil of a Gen5 SmartWatch is coming from a traditional watchmaker fossil and we actually have the Carlisle each collection over here.
It’s done in this smoked stainless steel finish definitely looks the most aesthetically pleasing and has that classic more traditional watch style look now.
We have a 44-millimeter circular face much like the Galaxy launch but it is significantly thicker and heavier than all of the other watches on this list definitely looks a lot more traditional
It should be fairly durable it has a 3-atmosphere rating so 30 meters deep in terms of water resistance
The overall fit and finish is a pretty nice we have a matching stainless steel band that goes with it but you can use pretty much any 22-millimeter band you want in order to get a specific look that you’re going for, for now, the build quality and the previous generation fall cell SmartWatch had a number of issues mainly some people reported that the back rear panel was coming out after a while
Now I’ve been using this thing for the past couple of weeks and haven’t had any of those concern to report thus far but some of the things that I do like about it definitely has to be the control interface it has a digital crown rotating dial on the side much like the Apple Watch and we’re using Google wear OS and it works much in the same vein as you would expect an Apple watch so you can scroll through the operating system some apps don’t work with it some do so that’s going to depend upon the developer side but in terms of native support definitely works really nicely it’s a great way to interface with the watch
Now one thing to praise is the display it’s of very high quality and very bright the capacitive touch screen is okay but can be a little bit clunky at times definitely not as precise as when we encounter on the Apple Watch.
That could be the actual capacitive touch screen but I doubt it because I pretty much get the same rate of response on the Galaxy watch active too it’s probably related more to a software issue than a hardware one because much like the Tizen platform on the Samsung side Google wear OS isn’t as well integrated and as easy to use and as dynamic I find compared to the watch OS platform on the Apple site now
Technically the internal performance we’re using the new Snapdragon wear 31 processors on the Gen 5 fall cell it also has a 1 GB of RAM a built-in speaker Bluetooth 4.1 it’s probably on par if not just slightly ahead of the exceed O’s 90-110 processor found inside the galaxy active two now so if we’re using a wear OS you have a built-in Google pay as well as Google Voice assistant which in my opinion is the best voice assistant on the planet for a smartwatch is definitely the most useful especially compared to things like Bigsby Alexa and even Siri and since we have a built-in speaker you can actually get the Google Voice assistant to speak back to you as well as take things like phone calls and stuff like
Lastly in terms of battery life I do really like the fact that we have four different modes choose perm so you have a daily mode which will basically enable all the different features of the SmartWatch and extended mode which will actually turn off some of the communication antennas as well as the always-on a portion you have a custom mode which you can choose to turn on and off specific things as well as a time-only mode which like it we’ll turn your small watch into a dumb watch but will potentially give you one week’s of battery performance and based on my experience I used it in a regular mode and I got 18 to 15 hours of usage so that’s about 1.5 to 2 days
Most people and that’s again with the always-on enabled and that’s pretty much on par with the battery life that I got on at the galaxy watch active 2.
Fitbit Versa 2 Smartwatch
Firstly in terms of the Fitbit Versa 2 compared to the original Versa that we looked at last year that isn’t a huge difference. associated the design has been tweaked a little bit it looks a little bit more sleeker and has an OLED display which is definitely brighter and it also has a better battery life to the previous version versa it’s super compact on the wrist only measures around 25 millimeters by 25 millimeters so certainly the more compact and lightest option out of the other three being a rugged fitness-oriented device.
It has an aluminum case that’s actually rated for 5 atmospheres so it can go down in water 50 meters deep making this possibly the most durable SmartWatch that you’re can find out there so whether you’re swimming running in the rain any kind of a rugged base activity you’re going to do outside.
It should be able to take any kind of punishment like that now the Fitbit Versa 2 actually uses fitbit’s own operating system and they do a great job of making the whole user experience as simple as possible it definitely has the least learning curve out of the other three smartwatches so it’s excellent for newcomers
The control interface is primarily using a the touch display which is sometimes not as responsive as you would like especially when you get the thing a little bit sweaty or wet outside you do have a large home button and if you hold down the home button you can enable a couple of different functions natively.
You have Amazon’s Alexa as a voice assistant which is excellent in terms of functionality, unfortunately, you don’t have a built-in speaker in here just a microphone so you can only really input information and obviously taking calls you’re going to be reliant on a Bluetooth headset or just take calls via your phone directly.
Even though the Fitbit Versa 2 may not have the sheer feature said and that technical prowess of something like an Apple watch a series 5 it still has of most of the features that you’d use on a SmartWatch such as getting basic notifications you can make a payment using fitbit’s own payment NFC protocol we have built-in sleep tracking capabilities and since this is a compact overall form factor it’s a be fairly comfortable to sleep with making sleep tracking an actually feasible option unlike most other larger traditional smartwatches which are a lot more cumbersome and more uncomfortable to sleep with now for me specifically
There are two killer features that the Fitbit Versa 2 offers that pretty much no other SmartWatch that I can think of has right now
Firstly is the ability to actually customize your always-on display so if you go into the settings there’s actually a whole bunch of parameters that you can set for the always-on so you can specifically set the layout and what you want to see when it’s always on typically that’s a default choice done by the manufacturer and the operating system on the other watches but here you can actually see whether you want to see calories steps time and the orientation everything like that you can also set off hours which actually turns off the display when it’s not in use for example when you’re sleeping or perhaps if you want to turn off your watching a specific time of day with some of this combination of features. the Fitbit Versa 2 can get actually up to seven six days of battery life now I haven’t personally experienced that but four days is pretty much guaranteed even in heavy use case scenarios.
Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 Smartwatch
Now in terms of the galaxy watch active to the Tizen operating system is probably its biggest fault and limitation it feels very clunky and the fact that we don’t have a physically rotating bezel as we did on the previous generation s3 galaxy and the previous generation Galaxy watch that we looked at last year just makes a feel not as nice to use and although we have the touch bezel interface where you can essentially replicate that physical rotating dial it’s still not the same thing and the overall user experience is not as nice to use as the other watches certainly not as good as the Fitbit and the watch OS experience they get on the Apple slide and even subpar compared to Google’s wear OS which is better integrated
Another big fault is the Bigsby integration not only is Bigsby’s general knowledge a lacking a significantly compared to Alexa Siri and the Google Voice assistant but it’s also lacking in terms of the voice recognition a technology a lot of times I asked they’re fairly rudimentary basic questions and I had no idea what the hell I was saying so the useful factor of that is definitely a big drawback
Now the one possible redeeming factor about the active two is the fact that with a future software update it’s going to have the ability to take easy G’s or EKGs besides the Apple watch there’s not a lot of fitness trackers or popular smartwatches that are doing that right now so that could be a selling factor for somebody that wants to get the Samsung Galaxy to watch or an alternative to the Apple watch while still having the ECG feature because the Fitbit and the fallen cell watch you do not have the ability to take ECG
Now in summary, if I had to pick a favorite out of the four I would definitely say it’s a tie between the Versa to buy Fitbit and the Apple Watch Series five I’m leaning towards at the Versa 2 in the sense that it costs about half as much which is definitely a nice thing
Secondly it has great integration with iOS and Android and devices and thirdly the battery life is sensational and you really can’t beat the fact that you can potentially use this thing for about a week’s time and still have some of the SmartWatch elements integrated in there in terms of core features it has everything that you need in terms of fitness tracking getting your notifications using it as a wallet obviously has built-in a sleep tracking so it has most of your bases covered there obviously in terms of a premium SmartWatch it doesn’t look as fancy as some of the other watches out there it’s not really a big fashion statement in that regard
It’s just simple cleanly laid out and minimalistic in terms of most regards which is definitely a good thing in my opinion and if you had to pick a SmartWatch and you’re new to the game definitely a top contender in terms of what’s available out there
But besides that guys and that’s really it hopefully you liked the blog definitely let me know what you guys think is the best SmartWatch
Apple Watch Series 5 Smartwatch
If we were to summarize some of our previous points I would definitely say that the Apple watch series 5 has the best hardware and software integration it’s certainly the most technically advanced in terms of some of the capabilities that it has to offer but there are three major faults that the Apple watch series 5 has to contend with firstly is the price point it’s starting at around 400 dollars for just the cheapest most basic version of the Apple Watch and that’s way too overpriced in my opinion and you can spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on the Apple watch if you want to specifically have a tailored designed aesthetically towards it if you want to get the home as a version and things like that and get the ceramic case and titanium cases. so the price is definitely going to be an issue, especially on the upper echelon but even in the cheaper Ashlyn it’s still $100 more expensive than an expensive smart want to begin with which is around $300
Another slightly minor fault is the fact that you don’t have built-in sleep tracking you can use third-party applications like Sleep watch as we mentioned to track your sleep using the Apple Watch Series 5 but it would be nice to have that built-in watch OS.
I think Fitbit does a really great job of tracking your sleep and as we’ve mentioned before the small form-factor size makes it a little bit more comfortable to sleep with and the fact that there are dedicated health-oriented bands that you can specify just use to track your sleep means that there’s a big market for it and something that the Apple watch is neglecting right now from a native standpoint.
Now the third and probably the biggest concern is to do with the battery life I pretty much can’t go a full 12-hour day in a lot of cases with the Apple Watch Series 5 it is definitely the worst in terms of battery performance compared to the other watches on the list.
I think you minimally need about a day and a half which is possible with the Apple watch but if you’re going to use any of its core features for a prolonged period of time you’re definitely going to struggle in terms of battery life.