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. Here’s how things compared, against a chest strap (Garmin HRM-PRO Plus), the COROS Heart Rate Sensor (optical band), the Whoop 4. Note that for all of these, I left all the screen brightness details at defaults, but did use always-on display the entire time.

com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services. He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.Apple made one massive mistake next to where it says ‘CoolBlue’, yet on the lower portion it was spot-on, whereas Samsung did some other corner-cutting and offsets for other portions. Moreover, screen brightness on the Galaxy Watch 6 series maxes out at 2,000 nits, doubling that of the last generation and matching the Apple Watch Ultra.

The Galaxy Watch 6 series continues to offer the same robust sensor suite as the last generation, inducing optical and electrical heart sensors, a bioelectrical impedance analysis sensor (for body fat and other body composition measurements), a temperature sensor, an accelerometer, a barometer, and a gyroscope. Galaxy Watch6 Classic provides ingress protection (IP68) against dust and fresh water to a maximum of 1.Further, Samsung does not support pairing of any sensor types natively – such as heart rate straps, cycling sensors, etc… There are 3rd party apps that do however. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 isn’t a major upgrade over the Watch 5, rather it’s a pretty incremental upgrade (even more when looking at sports). Meanwhile, from the watch face, if you swipe down, you’ll see your settings (lots of settings), and if you swipe from the left, you’ll see notifications.