Samsung’s Galaxy Fit 3 is a sleek $60 wearable that punches above its weight class, makes a few deep cuts, and has a specific audience in its target.
Samsung’s commitment to fitness wearables has been somewhat haphazard. The company put a hold on fitness bands back in 2022, and expanded to the smart ring format last year. But as the price of Galaxy Watches has kept climbing, making them inaccessible to a large chunk of health-conscious people, the company is again returning to its affordable roots.
The latest from Samsung is the Galaxy Fit 3, a fitness band that looks more like a sleek smartwatch. It’s beautiful, feature-loaded, and heavy on compromises that you would otherwise expect from a smartwatch — all for just $60 a pop.
It serves its own set of functional highs and inexplicable lows. If you are someone who is averse to the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a wearable, but are enticed by the idea of an affordable fitness tracker that doesn’t look like a kid’s toy, read on to discover whether the Galaxy Fit 3 deserves a spot on your bucket list.Fantastic build, gorgeous display
The Galaxy Fit 3 is a beautiful piece of wearable hardware. It is lightweight, but built well. The aluminum casing gives it a premium on-wrist feel, but other elements of the device don’t feel cheap, either. The clasp mechanism is pretty secure, and the silicone band also feels high quality.
It is thinner than an average smartwatch, but with the right analog watch face, it actually looks a lot more understated — and in a good way — compared to bulky smartwatches with their tacky watch faces and unwieldy on-hand presence.
You almost don’t feel it on your wrist, which is a major win. I have a hard time trying to ignore the bulk on my wrist every time I am wearing a regular smartwatch from Samsung or Apple.
The Samsung fitness band not only looks better, but its lightweight profile makes it far easier to sleep with. The build is 5ATM and IP68-rated, which means it is dust-tight and can survive immersion in water at a depth of up to 1.5 meters for a maximum duration of 30 minutes.
Samsung offers the Galaxy Fit 3 in three colors, while the bands are available in a wide range of shades, but no other material choice apart from soft-feel rubber. A few third-party brands, however, sell compatible bands in different styles and even material choices, including leather, via Amazon and other e-commerce sites.
The AMOLED display is a key highlight of the Galaxy Fit 3. Even though the bezels are not symmetrical, that display is surprisingly sharp and quite bright. You will never feel the need to crank it beyond the 70% level even under broad daylight.
In case you’re interested in the specifications, the panel measures four centimeters diagonally, offers a resolution of 256 x 402 pixels, and can produce 16 million colors. Plus, there’s also a light sensor that does an acceptable job of automatic brightness adjustment based on ambient lighting.
There’s an always-on display feature available, and you can also tweak the screen-on time numbers. For added flexibility, you can activate the tap-to-wake feature, and there’s also an option to turn on the screen as soon as you raise your wrist. All these features work flawlessly.
Running the show on the software side is the open-source RTOS platform with a Samsung skin on top, while the modest internals are rounded off by 16MB of RAM and 256 MB of onboard storage. Yes, you read that right.
That also explains why the Galaxy Fit 3 keeps sending you to the connected smartphone for even the most basic customization and control tasks. But to Samsung’s credit, all touch interactions feel fluid, and I’ve barely ever run into any stutters or lags on the affordable fitness band.
There is a pretty diverse variety of watch faces available in the companion app, and you can create your custom faces, too. You can’t, however, download any third-party watch faces. Unfortunately, the connectivity situation is also pretty barebones here.
There’s no cellular version on offer, and neither is there GPS or NFC functionality. Talking about the sensor stack, the Galaxy Fit 3 comes equipped with an accelerometer, barometer, gyroscope, and an optical heart rate sensor.
Here’s the worst part. This is an Android-only fitness band, which means it simply won’t work with an iPhone. And on top of that, some of the features, such as remote camera shutter and snore detection, are exclusive to Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones.Limited software, but expansive features
The Galaxy Fit 3 can best be described as a glorified fitness tracker, one that has a larger-than-average screen, but limited software versatility. It isn’t the full Wear OS experience, which means there are no apps to install. Whatever little you get is via the Samsung Wear app, which also ties into the Samsung Health app.
The user interface is pretty clean, and there is barely any learning curve here past the initial setup. There’s a single home button on the side, which can be customized to a double-press gesture, as well. For the rest, you essentially rely on swipe gestures.
A vertical downward swipe from the top edge pulls the control center, a swipe from the left or right edge opens the notifications area and the quick access activity tiles.
