This is our review of the 40mm Galaxy Watch6. Introduction
At first glance, Samsung was very docile with the upgrades to its Galaxy Watch6 series. But.
Introduction
At first glance, Samsung was very docile with the upgrades to its Galaxy Watch6 series. But you could argue that there was very little wrong with the Galaxy Watch5 series and that all the upgrades we got were useful or thoughtful.
The new watches use the new Exynos W930 chipset, which is nearly identical to last year’s W920. Both are made on a 5nm process and have dual-core Cortex-A55 processors, but the new chip has a higher 1.4GHz clock speed, which Samsung says makes for an 18% increase in speed. The Watch6 series also bumps the RAM up to 2GB.
On the software side, the Galaxy Watch6 runs Google’s Wear OS 4 with Samsung’s OneUI 5 on top. The watch generally feels and looks the same as its predecessor, but there are some subtle design tweaks to widgets and there are a few new watch faces.Build quality and design
Samsung brought back the Classic model with a physically rotating bezel but left the Vanilla model looking relatively unchanged. Look a bit closer and you’ll notice that the Galaxy Watch6 pushes the bezels further in, making for a slightly bigger display in the same casing.
Speaking technically, we get the Galaxy Watch6 in the same 40mm and 44mm casing options as last year but the bezels shrunk and the respective screen sizes are 1.3-inch and 1.5-inch – 0.1-inch bigger than the Watch5 series. It’s a noticeable change when you put last year’s watches to this year’s.
The new watch is even slightly smaller overall than the Watch5, but they weigh the same.
This review is of the 40mm Galaxy Watch6 in Gold. It ships in an environmentally-friendly box made from recycled paper, containing the watch and a wireless charger ending on a USB-C cable.
One of the changes this year is the new push-button watch bands. They use a single button to detach and attach, instead of the typical spring bars. It’s a better way of doing things and makes swapping bands easier. However, if you already have a selection of 20mm bands with spring bars, they’ll work just fine on the new watch.
The Galaxy Watch6 is built with identical materials to its predecessor, which is no bad thing. You get an aluminum casing and sapphire crystal top and bottom glass. This means that it’s nearly impossible to scratch or break the watch glass.
Unsurprisingly then our unit is pristine after a week of vigorous testing – no scratches or dents.
The watch is also IP68-rated for water and dust resistance and complements that with 5 ATM rating for 50 meters of worry-free diving.
There are two buttons on the side of the Galaxy Watch6 – a Home button, accented in red, and a back button. The Home button can take you home with a single press, open Bixby with a long press, or take you to your last-used app with a double press. You can customize those options to some extent – for instance, you can change the long press to wake the Google Assistant or give you the Power off menu, and make a double press to open any app, open an exercise, or go to accessibility options.
