Introduction and specifications
Samsung took a bold step last year by ditching its Tizen OS for watches and moving to Google’s Wear OS with its One UI skin on top. The gamble was big, but it looks like it’s paying off because the appetite for Galaxy smartwatches has remained constant. And you get significantly better integration with your Android smartphone.
This year, the company made another bold move: by removing the rotating bezel from the Classic model and renaming it Pro. Now, the lineup consists of Galaxy Watch5 and Watc5 Pro. There’s still virtual bezel control, but the physical one will be missing.
| Galaxy Watch5 Pro | Galaxy Watch5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Body | Titanium body, 45 mm diameter | Aluminum body, 40mm or 44mm diameter |
| To build | Sapphire crystal front glass, MIL-STD-810H compliant, water resistant to 50m (IP68), 20mm straps | |
| Screen | 1.40 “Super AMOLED, 450x450px resolution, 9: 9 format, 321ppi | |
| Chipset | Exynos W920 (5 nm): Dual-core 1.18 GHz Cortex-A55; Mali-G68. | |
| Memory | 16 GB 1.5 GB RAM | |
| Sensors | ECG certified, sphygmomanometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, heart rate, barometer | |
| Operating system / software | Android Wear OS 3.5, One UI Watch 4.5 | |
| Battery | 590 mAh | 410mAh for the 44mm model and 284mAh for the 40mm model |
| Various | Qi 10W wireless charging, NFC, Samsung Pay, speaker and microphone for calls, virtual rotating bezel | |
As for the hardware, there are a few changes taking place, but they are more than welcome. The Pro model has nearly double the battery capacity than its direct predecessor, now 590mAh. The vanilla Watch5 also gets a bigger battery, but the upgrade is relatively modest – 410mAh from 361mAh – at least as far as 44mm is concerned.
Another noteworthy update is that the new Watch5 series has a sapphire crystal that protects the display, and the Watch5 Pro goes a step further with a titanium body.
As for the rest of the hardware, it’s pretty much identical as all four watches run on the same Exynos W920 platform, use the same 1.4-inch Super AMOLED display with 450 x 450px resolution, and have the same set of sensors. This includes the ECG monitor and also the blood pressure monitor. The Watch5 Pro also has a body temperature sensor as a bonus, which could come in handy these days.
While small, these changes can affect the user experience a bit, so we dive deeper into the features of the Galaxy Watch5 and Watch5 Pro on the following pages.
Unboxing the Galaxy Watch5 and Watch5 Pro
We have both the Galaxy Watch5 and the Watch5 Pro. The former is available in the 40mm variant, while the latter is only available in the 45mm option. This means that the Watch5 Pro arrived in a slightly larger box than the Watch5, but the contents were virtually identical.
Unboxing of Galaxy Watch5 Pro and Watch5
Both watches have the usual set of user manuals along with a magnetic wireless charging cable. This time around, however, the cable ends with a USB-C connector instead of USB-A, and that’s a welcome change, as more and more charging bricks work with USB-C cables. Samsung’s top-tier Galaxy phones have been using USB-C PD connectors for a while, so it makes sense.
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