This watch surprises me almost every day with suggestions on new things it can do. I like it mostly for the health readings it gives me. Best smart watch i have ever had.
I got this thing about 4 days ago to upgrade from a Fitbit. The first thing I realized that all of you reading might already know is that this is a completely different class of product than a fitness tracker. This is a smart watch which has a lot more features than basic fitness tracking up to and including a constant LTE connection.
The build quality, accessory ecosystem, and functionality are all mostly great. It definitely feels like it's a step above the fit and finish of even Fitbits which are well known brands. It can track pretty much everything that a Fitbit charge 6 can and more. The screen is surprisingly clear and even when dimmed still pops with color and contrast.
Those are all the good things. Now for my main and only issue and how I solved it. The LTE connection, get texts and calls to your watch, stay connected constantly for up to the second live updates, etc. etc. The only problem is that while you CAN do this, it will decimate your battery. With every power saving feature enabled BUT LTE on (that is battery saver, Bluetooth off, AOD off, Wi-Fi off, dimmest screen possible, health tracking off, and a barebones watch face) My battery drained by nearly %15 an hour, which is clearly no sustainable if you work even an 8 hour shift. This battery life on a device that is supposed to stand in for a watch, or even a fitness tracker would be completely unacceptable.
My solution, which dropped my battery usage down to %2-%3 per hour, a much more acceptable range, was to turn on airplane mode the majority of the time and then only turn it off once or twice a day to sync or when I specifically want to use LTE features. This is not ideal as it obviously disables a couple of the main features of an LTE enabled watch like receiving texts or calls and constant connection to your phone. However for my use case it turns the product from basically unusable to totally fine.
All other things being equal or better I find that this is a totally acceptable product, I wish Samsung would release an update allowing you to more deeply customize syncing and features outside of airplane mode (to my knowledge right now the LTE configuration begins and stops with on/off) so that I could set it up to not constantly connect but rather automatically sync data every 30 minutes to an hour and completely disable more connection heavy features like constantly checking for new calls/texts. In this way I could not even have to worry about syncing but also have usable amounts of battery life for 1-2 days.