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Fitness
Like most smartwatches, you get a heart rate monitor that kicks in every few minutes. If the pulse stays unusually high for a while, it will ask you to take a step back, monitor your stress levels, and even suggest some breathing exercises.
The usual slew of reminders to stand up every few hours or take a break are also present here.
The watch is also capable of sleep tracking and gives stats such as duration and REM. Seems to work well and automatically begins when you fall asleep.
Battery life
Samsung suggests that the Galaxy Watch Active should give over 48 hours of battery life, and we are glad to report that was true for the most part. During regular use, when it would be paired to my phone for almost the entire day, I would generally hit that number. Nimbler use can get you to the third day, while heavier use would be around a day and a half. Thankfully, it was always over a day.
The watch will prompt you to move to the battery saver mode once below 20% to get some additional few hours, but cuts down the functionality.
While the competition's smartwatches usually last just a day, this one was a breath of fresh air; one which does not add to your list of tech pieces that need charging daily.
There’s a small wireless charging pad in the box, which you can use to recharge the watch. We found it took around two hours to go from zero to 100%. Since the charger is wireless in nature, there's no fiddling with the metal pogo pins to ensure if they have lined up correctly. No more guesswork if the watch will actually be charged when you come back to it.
The watch will also work with other Qi wireless chargers, including phones that include the power share feature. That means your Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus will be able to charge up the watch and we found this feature to work well.
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