Apple Watch Series 4 vs. Galaxy Watch Active: What's the best smartwatch? - CNET

For the price, it's hard to go past the Galaxy Watch Active, especially considering compatibility across Android and iOS. It offers a great range of fitness features, a comfortable fit for smaller wrists especially and a strong showing in battery life.

This article baffles me. I own both of these smart watches and I find the Galaxy Watch Active to be quite a poor product for someone who enjoys using their smart watch for smart watch-y things. And if you’re thinking this article focused more on the fitness aspect, no it did not.

Winner: Tie. Galaxy Watch Active has the best cross-platform support, but the Apple Watch has the flexibility of an LTE-option and a built-in speaker for making calls.

Listen, there are some people who will enjoy the Galaxy Watch Active, but every piece of the user experience as a smart watch is miles behind what watchOS has going on. I bought the Active with hopes it would show me some things Apple could steal for updates to watchOS. Instead, all I discovered was that Apple is further ahead of everyone else than I realized.

And finally, who the heck cares about a smart watch working with multiple platforms? Very few people change platforms so the fact that the Galaxy Watch Active works with iOS (poorly) and Android (slightly less poorly) is not a point in its favor to anyone besides a tech reviewer. Same with the Apple Watch; why is this even in the conversation if someone has an Android phone?

This article completely befuddles me.