Understand your body better with the Galaxy Watch7's Energy
Score. Track sleep, heart rate, and daily activities for
personalized coaching to improve wellness.
Review: Great overall. But - buying for health? Have a read. -
Here is my honest, most comprehensive review you'll find, after a
month of 24/7 testing. As expected from Samsung - you get a solid
device, with great build quality and functionality. But is it
perfect? It is not, although it is striving to be. However, while
the health suite is feature-rich, there are “experimental” and
questionable precision data points that you need to know before
hitting the buy button. Let’s cover it all, no bs. I’ll try to
split it for easy reading. The Health Catch: If you are buying
this as a dedicated health tool and value accuracy - you need to
know this: 1. The Samsung "Tax": Advanced features like ECG
(Electrocardiogram), BP (Blood Pressure) and Sleep Apnea
detection still require a Samsung Galaxy phone. Even more - this
features are also locked to certain countries due to regulatory
reasons. Many are supported, but you need to do a quick search
and double check it to avoid frustration. 2. The AGEs Index: The
new sensor tracks "Advanced Glycation End Products." It’s a cool
concept for metabolic health, but it’s currently labeled as
"experimental." It provides a score and a brief description, but
doesn't give much actionable health or medical advice. At least
yet. 3. Sleep Apnea Detection: A great addition, although it
works with the Sleep Cycle app for that and in my experience the
app is quite good and precise on it’s own. 4. Sleep tracking:
Well it’s not bad overall, but I can’t call it precise either. So
mostly it seems like the phases of sleep and actual sleep time
both total and each phase is tracked by movements. So when I have
a half sleepless night and I lay down for long periods of time
without movement - it’s still counted as sleeping. again, somehow
the Sleep Cycle app on it’s own, listening to your
sleep/breathing just via the phone’s mic - is more precise in
this regard and shows me more realistic sleeping times. 5. Energy
Score: Using Galaxy AI, it gives you a score based on your sleep
and activity. It’s a great "at-a-glance" metric, similar to
Garmin’s Body Battery. However, it is hard to appreciate it’s
precision and it does not necessarily correspond to how well
rested or energetic you are. In my view the energy score, as well
as the sleep quality score tends to be much more optimistic. For
example when Sleep Cycle app shows me a bad sleep (and it was
bad) - the watch recorded it as Good and even Excellent. Also,
this Energy score seems to be impacted heavily by how consistent
you daily activity is. If it fluctuates a lot - then the watch
sees it as abnormal inconsistency and puts a low score with
“needs attention” mark. 6. ECG (Electrocardiogram): Nice feature,
it can detect abnormal heart rhythms (not all of them). Keep in
mind, this can’t replace a proper medical grade ECG. On the watch
it requires holding your finger against top button for 30
seconds. It becomes not quite easy if you have a watch case - it
pick it up wrong and asks you to restart tracking, or if your
hands are very dry - same + asks you to try to moisture your
finger. 7. Blood Pressure & Heart Rate: Nice feature and one of
the reasons I bought this watch too. Well first of all again,
this is not your medical grade BP monitor. It needs to be
calibrated using a medical grade one and needs re-calibration
every 28 days (recommended). From my experience, even calibrated
it shows both SYS and DIA about 10-15 lower than the medical one
- but knowing this you just add on top and you get the
approximate one. Good in general but definitely not precise if
you look for precision. Also, precision is dependent a lot on how
high and well strapped the watch is, clean skin, hair or lack of
it, etc. Again, they are good features but don’t expect them to
be precise medical grade or super consistent. In this regard -
measuring ECG, BP and Heart rate one after another can sometimes
give you quite different numbers. UPDATE: A positive update here
regarding the BP. My old BP monitor died and it was of
questionable quality (Sanitas from Lidl) so I bought a new one
which is certified for accuracy. After re-calibrating the watch
using new monitor, it started to provide numbers much closer to
reality. Very often 1-3 SYS/DIA difference and rarely now shows a
discrepancy more than 5 SYS/DIA. Definitely happy about this
improvement. 8. Blood oxygen: Simple and nice, will show you in
%. 9. Fitness: Automatic workout detection is quite-accurate, but
it’s another background process that nibbles at your battery. In
fairness it applies to all watches. Generally - there are lots of
sports modes and in this regard it is very good. 10. Breathing
exercises: New to me but found it simple and brilliant - it
works. You have by default 3 exercises for relaxing, focusing and
sleeping. Also you can create a custom one. What is nice, you
don’t need to watch the screen to follow the instructions. For
proper relaxing with eyes closed or before sleep, if watch is not
in sleep mode yet, then it will gently vibrate but in very nice
and clear patterns that differentiate between breathing in,
holding and breathing out. This one is really great and I
definitely recommend everyone to at least try it. 11. Body
composition: Another interesting feature that will take your
weight and will show your skeletal, muscle, fat and water mass +
BMR and BMI indexes. Hard measuring is a bit awkward as requires
two fingers on both buttons simultaneously. Precision is also
hard to judge but interestingly after a 2 week break in my gym
exercises due to lower back issues, it indeed showed a decreased
muscles mass and increased fat. Hopefully AI does not judge it
just from lack of exercise recordings! Hardware & Performance -
great, fast, solid quality. Shortly for the tech bros: 1. The
Speed: This is the first watch to feature the Exynos W1000 chip.
The lag found in the Watch4/5/6 is finally gone. Swiping through
tiles and launching apps is now smartphone-level fluid. *
Dual-Band GPS: This is a massive win. By using both L1 and L5
signals, the watch is significantly more accurate when tracking
runs or cycles between tall buildings or under heavy tree cover.
Be aware it significantly increases battery consumption. 2. The
Screen: The Super AMOLED remains the best in class—vibrant,
incredibly bright in direct sunlight, and protected by Sapphire
Crystal. I still covered it with a protective case but it will
survive much more scratches. 3. Battery: 44mm (425mAh) and 40mm
(300mAh). The elephant in the room. At first I was disappointed
to be honest. Either it was the “ghost” factory charge, but it
discharged very quickly. I am inclined to believe that with
everything switched on, bluetooth, wifi, GPS, always on display
and active usage - you will make it through a day, but that’s
definitely a "charge every day" device. If you know it and are ok
with it, since most smartphones require the same - than you can
really live with it. What also helps is a convenient, quick usb-c
<=>magnetic charger, which takes a bit more than 1 hour for a
full charge. Enabling power saving mode also helps as the OS cuts
a lot of background activities, throttles the CPU and you can
even reduce health features to save battery further. Software &
AI: Wear OS + Samsung ecosystem = solid pack, almost phone
capabilities on your hand. 1. Wear OS 5: It feels polished and
the integration with Google Play apps (Spotify, Strava, Google
Maps) is seamless. 2. Google Pay & Samsung Pay 3. Gemini AI ready
to answer and do stuff for you, upon a long click of a button 4.
Music - you can download it directly on your watch and listen on
the runs, leaving the phone at home. I found it quite convenient
tbh. So, who is this for and would I recommend it? Buy it if: You
want a sleek, one of the most powerful extension of your Samsung
phone and don't mind the "smartphone-style" daily charging
routine. Catching it on major discounts like I did is also a
major “you get a lot of value for your money”. Skip it if: You
are a marathon runner who needs 5-day battery life (look at the
Watch Ultra or Garmin) or if you don't own a Samsung phone but
want full health metrics. Wow, this review took me some time -
but I really hope it helps! Stay well & healthy friends! Cheers!
Review: Best smartwatch on the market at themoment - I am liking
it so far. Other than GPS features in exercises, i have tried
everything i think. With AOD on, Bluetooth on, Location on, 7
apps notifications allowed, Gestures on, Adaptive brightness on,
Sleep tracking on, Heart sensor measures continuously: Getting
about 2.2 days of battery life. From the battery usage screen,
after using the whole battery, it shows AOD used about 50-60% of
it. Havnt tried it with AOD off yet, hopefully that puts it to 3
days. Value for money it's a no brainer especially if you find it
on a discounted price. Comes with a charger that has a usb-c plug
on the other end Design wise, works in an elegant setting, also
in a sport one. Just change the watchface and it suits any
situation. The watch strap is a good quality one that fits any
hand, but if you don't like it, you can find others online very
cheap. You can buy it with esim and GPS or only bluetooth and GPS
connection. The gps seems fine, not insanely accurate, but close
enough.
