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Author: Vatsal Agarwal
Rating: 4
Review: This is a great watch both in terms of looks and performance, with an unusual side effect of developing a ganglion on my wrist. The 46mm classic watch in silver looks like a high-end regular watch compared to a bunch of toy watches calling themselves smart watches. I always felt embarrassed to see a CEO or investor wearing an expensive smartwatch that looked like a toy watch they borrowed from a 6 year old. Galaxy Watch 4 classic is a real looker and am comfortable wearing it in most formal settings with a conservative watch-face and switch to something funky with a single flick when out for fun. I read a lot of people commenting on battery life. But in my using this bluetooth version, every single day of moderate to high use for about 2 months, battery never went below 30% in 24 hours, even though I keep it on while sleeping, continuously measuring all fitness options. Usually it consumes 15% during an 8-hour sleep and 45-55% during the 15-hour day, with about one hour of charging time daily. Please note that I rarely use the location and WiFi which are mostly off. The fitness set is great too. It has all cool measures you would read about. It got me into better habits with improved sleep, better eating/drinking, exercise etc. It does makes occasional mistake like counting steps while on a bumpy car ride or in the beginning of a train start. Stress measure is also way off a lot of times. It shows low stress when I am getting killed at work and shows high stress when lying on a couch watching movies. Blood pressure measurement is also difficult to setup as it requires a device to calibrate first time and everytime you reset the watch (such as switching phones). Sleep tracking is my personal favorite. It tracks if you are sleeping properly and suggests things to improve. It also nudges me to move every 50 mins since most of my job is sitting at a desk. However, there would be a few things of definitely interest from me to include. (1) Alarm adjusted to the sleep cycle. A lot of times my alarm rings when I am in very deep sleep or in between my REM sleep. It would be great to have a feature where the watch can track my sleep state and only ring the alarm when I am in light sleep within the allocate hour or so. (2) New sensors for body temperature. During covid, we have seen so many instant temperature measuring tools. Adding it to watch shouldn't be too difficult even if accuracy is not constant. (3) Sun exposure. It would be good to measure the amount of sun exposure I am getting; a very important health concern for desk jobs but not much in discussion in watches. A few other gripes about the watch. Samsung pay is only available in a few countries. Expansion to the countries supported on the phone should be launched with urgency. Secondly, tiles need to support the "Work profile", specially the calendar. I can see personal calendar in the tile which usually has nothing and all my work appointments are not available on watch. If I have to look them on phone, it beats the purpose of the watch. Samsung can find a work around in Knox to show Work calendar in a tile, since the notifications are already coming through. Third issue is the need to reset the watch every time I switch the phone. It is not that frequent but my dad wanted to try the watch and I set it up for him. When I reset to my phone few things are not restored from backup like installed watch-faces. Now I got a new phone and again had to set everything from scratch, although backup reduces the effort. There must be an easier way to connect the watch to a new phone without the whole hassle. Finally, the ganglion. I wore the watch 24x7 (except 1 hour daily charging) for about 2 months. Occasionally it was uncomfortable or sweaty but mostly it was very comfortable. One day I observed the skin under by watch was a little hard with minor swelling. I decided to not wear the watch for 2-3 days to let the wrist relax. But the area where I usually wear watch started to swell with light pain. I watched for two weeks since it was not affecting much. In the third week, I consulted my physician who immediately declared it to be a ganglion. He said that reason for ganglions are not known but it practically harmless and should go away in 12-18 months. But it can't be a concidence that ganglion developed tight under the watch when I was wearing it for 2 months. And now I am stuck not being able to wear any other watch either for a year. I hope I am the exception but do watch out if the watch causes ganglions to any of you too.
