Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsA very good smartwatch, with one glaring problem (for me)
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2019
I'll open my review by saying I couldn't care less about the fitness features of this watch. My requirements from a smartwatch are to silently relay messages, emails, reminders and phone calls from my phone, plus do anything else to increase my day to day productivity, all that while looking nice on the wrist. So, this is not a review of the fitness features. I came to the active 2 from the LG watch style smartwatch which is an Android Wear watch with a 240mAh battery.
Pros:
1. Battery life! I chose the 40mm version which fits my wrist much better (my wrist circumference is 16.7cm, and the 44mm, while having a bigger battery and being nicer to interact with because of the noticeably bigger screen, is way too big to look classy on my wrist). Even though this is the smaller battery version, coming from the LG watch style which has the same battery size, battery life is simply amazing. With the watch style the battery usually died at the end of the day, or slightly before the end of the day. With the Active 2, with the exact same usage, I get to the end of the day with 82% (!) of the battery full. This is unbelievable. Now, the usage I'm talking about is light, I'm connected with BT (WIFI is on auto but mostly not engaged), GPS is on, and always display off. I'm getting all of my massages/reminders/phone call alerts and this is the most important thing to me. I also use it as a timer which is convenient. Even with much more demanding usage I don't ever see a problem of this watch not lasting through the say, which is basically what I need because I'm charging at night anyway (I have fitbit for tracking sleep, and they probably understand much better about sleep tracking than Samsung).
2. User interface. The user interface is very friendly, and not less important, extremely fluid. Everything runs and behaves so well, it's a joy to use. The level of customization is enough for me to have everything I want at close reach. Really in terms of UI, Android wear is years behind and at this point probably out of the game. Please don't purchase Android wear watch before trying a new Tizen watch.
3. Screen. Wow. The active 2 screen is a joy to look at. Colors are so vibrant (including deep blacks) with very good resolution. Looking at the screen is a very enjoyable experience.
4. Comfort. This watch is very comfortable to wear. I can barely feel it on my wrist. Without looking decent and being very comfortable I would not wear a watch. I never wore a watch before smartwatches because I don't like to wear anything on my wrist, but the added productivity with a smartwatch is simply too important for me to let go.
5. Speaker. The speaker is a very nice addition to a smartwatch. It sounds very well during phone calls (considering its on a small watch). I still haven't really needed it, but I know it will come handy from time to time when I'm getting an important call and far from my watch. With the older LG watch style, at these situations when getting an important call alert on my watch and being far from my phone, I simply run for my phone, many times not getting in time, not anymore :)
Cons:
1. Vibration strength. This is by far my biggest problem with this watch. The vibration parameters I'm using are: "long", "strong", with "Knock" style - this combination gives the most felt vibration possible, and I still miss some of the alerts... Now, I've read many reviews before I purchased this watch and saw maybe one review that talked about this problem, so hoped this will not be a problem if all the other reviewers haven't mentioned it. It could be that this is more of a problem for me than for others because: 1. I chose the less popular 40mm size which has less skin contact than the 44mm size, and hence maybe the vibration is less felt, 2. I don't want to "strangle" my wrist with the watch band, I like to keep it a tiny bit loose. If I am tightening the band completely, the vibration is felt very good, but if not, I'm missing some alerts. I didn't have this problem with the LG watch style (which I wore the same) which ironically was criticized for not having a strong enough vibration. I don't know what to do because I really like this watch, but If I can't trust it to reliably relay alerts, it fails at the most basic feature I need it for. One more option I can try is activating the watch speaker for alerts, but this kinds of defeat my purpose of getting a smartwatch in the first place, if I can't get my alerts silently...
2. Thickness. Now don't get me wrong, this watch is nice on the wrist, but in order to really be good looking, it should have been a bit thinner. It's weird because the LG watch style was just 0.1mm thinner, yet looks considerably thinner on the hand, maybe the way it was styled (not just one color on the sides) helped this...
So overall I'm giving this watch 3 stars. it's a really nice watch with great potential, I simply can't give it a really high rating if it fails at the basics. I just hope I can figure out some solution for the vibration problem. My biggest problem with the LG watch style was battery life, I couldn't trust this watch for this reason. The Active 2 solved this problem, but now I can't trust it for a different reason... Sigh...
