– Okay, look, it's confession time. I've spent the last year and a half or so complaining that there aren't
any good smartwatch options for Android users, but
here's a question for me. What if I've been too
hard on all these watches? Now, look, there aren't any great options. There's nothing as good as the
Apple Watch for iPhone users, that's just facts. But this watch right here,
the Galaxy Watch Active 2 from Samsung, it is a good smartwatch. Not great, but good. So anyway, if you have an Android phone, and you wanna smartwatch you
should give this thing a look. And if your Android phone
happens to be a Samsung phone, you should definitely
give it a second look, because this thing is
actually kind of a looker, you see what I did there? (mellow music) All right, so the Active 2 is a smartwatch that comes with a round OLED screen that comes in two sizes,
a 40, and a 44 millimeter.
This is the 44 millimeter. It starts at 279, which ain't bad, and it comes in a few
different colors and finishes, and there's also an LTE version if you wanna spend more money. Now it runs this operating
system called Tizen, which is a custom Samsung thing that also happens to run their TVs. Anyway, the watch can work with both iPhones and Android phones, but if you have an iPhone, well, trust me, you should just move
on, get an Apple Watch if you want a smartwatch. Anyway, the Tizen underpinning
here doesn't really matter so much as the interface
that's on top of it. And I love it, and I hate it. It's a hate/love relationship.
See, Samsung designed everything
her to work in circles, because the watch is round. You spin your finger around
the bevel to do things, like look at widgets or
notifications, or even apps, and I love that, it's really
clear and really consistent, and it's fast to get around. That whole circle system, by the way, is why this is the Galaxy Active 2. The first Galaxy Watch Active was released like six
months before this one, and six months isn't a very
long time between models. But the thing is, Samsung just straight up didn't think about how
this OS works in circles, so the first one didn't have a bezel. This is one does have a touch
sensitive rotating bezel that you can run your finger around. I will say that a touch sensitive bezel, it's not quite as fun or as cool as an actual, physical
rotating one, but it works. And overall, I think this
hardware works really well. It's simple, but it's not basic. And it's clean without being boring. Plus the OLED screen is great. It's always on, and that is
how watches are supposed to be, and I don't know why it
took Apple five years to get that right (laughing).
Look, why is this watch good? It gets the basics right,
it mirrors notifications, it lets you reply to incoming messages, it has a bunch of health
features for tracking most of the stuff that you'd expect, and it has a battery
that lasts a full day. It's comfortable to wear, and
it's not aggressively chunky, it just kinda blends in. It also does some really nice stuff that I haven't seen other
smartwatches do well. Like it has this goodnight mode, which is actually really smart. It turns off the screen,
and notifications, and goes into a sleep tracking mode. You can set up these
widgets on this watch, which you could scroll into
with the touch sensitive bezel, and I use them all the time.
It's actually a feature
that Google pretty much straight up copied for AOS
and they should've copied it, because it's great. It also comes with Spotify, and you can download Spotify
music directly to the watch, which is great. Not so great is the third
party app eco system. There's really not a lot of
things you're gonna want there. Also, if you've seen anybody recommend the YouTube or Twitter
apps for this watch, just trust me, you don't want them. Besides, you know, there's a full Samsung internet web
browser here if you want. You can watch YouTube on that. There's also no apps map built in, and I haven't found a
great third party option that I really like. Now, the watch faces are,
well look, they're fine.
There's a ton of ones built in, but I haven't found on that I love, just one that I kind of like. Plus, all the complication option, they're just, they're too complicated. There are third party watch
faces though, in the store, which is great, but finding a good one requires wading through a lot
of really, rally bad ones. But look, top level, this is a watch that looks pretty good,
can handle fitness stuff, lasts all day, and has a nice interface. Why is this just a good
watch, and not, well great? (sighing) Samsung, specifically
it's Samsung's software.
It's just, it's so much. I'm not even talking about the aesthetics. If you aren't already
using a Samsung phone, you have to install a least
like three things on your phone just to get started, and
that doesn't even include Samsung Health, or Samsung Pay. And well, the voice assistant
on this watch is Bixby. And look, I don't wanna
make fun too much of Bixby, because honestly, it can
do some basic stuff okay, like transcription, but
overall, it is slow, and it's, you know, it's bad. Overall, I would say that this is the best asterisk smart
watch for Android users. I don't think there's anything better, so this is the defacto the best. But while it's good, it's not great. And that's the asterisk.
For Android users, good is
about as good as it gets, and you know, I'll take it. If you're watching this video closely, you probably saw this
thing sitting right here. It is the Galaxy Fold, I
am currently reviewing it. If you got questions about this thing, let me know, down in the comments. Also, are you interested in a smartwatch? I'm curious about that too, what are you looking at right now?.