The best Android smartwatch for the price
Samsung’s $199.99 Galaxy Watch FE is a rare smartwatch running Google’s app-rich Wear OS platform to launch at a budget-friendly price. It only comes in one size, the screen has big bezels, and it’s missing Samsung’s Galaxy AI holistic health insights, but it otherwise offers almost all the same excellent connectivity, lifestyle, and wellness features as the company’s $299.99 Galaxy Watch 7 and $649.99 Galaxy Watch Ultra. With body composition measurements, continuous blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) monitoring, detailed sleep and snore tracking, and heart rate alerts, it’s a more robust health companion than most Wear OS-powered competitors from different brands. It’s an excellent wearable with a ton of useful features at an attractive price and it wins our Editors’ Choice as the best budget-minded smartwatch for Android phone users.A Simple Look With Surprising Durability
Like the rest of Samsung’s current watch lineup, the Galaxy Watch FE is exclusive to use with Android phones (running Android 10 or newer with at least 2GB of RAM), with some features like snore detection only available to Samsung phones.
The Samsung Galaxy Watch FE features a simple design and comes in just one 40mm size in black, pink gold, or silver. For comparison, the Galaxy Watch 7 has 40mm and 44mm options, while the Galaxy Watch Ultra comes in a single 47mm size.
For this review, we tested the silver version of the Galaxy Watch FE, which comes with a light blue band. The $199.99 version is Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-only, with GPS and NFC for contactless payments. An LTE version is slated to arrive later this year for $249.99.
The watch has a 1.19-inch, 396-by-396 Super AMOLED display with 330 ppi and sapphire crystal glass. The screen is smaller than its 1.3-inch counterpart on the 40mm Galaxy Watch 7, with large, slightly distracting bezels, hearkening back to the Galaxy Watch 5.
The Watch FE measures 0.38 inches thick, matching both the 40mm and 44mm version of the Galaxy Watch 7. It’s slightly lighter at 0.9 ounces, while the 40mm Watch 7 weighs 1.0 ounces and the 44mm version comes in at 1.2 ounces.
Considering the price, the Galaxy Watch FE is surprisingly durable. It has an IP68 weather-resistance rating, a 5ATM waterproof rating, and MIL-STD-810H certification. That means it’s impervious to dust and can survive at depths of up to 164 feet of calm fresh or salt water for 10 minutes. Samsung says the watch can function between -4 and 122 degrees Fahrenheit. These stats match those of the Galaxy Watch 7 and exceed Apple’s most affordable smartwatch, the $249.99 Apple Watch SE, which lacks dust resistance or a military-grade endurance certification. Specs and Features: Well Equipped
The Galaxy Watch FE stacks up well with its more expensive siblings. Like the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Ultra, the Galaxy Watch FE has an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, a barometer, a blood oxygen monitor, a compass, a gyroscope, a pedometer, and Samsung’s BioActive Sensor for heart rate monitoring.
Overnight, it tracks your sleeping duration and stages, blood oxygen level, heart rate, respiratory rate, menstruation cycles, and even snoring. For snoring detection, you need to keep your Samsung phone nearby. Additionally, you can take an ECG with the watch, and it can even measure body composition metrics like body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI), similar to a smart scale.
Compared with the other Wear OS smartwatches from other companies, the Watch FE is a more robust health companion. The OnePlus Watch 2 ($299.99) lacks ECG, fall detection, and period tracking features. The Pixel Watch 2 ($349.99) doesn’t allow for on-demand blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) measurements. Neither measures your body composition metrics or tracks snoring.
You’ll make some compromises for its lower price, of course. The Watch FE lacks a few of the features of Samsung’s current flagship smartwatches, including dual-frequency GPS, skin temperature sensors, sleep apnea detection, and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) index tracking that provides a detailed picture of your metabolism. It’s also missing Galaxy AI, which encapsulates all of the tracked fitness and sleep metrics from the flagship models into a holistic Energy Score on a scale from 0 to 100. Galaxy AI also provides useful wellness tips and personalized guidance on how to improve your score and feel better.
Having spent the last few weeks testing the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra, I somewhat missed seeing my daily Energy Score and Wellness Tip when I switched to the Galaxy Watch FE. I liked having a single number representing my overall wellness, and the Galaxy AI guidance was usually precise and relevant to my lifestyle. However, if I hadn’t ever used those other watches, I would not have noticed anything missing from the Galaxy Watch FE.
Most of the features differentiating the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra from the Galaxy Watch FE were added this generation, so the budget model largely matches the capabilities of last year’s Galaxy Watch 6 ($299.99). That applies to its operating system: It runs Google’s Wear OS 4 with Samsung’s One UI 5 like the Galaxy Watch 6, whereas the Galaxy Watch 7 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra run the upgraded Wear OS 5 and Samsung’s One UI 6. However, in terms of memory and processing power, the Galaxy Watch FE matches the older Galaxy Watch 5, running a 5nm 1.
