Samsung Galaxy Watch5, Golf Edition, 40 mm, Graphite, Smartwatch, Bluetooth

Galaxy Watch 5 Pro review A five star rating. I have had my watch now for about one week and I'm very pleased with it. This watch is a huge improvement over earlier models and a winner for Samsung. I chose the black version with the magnetic clasp style sport band. I'm going to try and list my likes and dislikes of the Samsung Watch 5 pro. Without elaborating in to much detail I'll just get right to the point and list them. PROS: 1. Yes the battery life is fantastic. I unboxed my watch around 12:30 pm and out of the box the watch was charged to 65% and that charge lasted all day and into the night. By 11:30 pm the battery was showing it still had 45% left. The first night I didn't wear my watch while I slept. I put the watch on the charger that came with the watch and left it on the charger all night. The next day when I woke the watch was at full 100% charge. The rest of that day I used the watch fairly heavily as I was trying out all the apps on the watch. By 9:00 pm that night I still had 68% battery charge left. Did not put the watch on the charger overnight on purpose and when I woke the next morning the battery was showing 59% charge. That 59% charge got me through the whole day and into the night. By 10:00 pm that night the battery was at 48%. I decided not to charge the battery just to see how long it will last. The next morning, (now at 2 and a half days) the battery was at 42%. I made it till 6:00 pm that day when the battery was down to around 29% after moderate to heavy use. I got three days battery life from a fully charged battery. I'm impressed. If you use a 45 watt charger I was able to charge the battery from 20% to full in about 1 hour and 34 minutes. 2. The watch is light and the screen is plenty bright. However, I did struggle a little in very bright sunlight outdoors. But by just placing my hand in the right spot to cast a little shade on the screen made all the difference. This though could be unique to me because my older eyes do take longer to adjust to changing light conditions. 3. The microphone works well and picks up conversations very well. The speaker on the other hand is a bit to cheap and high pitched sounding for my liking. But then you can't jam any bigger speak in the small space of a watch. 4. The wrist band is easily adjustable and the magnetic clip is very secure and won't unclip while doing any kind of exercise activities such as running or any other activity where you might throw you wrist around hard like pitching a ball. 5. The Samsung Health apps work well. How accurate they are is a form of debate amongst users. I found the heart rate, blood oxygen, and the ECG monitoring to be within acceptable medical standards of variation between devices. The blood O2 readings were within about 2 to 3 percentage points compared to an expensive medical grade finger blood O2 monitor. My heart rate reading was dead on compared to the same finger devices used in a hospital. The ECG reading was clear and accurate. I showed the read out to a paramedic friend and she claimed it was good enough to be used in a pinch if she didn't have access to an ECG heart monitor. 6. Connecting your Samsung ear buds to the watch is a snap. Just go to settings and tap the headphone symbol and just like that your connected. Even if you were using your buds with your phone they will connect just that quickly. CONS: I really don't have to many major complaints. But here are a few little things that annoy me about the watch. 1. You can't use the Google maps app as a stand alone map on the watch. The watch must be tied to the phone via Bluetooth for the full navigation on maps to work. You can open the maps app on the watch and get a location and track where you are at the moment. But when you select a destination on the watch, the full function of the navigation must be through the phone. So if you type in a selected destination on your watch and tap say, driving mode it will automatically activate the Google map app on your phone. The watch is just a repeater screen. So as a result, in order to use the full functions of the Google map you must have your phone with you within Bluetooth range. 2. There is a very limited number of apps to choose from on the app play store that will work with the watch OS. And most of those apps are a very trimmed down limited version of the full app that would work on your phone. Hopefully this will improve in time with future updates. 3. The body temperature sensor and blood pressure sensor is not activated in the USA at this time for some strange reason. 4. The magnetic compass app that comes with the phone is absolutely useless. The north pointer is almost always 90 to 180 degrees off. No matter how many times you try and calibrate it, it will never point to magnetic or true north accurately. 5. The stock calculator works well but is difficult to use if you have big finger tips. The tiny number keyboard is very responsive but it is very easy to hit the wrong numbers. So be carful with inputting numbers and check your math so you don't make mistakes. 6. The Samsung pay app is worthless. At least for me because my bank doesn't support it and many stores don't seem to work well with it. Google wallet or Google pay is way better and I have never had any issues using it that I couldn't correct or that weren't caused by me using the app wrong. 7. Like I have said before. I find the speaker to be a bit to high pitch for me and lacks a little bass. But given that it's a watch and you cant jam to large a speaker in there it does the job anyway. 8. The inability to remove bloatware is disappointing. There are only about three stock apps out of 32 apps that come with the watch that you can uninstall. 9. The camera app doesn't take pictures to the watch. The watch camera app works more like a remote shutter control for our phone camera. 10. The gallery app on the watch is really just a novelty app. The pictures are just to small to view if you were going to show the pictures to your friends. SUMMARY: All in all this is a very powerful smart watch and frankly the best smart watch Samsung has put out. If you are considering getting the watch and you are with a cellular provider, I would recommend you get the LTE version. That way you can basically let your phone at home when you go out to make a quick trip to the store or go for your daily run. With the LTE version you can make phone calls and text and use some of your internet based apps without having to have your phone with you. In most cases the LTE version will cost a little more but its worth it in my opinion. There is just two things that if Samsung could do to this watch it would blow all other smart watches away. It would be great if they could somehow stick a camera lenses at the 12 o'clock position on the face of the watch so you could take a picture with the watch. And, it would be great if you could use your Galaxy S-pen with the watch for simply a tap to type and to open apps instead of using your big fingers in such confined spaces. I will have to give this watch five stars.