I've now been using by Samsung Watch 5 since it was released for recording my sporting activities and I can honesty say is doesn't come close to Garmin in terms of reliability and ease of use. I've tried using Gear Tracker, SWIM.COM in addition to the inbuilt recording and there is just no simple reliable option to make this an active smart sports watch.
Here are my findings and I would be interested in knowing if anyone has any advice/feedback. Firstly connecting to STRAVA, Training Peaks is unreliable. You can't download programs from TP to Samsung Health and therefore I'm having to manual create workouts in SWIM.COM for example.
Swim mode is been very poor, the watch gets confused between swimming and turning and thinks you are stopping and therefore workouts become messed up.
Cycling, doesn't have the battery life for long rides and then trying to add power meters, cadence meters etc drains the battery even more. You can add a PM via Gear Tracker but in the end I just continued to use my Garmin Cycle Computer.
Running, not very easy to display running speed, moved to Gear Tracker to help which was better and you can upload to Strava and TP as the same time, you are unable to do this via Samsung Health.
No multisport recording option.
Samsung Health is not available via Tablet or PC, why, only option is to access via your phone.
I believe the capability exists in the watch but the software is lacking and this is what lets down the watch in the end of sports use.
Overall the watch works well for other things such as payment, step count, alerts, sleep tracking etc. but I wanted a multi sport watch that I could wear for non sport use.
Looks like I will need to go down the Garmin Fenix route, at least I gave it a go.
