It's beautiful, packed with features and uses a brilliant innovation: the rotating frame for navigation. The Galaxy Watch3 is unquestionably the queen of Android smartwatches. Well, the queen is expensive, it works much better with Samsung devices and some functions could use a tune-up.

We love

Very round, 11.1 mm thick, the Galaxy Watch3 weighs only 53.8 grams. It comes in three tones with lovely leather straps. It no longer has anything to do with its sturdy and not very discreet predecessors and is easily confused with a classic watch.

But don't be fooled by appearances: it's a whole microcomputer that has been packed into such a small space. WiFi and Bluetooth, gyroscope, barometer, accelerometer, light and heart rate sensor, GPS, this paraphernalia allows it to be independent of a telephone. Its 1.15 GHz processor uses 1 GB of RAM and has 8 GB of storage.

In short, it's top of the range. There are hardly any functions that can be found elsewhere that the Watch3 does not offer. It displays relevant information, including speed, duration and calories burned, for 40 physical exercises and automatically detects 8.

Your heart rate and the number of steps are constantly counted, it detects your falls, the quality of your sleep and offers 120 training programs. In these pandemic times, it even measures the oxygen level in the blood, a probable indicator of a COVID-19 infection.

Weather, texts, emails, stopwatch or timer, calendar, music stored on the watch or with Spotify, phone calls on the wrist, dictation of messages by voice recognition: everything is offered. For the appearance of the clocks, there are 80,000 choices, some very classic with a beautiful old design, others more digital with more information.

To navigate between all these functions, instead of the small rotary button on the side of Apple, we have a frame that goes all around the screen. This method of switching between apps or scrolling through emails or texts is unbeatable and much more precise than using your finger on the touchscreen.

Battery life is above average, with two good full days of use. It can be recharged with its small supplied base or by induction with a Samsung phone.

The Bluetooth connection is almost instantaneous with a Samsung phone when the watch is turned on for the first time. It is possible to create a connection with another Android phone by downloading the Galaxy Wearable app. The process is longer, but then you have all the functions.

We like less

At $529.99 for the 45mm model we tested, the Galaxy Watch3 is expensive. It actually joins the Apple Watch Series 6 to the nearest hundred, certainly not an affordability model either.

Navigation with the rotating bezel is efficient, but the classification of apps in the watch could use some cleaning. Beyond the most often used elements, it is difficult to find your way around in the sub-menus. For example, most of the interesting indicators are found in the Health app, in which you have to navigate to then find the oxygen level. This one is inconsistent: in less than five minutes, we obtained a worrying rate of 84%, then we went back to 96%.

The blood pressure feature is available in some countries, but unfortunately not in Canada.

Theoretically, a Galaxy Watch app for iPhone is available in the App Store. But we never managed to establish the connection with the watch, despite two attempts with two different iPhones.

Shall we buy?

Let's settle the case for iPhone owners: the Watch3 is not for you.

For others, this is the best Android smartwatch we've tested. Fast, with every feature imaginable – and we've only covered a few of them – it's impressive. To agree to pay so much, you obviously have to be part of this minority of users won over by the idea of ​​a smartwatch. Those, if they want the top of the basket, will be satisfied with the Galaxy Watch3.

Review: Galaxy Watch3Manufacturer: SamsungPrice: $479.99 (41mm) and $529.99 (45mm)Rating: 4.5 out of 5