With the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 and Watch5 Pro, the company joins the ranks of other entities stamping products with the ‘Pro’ moniker. Sometimes that designation is deserved, and other times it’s little more than marketing. This time around, Samsung appears to be courting portions of the adventure crowd with this new Pro model, which boasts not just significantly higher battery life, but also features specific to trails, like navigation from a .GPX file, a compass watch face, and Track Back.
The Pro model also differentiates itself with different materials, including a titanium case and a higher hardness level sapphire crystal display. However, as with the base model, it runs Google’s Wear OS, which Samsung switched over to last summer/fall as part of a platform shift. While we’ve seen incremental feature updates to Wear OS, it hasn’t resulted in significant battery savings for the platform. Thus, Samsung appears to be taking measures into their own hands by just stuffing a giant battery in there. The company is claiming up to 80 hours of smartwatch mode, and up to 20 hours of GPS-on time. While these numbers might seem paltry compared to the likes of endurance-focused watches from Garmin, Polar, and Suunto – they are, on paper anyways, a big step up from years past (or Apple’s numbers).
In any case, this isn’t so much an in-depth review, as an early review of the sports features and accuracy. As usual, this review isn’t sponsored. I ordered and bought both the Watch5 Pro and Watch5 (base) units myself, and then simply picked them up at the store this morning. Since then, I’ve been putting it through its paces for the new sports features. However, longer-term testing is of course required, especially on the sleep and battery-related metrics.
With that, let’s dive into it.
As with years past, there are multiple sizes of the Galaxy Watch series, each with differing batteries and price points. Here’s the quick gist of things:
Samsung Galaxy Watch5 (40mm): From $299/299EUR ($349/EUR for LTE) Samsung Galaxy Watch5 (44mm): From $329/329EUR ($379/EUR for LTE) Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro (45mm): $469/EUR ($499/EUR for LTE)
There’s a slate of different color options, and even a golf-specific one ($329). Oh, and the ship-date of these watches is set for August 26th, unless you live in the Netherlands, in which case it’s apparently this morning instead.
All the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 units have the following core features:
– Included GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth – Google Wear OS (operating platform) – Removable/swappable bands/straps – Speaker and microphone built-in – Ability to play music, contactless payments – New Optical HR sensor, ECG (where allowed by law anyway), and body composition measuring – Body temperature sensor (for sleeping, this is new) – New USB-C charging cable that’s significantly faster – Can charge from 0 to 45% in 30 minutes, can charge 8-hours of sleep in 8 mins
Of course, there’s a slate of software features behind all that, some Google based, some Samsung based. As with Watch4, Watch5 requires an Android phone (previous Samsung Galaxy watches actually worked with the iPhone). Further though, like watch4 it also requires a Samsung phone for certain apps (such as the blood pressure sensing). So in effect, if you want to use all the features, this is basically a watch for Samsung phone users (just like the Apple Watch is only for iPhone users).
So what’s the Pro version got that the base doesn’t have? Ask and you shall receive:
– A bigger battery, which results in longer GPS (20 hours), and standby time (80 hours) – Titanium bezel, plus a harder sapphire crystal display – Ability to navigate a downloaded .GPX file (route) – Ability to ‘Track Back’, to get back to the start of a course – Magnetic compass watch face – A different clasp system on the back
Starting off first with the navigation bits, to load a course you’ll need a .GPX file. The actual file, not just a route on a site. In my case, I used Strava to create a route, and then used the ‘Export GPX’ option, to get the file.
From there, I e-mailed it to myself (since that option is really only available on the desktop app), and then I saved it to my Samsung phone’s file structure. Following which I then cracked open the Samsung Health app, and dove into the sport profiles area. Somewhat oddly, how you access the Routes feature varies each time you open it. The first time there’s a tile that suggests you check it out. However, after that, it’s buried deep in the settings. It took me many minutes to re-find it again, well hidden.
Here’s some screenshots of the first route I did, my planned run….before I found out that the route feature only works with Hiking and Cycling, not running or other sport types.
Once found, you’ll select the .GPX file you saved to your phone, and then it’ll import it into Samsung Health. Samsung says you can also share these among your Samsung Health friends, which is kinda handy. Once on your account, it’ll automatically sync to your watch.
Meanwhile, on your watch, you’ll swipe a handful of times to the routes app/widget, which lets you select the course (it’ll also show other saved courses you have if this isn’t your first barbeque). There’s an option to reverse/invert the course as well. You’ll see a small map of the course, though you can’t pinch/zoom/etc here.
With that, tap ‘Start’ and off you go. If you have cellular connectivity it’ll enumerate the map tiles below the route, else, it’ll just be blank (breadcrumb style). It’ll show how far to the next turn, and give you audible turn-by-turn directions. It’ll audibly tell you how many meters to each turn.
If you miss a turn, it’ll notify you about 50 meters later (half a football field), which…is kinda a lot.
Further, it won’t seem to notify you if you happen on a parallel trail that’s within 50 meters (not that uncommon, such as on a different side of a stream), so you could go for quite some time before it notifies you. Overall, it works, but I wouldn’t trust it for anything but very obvious trail routing. The latency on missed turns, combined with the detection for when you’re actually back on the route (especially when I tried a lollipop course), seemed wobbly at best.
In addition to straight navigation, there’s also Track Back, which lets you follow your existing track back to the start. This is not direct to start, but on the precise path you used to get there. So if you made any errors on the outbound, it’ll repeat those on the return. To access this, you’ll swipe to the mid-activity menu, and then select Track back:
At which point, the navigation prompts are identical to regular navigation.
Next, there’s the new compass watch face. This magnetic compass gives you quick access to…well…the compass. It’s not enabled by default, so you need to both enable the Pro Analog watch face, and then tweak the complications to show it.
Once that’s done though, it roughly works. Or, works roughly. As shown in the video, it easily gets confused and points the wrong way if you move it too quickly (and stays stuck). Hopefully this is a bug they can quickly fix. If you move slowly, it stays accurate.
With the Pro features behind us, let’s take a look at the accuracy of the optical HR sensor and GPS first on an interval workout of sorts. Obviously, this is just one workout, and certainly more are slated. However, Samsung outlined this being a new optical HR sensor package. It’s a little fuzzy if it’s just repackaging the existing sensor (since it appears visually identical), or if there is something actually new in the optical HR sensor.
Either way, I aimed to give it a whirl and compared it to the Apple Watch Series 7 on the other wrist (using watchOS9 beta). Further, I had a chest strap (Garmin HRM-PRO), and heck, even the Whoop 4.0 and Oura V3 ring. Here’s the HR chart:
As you can see, it’s actually not that bad. I removed Oura from this screenshot because it’s too messy (but you can see it here, it’s not good this run, a rarity for me). The Samsung Watch5 Pro starts off a bit low/slow, and then quickly overcompensates with a spike. But once you got beyond that first minute or two, it settles out nicely and easily follows along. My plan was to do steady-state running, and then every 2KM do an interval. Then, at the end I’d do 4xVery Hard intervals. For the last four intervals, it was a bit latent on the peak, but not horrifically so.
Meanwhile, on the GPS side, I had the Samsung/Apple watch combo, plus also a Garmin Forerunner 955 and a COROS Vertix 2.
Starting off on a mostly easy path, the Samsung wasn’t quite nailing it. It wasn’t bad, but nowhere near as accurate as the others. It just wandered a bit…but fine, good enough for most.
However, once I got into the downtown building district test with tall buildings and skinny streets, it had a rough go of life. Though, oddly, not nearly as bad of a go as the Apple Watch Series 7 did. I’ve never seen an Apple Watch have that horrific a failure of GPS, in 7 years of Apple Watch units. No idea what happened there, and if perhaps it’s tied to watchOS 9 beta (most recent release two days ago), given I’ve never seen anything remotely this bad before from Apple. But yeah, not ideal.
Setting aside the building sections for both, the rest of the run was mostly fine, with just some wobbles. This is all largely an improvement from Samsung Galaxy Watch4.
Finally, an early look at the battery drain indicates it’s falling short in GPS time. I left the house with the battery at between 99% and 100% (straight off the charge at 100%). When I finished the 50-minute run, it was 91%. So simple napkin-math says about 10%/hour, or 10 hours of battery life (versus the claimed 20 hours of GPS life). I didn’t have always-on enabled, nor music, or anything else. In terms of regular battery usage, it’s still too soon to tell, but right now I’m trending towards 50% per 24 hours, though obviously that’s with GPS time, and a bit of other time for photos and such (but probably less than a normal person dorks with their watch in a day). This particular paired phone/SIM card doesn’t get my usual allotment of notifications, so it lucks out there.
Again, this, as well as the sleep bits are items I’ll be evaluating over the next few weeks.
I suspect we’re going to see more ‘Pro’ watches this fall. However, I’m not entirely certain this specific feature-set lives up to the ‘Pro’ moniker. If the baseline for whether something is ‘Pro’ is whether a professional would use it to get their job done, then from a hiking/trekking/outdoors standpoint, it’d be hard to convince me this unit would accomplish the same task as any of the watches I brought with me last week on my 8-day 170KM trek. The battery alone would have killed this in a single day.
But at the same time, I’m glad Samsung both recognizes the need for more battery (even if a bit chunky), as well as the ideals of having more outdoor features in their watches. While sometimes a bit perplexing, Samsung’s Health app is actually quite deep in functionality, including a slate of structured workouts for a number of sports. In fact, it arguably has far more sports-depth history than almost any watch-maker app out there. At one point it even connected to almost every ANT+ sensor type and more (seriously, go read that craziness from 9 years ago). Those days are long gone, but there’s still lots of interesting nuggets left behind from that era.
And perhaps, this is the start of a new era of Samsung focusing on the outdoors market. A market that Garmin and others have proven is vast, and based on the new Apple WatchOS9 features, it seems like Apple is seeing an opportunity there as well. All of which is good for consumers, either via extending competition, or simply offering more choices.
With that, stay tuned for a full in-depth review down the road.
Thanks for reading!Found This Post Useful? Support The Site! Hopefully you found this review useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well. If you're shopping for the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. Even more, if you use Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with coupon code DCRAINMAKER, first time users save 15% on applicable products! Samsung Galaxy Watch5 ProAmazon $450 And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about! Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks! Found This Post Useful? Support The Site! Hopefully you found this review useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well. If you're shopping for the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. Even more, if you use Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with coupon code DCRAINMAKER, first time users save 15% on applicable products! Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro Amazon Buy Now $450 And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about! Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
Hopefully you found this review useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
If you're shopping for the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. Even more, if you use Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with coupon code DCRAINMAKER, first time users save 15% on applicable products!
And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about!
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
Hopefully you found this review useful. At the end of the day, I’m an athlete just like you looking for the most detail possible on a new purchase – so my review is written from the standpoint of how I used the device. The reviews generally take a lot of hours to put together, so it’s a fair bit of work (and labor of love). As you probably noticed by looking below, I also take time to answer all the questions posted in the comments – and there’s quite a bit of detail in there as well.
If you're shopping for the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro or any other accessory items, please consider using the affiliate links below! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but your purchases help support this website a lot. Even more, if you use Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with coupon code DCRAINMAKER, first time users save 15% on applicable products!
And of course – you can always sign-up to be a DCR Supporter! That gets you an ad-free DCR, access to the DCR Quarantine Corner video series packed with behind the scenes tidbits...and it also makes you awesome. And being awesome is what it’s all about!
Thanks for reading! And as always, feel free to post comments or questions in the comments section below, I’ll be happy to try and answer them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if you felt this review was useful – I always appreciate feedback in the comments below. Thanks!
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Hi Ray. I apologize that the comment is not on the topic of the article! What happened to diving into the pros and cons of the FR255 and FR955 and the Instinct 2? Did you give up?
Does not seem like the added features of the Pro justify the $140 upcharge from the non-Pro. I know that Samsung has a ton of development resources relative to Polar or Suunto (at least I would imagine so) and this is still early for them in GPS sports watch (relatively speaking). Still, maybe a full featured GPS-enabled sport watch is enough outside Samsung’s wheelhouse that this project will aways be that – an uncompetitive project. I suppose the way to think about this is … if I’m already buying the smartwatch and I get the GPS sports part for low cost/free, maybe a useful selling point. But if I’m comparing this to Garmin…Suunto…Coros…Polar…*shakes head*.
Agree, “Pro” doesn’t feel all that “Pro”. I’m pretty sure you can get course follow / track back on a regular Watch 4 as well with a help of a third-party app.
“Pro” here is not short for “Professional”, is short for “Probably you will be able to go a whole day without recharging this time”.
Great review as always Ray. I look at this as a smartwatch that has additional sport features included.
Didn’t mention the LTE connectivity. Big plus.
I included the LTE pricing above. But Samsung has always had LTE options. However, it doesn’t impact any of the sports/fitness features (except perhaps real-time access to map tiles if in range).
There’s obviously huge non-sports benefits to LTE for some people, though for the most part, most companies don’t provide much sports-specific benefit with LTE. Oddly enough, Garmin does actually provide good sports-specific LTE features, but of course then it falls apart entirely for non-sports LTE features.
There’s an LTE version of those though.
Getting rid of the physical rotating bezel was a big mistake.
And they somehow managed to make these look incredibly generic.
100% agree, it looks… bland. Dull. I appreciate it’s a 350€ Samsung, and not a 10,000€ piece of Swiss exotica, but even so they could have made a bit more effort!
I noticed the map is still visible below a turn indication.. Garmin can learn from that.
It’s still visible on all the Garmin wearables I have?
With Garmin it’s a slightly different problem – there’s no priority for notifications. For example, I’m approaching a route and a turn notification pops up. If at the same moment any other notification from device is triggered (like “Drink”) – it will take over the screen, hiding the turn notification.
Yup, now that I agree with…
I have the Watch4 Classic now and I have been using it for MTB and running now and again. The interface is very basic, but it tracks GPS surprisingly well – or well enough for me. What bothers me is that the HR is very inaccurate or “slow”. It’s really having a hard time picking up spikes in short sprint intervals for example. I hoped to help this with the use of a belt instead, but the watch (The Samsung app) will not accept that. Do you know if it’s possible to use a belt with the Watch5 pro?
No, not natively – at least not that I can find/figure out (which matches the past). There are 3rd party apps though that do pair with HR straps.
The HR data on the YouTube video doesn’t seem bad at all! I’m glad non-sport companies are catching up in the sports features, hope that leads to a more competitive market and better products.
What seems to be still pretty off is the whoop… I’m thinking on trying one but not 100% sure it is going to be helpful if it still struggles with getting correct HR readings. What’s your latest experience with it?
This was actually a surprising mini-fail for me on the Whoop 4 (especially given it was armband/strap). Usually it’s much better than that for running.
Happy to hear that… I’m considering it because I mostly do strength training with 3/4 runs/rides a week and for the gym, with Kettlebells involved, watches are awfully uncomfortable.
Honestly at certain point every sensor fails. I’m a happy user of the OH1 since it appeared and sometimes it also gets wrong readings (super rare I must say).
Getting back to the Galaxy, you think it’s going to be able to shake things up or it’s just so marginal the number of Samsung users that it’s effect is going to be negligible?
If using Whoop as strength, you pretty much have to use it on the armband or sleeve (or, I suppose Whoop shorts). Even then, it will significantly undercut your load, as HR is always lagging for strength (no matter the sensor). Since Whoop only looks to HR for strain, this is an area where HR (again, no matter the device) isn’t ideal.
As for Galaxy, I don’t think it’ll move the dial one way or another significantly. In some ways, the Galaxy watch has become the watch for Samsung people, in the same way that Apple Watch is for iPhone people. These days, those camps become more and more entrenched. I think Samsung could pull more phone sales from non-Samsung users into the camp because of the watch, but that’ll depend on what Google does this fall with Pixel watch.
Yes! Same as the OH1. That’s why I thing it will be less intrusive: as you can move it away from the wrist, you don’t have to be concerned about the bells smashing it. The strain factor I guess will be more “accurate” for conditioning workouts but meh-ish for pure strength ones, right? However that is a part where I suppose every vendor fails: accounting the calories/strain/effect/whatever-metric-the-company-chooses for non-cardio activities.
My point with the Samsung is exactly what you say. Considering Samsung has a large portion of the smartphone sales, if they manage to keep their clients into their ecosystem (I have the feeling that Apple is best at doing it), that could be a considerable loss to Garmin et Alt. I only knew one person with a Galaxy, and the moment he started to ride more, he immediately switched to a Fénix 6, despite liking the smartwatch functionalities of the Galaxy more.
“Body temperature sensor (for sleeping, this is new)”
Really only for sleeping? Btw: have you ever compared the core body temperature sensor with the Garmin “Estimated Body Temperature Data Field”? I have asked this somewhere here months ago, but have not watched it…
“New USB-C charging cable that’s significantly faster”
Sounds interesting. Perhaps Garmin is using this for an upcoming Fenix 8 series etc., too?
I think I have done some comparisons, but I’m pretty sure I never got around to writing them up. They’re buried…well…somewhere.
Hello Ray, Do I see it correctly: you still can’t connect an external heart rate sensor like Polar H10 or Garmin to the watch so that the data becomes more accurate during training? Thank you Hans
Correct, at least not natively. There are 3rd party apps that support it though.
Hi, does the watch connect to a power meter when recording? Can it also record slow during workout.? Love the content. Keep it up.
Not natively. I odn’t know which Wear OS apps work offline with a power meter. But I’ll be doing some digging there (I do know one that works with Stryd for running though, which is GearTracker, and that also supports HR straps too: link to play.google.com
Hi, Ray! Great to see you covering these two 5-series watches. I’m still using my trusty old TomTom Spark for my outdoor running but the older I get, the more I worry about being far away with no communication for help, so I started investigating the Samsung watch. I didn’t even realize when I started this search a couple days ago that it was the day that Samsung introduced the 5 model! When I discovered this, I came to your site and saw nothing. I was disappointed! Now, I can be happy again! I couldn’t find on the site where you reviewed the 4-series. If you did, I would love to hear your thoughts on that versus the 5-series and the 5-pro, especially with regard to sensor accuracy.
Thanks for doing what you do! Your in-depth analysis added to your mountains of experience make our decisions so much easier.
I didn’t do a full written review of the 4 series, but did a video review: link to dcrainmaker.com
Yes, I actually did find that after my post but it was so early in the lifecycle of it. I wondered if it ever improved, especially regarding the HR monitor just stopping completely. That for me (and I imagine most others) is a complete deal-breaker. I look forward to your long(er)-term review of the 5. Thanks for responding!
hello i am blind user who plan to buy galaxy watch 5 pro but i would like if you can descrybe haptic in the watch and show some speaker test just for orientation
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