Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro hands-on: Barely-there updates (and one new design)

Besides the debut of the larger Pro edition, little about the Galaxy Watch 5 line feels new.

Video Transcript

CHERLYNN LOW: It's Galaxy Unpacked time again. And this time around, in addition to two new foldables and a new set of wireless earbuds, Samsung is unveiling a pair of Galaxy watches. These are the Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro. The Watch 5 will basically replace the Galaxy Watch 4 and is available in 40-millimeter and 44-millimeter sizes, and basically looks very similar to its predecessor. More on that in a little bit.

The Galaxy Watch 5 Pro is a new entrant to the series altogether and it's got a 45-millimeter face and is designed for, as Samsung says, the great outdoors. That means it's got features like enhanced durability, it's got GPS built in for people who go on hikes or run around outside a lot.

So at a hands-on event in New York, I got to see both of these watches. And I mostly spent time with the Galaxy Watch 5 40-millimeter version. At first glance, I couldn't really tell that there was any difference between this and its predecessor.

And that's because most of the changes here aren't really visible to the naked eye. For one thing, Samsung has changed up the glass here and is now using sapphire crystal glass, which the company says is about 60% stronger than last year's model. And overall, the Galaxy Watch 5 is rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, and it's also rated at 5 ATMs.

The other thing that Samsung did to refine the design of the Galaxy Watch 5 is it sort of tweaked the curvature of the glass on the underside. And this way, it's supposed to have increased surface area contact with your wrist. And therefore, helps its sensors get a better reading of your biometrics.

And finally, if you look closely enough, you might notice the one new hardware addition here, and that is the skin temperature sensor. This is in addition to Samsung's bioactive sensor that takes up most of the underside that already does optical heart rate monitoring as well as blood oxygen and ECG. Samsung says it's improved some of these sensors to give you better or more accurate readings.

And it's also introduced some new features into its health and wellness tracking system. Samsung also is introducing a new feature to its sleep tracking tool. And, in addition to being able to tell what zone of sleep you're in and how long you were asleep, it will also be able to build a plan based on its data gathered from you to help coach you towards better sleep.

Of course, I wasn't able to test this out at our 90-minute hands-on event unless I fell asleep somehow, somewhere during all of that chaos. So this is something that we'll have to wait till we get a review unit in for testing to verify how well it works. And if you recall, Samsung teamed up with Google last year to introduce a new Wear OS powered by Samsung, and the Galaxy Watch 5 also uses this interface.

You will swipe sideways to access different pages. And you can always add more tiles to this. You can also long press on the home screen to create new watch faces. And Samsung's made eight new watch faces for the Galaxy Watch 5 and improved, it says, 10 of the existing ones. Samsung also says it's upgraded some of the hardware inside of the Watch 5.

I used a Galaxy Watch 5 to get a reading of my body muscle and fat composition, and noticed that it was a lot faster than on the Galaxy Watch 4. I don't know if this has to do with the chip only or the fact that the fit of the watch just felt more snug on my wrist thanks to that new, improved curvature.

The Watch 5 also features a 15% bigger battery than the 4. On the smaller model, this is a 276 milliamp bar cell, and on the larger 44-millimeter model, you've got a 397 milliamp hour battery. Samsung also says you can recharge this to 45% in just 30 minutes of being plugged in. And, in case you were worried, Samsung still retained its bezel-based navigation feature here.

And instead of a physical bezel, like on the Watch 4 Classic, we've got a digital bezel that is just a touch-sensitive area framing the screen. I found it kind of tricky to use. Often when I was scrolling through things like exercises and workout options, for example, I would keep triggering things on the screen by accident.

This touch-based bezel was also available on the Galaxy Watch 5 Pro, which is a bigger watch that feels like it would have room for a physically rotating bezel. But it's already kind of bulky. And Samsung did say it wants to reduce the number of moving parts in this device because you're out and about and you don't want to have another opportunity to break this thing.

So speaking of breakage, durability is kind of the core design element here. For one thing, it uses a more durable sapphire crystal glass display and has a titanium casing. It's also got a larger battery of up to 590 milliamp hours. And GPS is built in so you can go and hike without having to carry your phone and still be able to map your route.

And if constantly hiking is not your thing, the GPS is also helpful when you do route-specific workouts, a feature that's similar to something that Apple just launched on Watch OS. On the watch of a Samsung executive at the event, we were able to see some historic map data on a bike workout that had already had a different route saved on it. And we could start the same route just from that page.

Aside from that, this is basically the Galaxy Watch 5. I mean, it has same ip68 water resistance and dust resistance rating, as well as a 5 ATM underwater use rating. So not that much different there. Samsung did also launch a new Golf variant of the Watch 5 Pro. This is the golf edition, and it comes with, basically, more apps for people who are golf enthusiasts to use.

If you're already interested, you can preorder the Galaxy Watch 5. The Bluetooth version starts at $279.99, with the LTE version going up to $329.99. That's for the 40-millimeter model. The Watch 5 Pro, however, starts at $450 thereabouts for the Bluetooth edition and then adds $50 for the LTE model.

These will all be available come August 26. But in the meantime, before you go spending your money, wait till we're able to test this thing out in the wild and give you our thoughts on its performance in the real world before you go pre-ordering and spending your money. For that and more coverage of Samsung's devices, as well as the world of consumer technology, make sure you subscribe to Engadget. And as always, thank you for watching.

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