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From practical life with the Galaxy Watch5 Pro

(Topic created on: 07-09-2022 08:24 PM)
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Libb
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Hello Community!

After the articles which summarized the first impressions after a week of use with the article Galaxy Watch5 Pro, I will try to look at the selected functions in a little more detail. Why selected features only? Because I want to write about what I actually use and not copy the manual. You can definitely read it yourself.

Note: the article was written at first in czech language and I used Google translator and then made some correction. Apologize for czech screenshots, I'm not able to take all screenshots again in english. I hope it's OK. I used also metric system.

Charging and battery life

Stamina is an oft-discussed trait. It is not easy to fit the battery required for longer duration into such a small space as the body of the watch. Samsung managed to fit a 590 mAh battery into the Galaxy Watch5 Pro. That's nice, but how does the watch fare in practice?

It probably doesn't make sense to list any exact endurance times. Everyone uses watches a little differently. Someone mainly for monitoring sports activities, someone rather their smart functions. I personally belong to the second group.

My use of the watch looks like this: in the evening at 10 - 11 p.m. I take it off the charger charged to 100%. I sleep with them at night, I have on monitoring everything that goes: heart rate. oxygen, snoring, everything non-stop. At night, I switch the watch to sleep time mode so that the display does not light up and the watch does not inadvertently respond to possible touches. In the morning, the watch has about 92%. During the day, I am again allowed to watch absolutely everything, for that I have the Always On Display active, with the watch face programmed in Watchmaker - which means lower optimization. During the day, I receive dozens of messages, each of which lights up the display. It is now 11am and the watch is at 82%. They get a bigger shot in the afternoon, I often shoot in the foto studio and use them to control music and check messages. I'll come home in the evening and throw them on the charger. Yesterday they had 64%. They are loaded for - I don't even know. No need to deal with it. By the time I shower, brush my teeth, and do some PC stuff, they're charged. I use the original charging craddle connected to a 25W Samsung charger.

x20220907_170609.jpgWatch on original charger

The watch can also be charged with the Galaxy Watch4 craddle. In that case, charging is slower, but works reliably. The advantage is the lower price and another advantage can be the USB-A connector.

The above means that the watch will give you 2 days of fairly demanding use in smartwatch mode with a margin. If I used them for sports, especially with GPS, it would be worse. On the other hand, I could gain a lot by turning off AOD, but I don't like the black wheel on my hand.

x20220907_170635.jpgWatch on original charger

Is it a good result or not? It depends what you expect. A sports watch with limited smart features will last for weeks, but you won't be able to change the watch face or upload your own app. On the contrary, the previous generation lasted one day. I've been using the TicWatch Pro3 GPS watch for the past year, which had a 570 mAh battery and it only had about 40% in the evening, and it had fewer sensors than the Galaxy Watch5 Pro. From my point of view, this is a great result considering which market segment and use they are intended for.

Appearance

What to say about it? They won't excite and won't offend. They rather go the route of practicality and you can influence a lot by choosing the dial. The display is great and beautifully visible both in the fully lit state and with the display dimmed.

AOD0.jpgAOD1.jpgDimmed and illuminated display

Wear and comfort

It should probably be said that I am used to rather larger watches and I have a larger hand (about 21 cm in circumference). The included belt is just right for me and if I want another one, I have to buy an extended size.

It follows that I like that the watch is rather larger. I struggle a bit with the extra thickness. The nice thing about the watch is that it has a raised border around the display, which is thus protected from side impacts.

Back to the included band. You already know that it is silicone and has a magnetic closure. You also know there is a problem with it when charging on a flat pad. I saw a solution where the user turned the strap around, but I don't dare to recommend it. I don't know what an operation like that would do to the strap and posts with more frequent use. There is no such thing mentioned in the instructions for the watch, on the contrary, there is a direct mention of the need to use an original charger. Consider it yourself.

The material did not suit me personally. Although it was light and comfortable, I encountered two disadvantages: firstly, my hand sweated more under it and the skin then became red and itchy, and secondly, the size of my hand changes during the day, so sometimes the watch was a little loose and other times too tight. The belt can be corrected, but again, I don't know what would happen to the material if the pressure point changed very often within a small range. That's why I decided to replace the strap with a leather one. The watch has a standard mount with a pitch of 20 mm. If you have a normal hand, you will be able to choose from an abundance of straps of different materials and colors. I was a little limited with my larger hand, but I still ended up finding a few straps that I liked. In the end I chose my favorite black and red combination. (Note: it was the fact that I expected to change the strap for a different one that made me buy the watch in black. I like the titanium better, but the strap is better designed for black.)

reminek.jpgA watch in full beauty

You can buy a strap anywhere. Just be careful with the attachment system. There can be a quick-release system, where there is a stop on the post, behind which you can catch a nail and release the strap easily, but it can also use the classic method with regular posts. That's no problem either, you just need to add the right posts to the strap and I also recommend a tool for easy replacement, a post remover. With it, the strap has been taken off and put on once or twice.

uchyceni.jpgA view of the strap attachment.

x20220907_172445.jpgPick-up and spare pick-ups

Sleep measurement

This is one of the things that Samsung emphasizes on this watch. This is very important to me because I suffer from sleep apnea and I have a BiPAP machine at home that helps me breathe at night and keeps my blood oxygenated. Without it, they measured me in the hospital at about 76%, which is really very little. In addition, the person then does not fall into a deep sleep and wakes up restless.

I was in Berlin at IFA this weekend and didn't want to lug the device around with me, so I spent two nights without the breathing support to see what my night looks like without it and if the watch shows any change. Here I attach the recording of sleep without the device and with the device. The data without the device are quite consistent with what they measured for me in the hospital, with the device the values ​​should be a little better than what the watch measured. Even my doctor mentioned that these sensors tend to show rather slightly lower values ​​than reality. But if I compare different measurements on the same watch and see a significant difference, I know something is wrong.

1.png2.png 3.png4.png

Pressure measurement and ECG

The watch can measure blood pressure. For that, you need the Health Monitor app, which only works on Samsung phones. If you want to measure pressure, you need to calibrate once and 4 weeks. The watch itself cannot tell exactly what pressure the measured data corresponds to, but if you take 3 measurements simultaneously with the medical device, it can calculate the current pressure from the deviations.

tlak1.pngtlak2.png ekg.pngekg2.png

In the application, we can view the current status and measurement history.

How accurate is the measurement? I tried to take the measurement at the same time with a medical tonometer. The same against which the watch was calibrated. I tried to measure several times, the values of both devices remained similar. The second measurement is after recalibration.

Note: the watch was updated today. It is possible that a recalibration needs to be done after the update. In any case, there is probably a reserve here and it is definitely a good idea to pay attention to the warning displayed on the watch: do not change the medication based on the data from the watch!

xX20220907_165434.jpgComparing of measured pressure values before and after recalibration.

Blood oxygenation

This can be measured either on demand or continuously during sleep. We can see the results in the S Health app. I don't have a professional medical device to make a comparison, but in my experience I'd say the measurement is accurate enough.

1 Screenshot_20220907_130405_sysui.png2 Screenshot_20220907_130410_shealth.png3 Screenshot_20220907_130416_shealth.png4 Screenshot_20220907_130430_shealth.png

Body composition

I don't have any current comparison here, and I can say that I'm fat much more succinctly, but according to my colleague the measurement is accurate. During the measurement, you touch both buttons and follow the instructions, it only takes a few seconds

a1 Screenshot_20220907_130624_sysui.pnga2 Screenshot_20220907_130631_shealth.pnga3 Screenshot_20220907_130639_shealth.pnga4 Screenshot_20220907_130652_shealth.png

Stress

The watch also offers stress measurement. I will give today as an example and he could confirm that during the times when the values are in the red, I was really in stressful situations.

stres.png1Screenshot_20220907_130120_shealth.png

Control

The watch environment is a cross between One UI and Wear OS. We get to the list of applications by swiping up, on the contrary, we pull down the bar, in which, unlike Wear OS 2, we can move horizontally; so we are not limited to 6 switches. By swiping to the right, we get to notifications, and to the left, we get to tiles. This is something like widgets.

1 cifernik.png2 notifikace.png3 notifikace.png

4 lista.png5 aplikace.png6 dlazdice.png

In contrast to pure Wear OS, watch settings can be controlled very well from the phone, from basic things such as dial settings to system settings. For example, right now I'm downloading the first watch firmware update in the mobile app.

Screenshot_20220907-122452_Galaxy Watch5 Manager.png

With the Galaxy Watch series, we were used to controlling the bezel (Classic version). The bezel is completely missing from the Watch5 series. Is it a problem or not? If you had a Watch4 Classic and are used to a bezel, it might seem that way, but in practice I can confirm that the digital bezel is fully adequate. The system is designed to work well without a bezel, and having used other Wear OS watches for the past two years that didn't have a bezel, I'm used to the controls and don't miss them at all.

But what the watch does have are two side buttons. The upper one works as the home button, we can activate the assistant by holding it down, and we can set the double-press action. If you use your watch to pay, it's handy to set it to double-tap to launch Google Wallet. The bottom button works as Back.

Notifications

One of the main smart features. They work great for me. What I like is that if you have a notification displayed and leave it displayed, when you switch to the muted display, it will blur and only show a simple time so that bystanders don't see any potentially sensitive information.

Screenshot_20220907_122339_sysui.pngScreenshot_20220907_122347_sysui.png

Notifications can be dismissed by swiping up.

And what else?

One could write about measuring the route, but my trips from the parking lot to work do not give much room to shine. I don't go to the gym... So I'll give a chance to others who have this watch, write either under this article or even better as a separate conversation, how the watch has worked for you, so that other readers have the opportunity to do get as detailed a picture as possible.

The overall impression

I was really looking forward to this watch and it did not disappoint me at all. They offer a lot of music for a still reasonable price. What particularly won me over is the perfect sleep monitoring and excellent endurance in its class.

7 REPLIES 7
Neo001
Legend
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Nice review!

Members_r0EQv1B
First Poster
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Excellent & very elaborate review. Thank you very much.

Members_sILYXb9
Apprentice
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I think the sports side of the watch is very lacking compared to Garmin. The health and mobility side is good but I want to replace my multi-sport watch which this clear isn't.

Anyone had any feedback from samsung on the development of the mutisport option and improving the detection of devices such as power meters and cadence for cycling. 

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dawidmos
Apprentice
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Nice but Screenshot_20221113_164847_sysui.png

and bug, reset not helps, wifi is on and connected - searched icon and it's google protect :winking-face:

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SW2
Pathfinder
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Very good review. Very accurate about the strap. Charger and D buckle strap are not compatible. So changed to the hybrid leather one. I had the same issue about the redness and itchiness with the strap. I have purchased some watch protector covers which look great and I can change the colour of the bezel to match any colour strap and avoid damaging the bezel with impact.
Members_KaC4kFo
First Poster
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What a fantastically detailed and helpful review!  I particularly thought the note about using non-standard chargers and 'folding the strap back'  was useful, as was the ability to use the Watch 4 charger (that I already have.)    I'll be looking for a replacement strap, as well, for all the reasons gave in this article.  Thanks for taking the time and effort to help us decide before we shell out quite a wedge of cash.

Sean36
First Poster
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Have you tested or done review on exercises/workouts?  Quite a few of us have complaints of inaccurate stats and I didn't see anything in your review. 

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