Let me start by saying that I am not a sports person. At all.
However, in order to properly test the features of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro (which I have already explored quite a bit before), I decided that it was necessary to activate myself for once.
So I brought the watch with me on our corporate cruise trip, Royal Caribbean’s Spectrum of the Seas (non-sponsored), and pushed myself to participate in various physical activities. Here is what happened.
Kick-off
I started my day off right by attending a morning workout, which turned out to be a Zumba-esque dance class.
Led by our handsome Brazilian dance teacher, Leandro, I learned a choreography phrase in 32 beats and ended up sweating a lot more than expected.
For the first 24 minutes, the watch automatically tracked my walking activity. In the last 12 minutes, he started following him as “Other training”.
If you want, you can actually manually track the dance on the watch.
Although the activity tracking on the watch is better than its predecessor, with the ability to automatically detect popular activities like cycling, running and outdoor walking, it was unable to recognize my sick movements .
Dive into
My first immersion in the water on the cruise was while trying out the FlowRider, a stationary surf machine. However, the artificial waves seemed a little too strong, so I took the watch off.
This turned out to be a good idea, as the water tasted a little salty (beware, I wasn’t actively drinking it, I just happened to splash my mouth). I say that was a good idea, because water resistance ratings generally only apply to fresh water, not salt water.
That said, the watch comes with a scuba diving trainer. Oddly, this option does not automatically activate the water lock.
After the FlowRider experience, however, I took the watch to the outdoor pool for a dip. The cruise pools ended up being deeper than expected. It looked more like 5’4”, even though the signage said 5’1”. Anyway, the watch comes with 50 meter water resistance, so I wasn’t worried.
Before jumping in the pool, I made sure to activate the water mode lock. This disables your touchscreen, wake gestures, and always-on display.
The watch almost immediately started recognizing that I was swimming. It ended up tracking 49 minutes of swimming, which seems about right.
Besides tracking my distance and heart rate, I was surprised to find that the watch also tracked things like the types of swims I was doing. He calculated one minute of backstroke, six minutes of breaststroke, and the rest was mixed.
There was also a number called “SWOLF”, which I didn’t even know until I looked at my stats. Derived from the words swimming and golf, SWOLF is a score that measures swimming efficiency.
A lower score is better, so I guess my breaststroke score of 385 is abysmal. (For the record, I wasn’t trying to swim seriously).
After getting out of the water, I turned off the water lock. This causes the watch to beep. The vibration of it is supposed to clean the watch from water.
end the day
After a day of more outdoor activities than I’ve done in…a long time, I was ready to knock out. With my fatigue, I expected a good sleep score, but it only turned out to be 69, below the average for my age group.
However, I got 21% deep sleep (one hour and 15 minutes), so I think that counts as a win.
Apparently the watch needs a day of sleep tracking before it can start guiding me on my sleeping habits. Just like my exercise, one day just won’t be enough when it comes to health.
Overall, I really enjoyed wearing the watch, except for a few minor issues such as the constant accidental touches registering every time I tilted my wrist oddly.
Anyway, having the watch on my wrist made me feel more motivated to get active. The detailed records of physical activities were a tangible representation of my efforts, and I loved that.
Of course, that motivational feeling can be true for any sports smartwatch, but I liked how the Watch 5 Pro also has a sleek, stylish aesthetic that makes it suitable for a fancy dinner after as well.
Can I say that I had more fun on the cruise than I would have without the Galaxy Watch5 Pro on my wrist.
- Learn more about the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro here.
- Read the other articles we’ve written about Samsung here.