Samsung Galaxy Active 2 Watch not accurately tracking calories burned

[knichols_]

I purcahsed a Samsung Galaxy Active 2 watch a few months ago.  I used to be a FitBit user.

This watch was sold to me as a fitness tracking watch.  I track my workouts daily and calories burned are significantly lower (100-200 calories) than what they were with my FitBit.  I have also used an Apple watch so I'm aware there can be differences but the workouts are always very similar so should not be seeing this much difference.  I read an article somewhere that said Samsung don't use heart rate to calculate calories burned although the watch does track your heart rate throughout the work out but I cannot find this anywhere officially on any Samsung pages/write ups.  Could someone please advise if this is the case or if there is a possibility of something off in my settings?

If this is the case, super dissatisfied and do not believe this can be classed as an active/fitness watch as I have little idea of how many calories I am really burning throughout the day and for a $700+ watch I would have thought it would be able to accurately calculate calories burned. 😞 

[Mitch053]

It's good for walking, running, cycling, etc. The problem is with workouts like HIIT.  The closest workout is cross training and if you do exactly 45 minutes each workout you will get almost exactly the same calories burned.

[vlgarton]

if there has been an update it's not updated the circuit training function. I'm still burning circa 240 calories on my Active 2 compared to the 400 on my other tracker for a 45 min workout. when I get to 30 mins I get the same 152 calories on the watch.

[Mesosphere]

I see, so it seems the HIIT type workouts still don't factor in heart rate. It used to be that this was true for elliptical, cycling, and hiking as well (at least on the Fit2). I guess it is half a step forward at least.

The most HIIT-like workout I perform is "weight machine", and, looking back, that one does seem very much independent of heart rate. I get the same ~8.6 calories burned per minute to within about 1% (which could just be my weight fluctuations). My primary calorie-burning activities are steady-state cardio, and those do seem to scale with my heart rate, so it works for me, but it is still disappointing to learn how little progress they have made since the Fit2...

[AlexxM22]

Same thing here I play ringfit and it is always 182 calories after 30 mins and 365 after an hour I wonder if I should sell it?

[THiN78]

Well, I am extremely disappointed with mine. Not only the workouts on the watch are ridiculous (plank? Really?) it is consistently underreporting my calories burned by good 50%. I do 2hrs kickboxing sessions and my old Galaxy Watch and later Huawei Watch GT2 both reported 1400-1600cal. Now I get 700cal after 2hrs killer session. It is an absolute joke...

[Members_smdnsNH]

Yep really disappointed to read these comments re this 'feature', every time I do a 30 minute circuit I burn 196 cal, surely they need to address this given how the watch is labelled and sold?

[Lewis1]

What a disappointing device. Was using a Fit2 previously to track my boxing/hiit workouts and it was quite accurate at recording heart rate and calories. Now with the Active2 (supposedly a superior device?) not only does it not have boxing as a workout option, but the heart rate and calories are so wrong it's laughable.

Apparently my heart rate is much higher bit for some reason I'm burning less than half the calories, now?

Does anyone know of any 3rd party apps that might work? Or should I just get rid of it.

[THiN78]

Right. As my Watch Active2 is pretty much a lost cause, I just got myself a Watch4. I'm happy to say that what Active2 reported as 300kcal workout, is now 500kcal workout as it should be. So, goodbye Watch Active2, totally ignored by Samsung, long live the Watch4 😄

[Mitch053]

Hi. Thanks for the info. I am thinking of getting the watch 4 but was holding off because of how the active 2 handled calories.  Can I ask you what type of workout you selected. This issue seemed to affect the circuit training workout. Did they add more workout types like HIIT, Cross Training, etc.

[THiN78]

I don't think there are any more workouts that on Active2. The difference is you can actually add any that you want to your watch. I train kickboxing and can now select Martial Arts on the watch and this seems to work as it should. Circuit Training is there too but I haven't tried it. Also, I heard you can use Google Fit for workout tracking.