Everybody loves a deal. That’s the whole point of budget devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch FE: it may lack the flagship watch’s flashy features and premium hardware, but you save a good chunk of cash in exchange. It’s a fair, sensible tradeoff — but only when companies strike the right balance between price and features.
And with the $199.99 Galaxy Watch FE, Samsung is way off the mark.
Design: A Familiar Face
Design-wise, the Watch FE is a lot like the brand-new Galaxy Watch 7, which sells for $299.99. They look nearly identical! They share most of the same software features, like activity tracking, notifications, and advanced health features like EKGs and body composition analysis. Most of the things you can do on the Watch 7, you can do on the Watch FE.
A Rebadged Galaxy Watch 4
Under the hood, however, the Watch FE is really just a rebadged Galaxy Watch 4, which launched in 2021. The FE comes in only the smaller 40mm size, uses Samsung’s last-gen smartwatch processor, lacks a skin temperature sensor, and sports a slightly smaller battery. The only upgrade over the Watch 4 is a more durable sapphire crystal lens and the newer one-click strap mechanism.
Performance: Laggy and Not Great
Because it’s essentially a Galaxy Watch 4, it performs like one, too. Swiping through screens is consistently laggy, which doesn’t instill confidence that the FE will smoothly handle future versions of Wear OS. I might’ve written off a jittery, slow screen if I were buying a refurbished Watch 4. But this is marketed as a new watch, and paying $200 (or $250 if you want LTE) for laggy performance feels wrong.
Battery Life: A Shortcoming
Compared to the Galaxy Watch 4, you do get sapphire crystal and the newer one-click strap mechanism. Battery life isn’t quite as good as the Watch 7, either. I got it to last 24 hours, but that was with the always-on display disabled and ample use of the power-saving mode. You can probably get more mileage if you tweak settings, but with normal usage (sans low-power mode), I got around 18–20 hours. This is most definitely a watch that requires daily charging.
Samsung’s Branding Strategy: Cloning Apple
The Watch FE feels like Samsung getting its branding ducks in a row to mirror Apple. If you look at the lineups now, there’s a one-to-one analog of Galaxy Watch to Apple Watch. The FE is less egregious of a clone than the Galaxy Watch Ultra, but I just don’t think Samsung nailed the right mix of features, hardware, and price.
A Better Value: Last Year’s Galaxy Watch 6
With the Apple Watch SE, you lose the always-on display and some advanced health features like EKGs, while still getting good performance and a larger $150 discount. Apple bet on the same performance and fewer features, whereas Samsung bet on more features with worse performance. The former works. The latter doesn’t.
How to Get it Right: A Few Tweaks
Samsung wouldn’t have to tweak much to get the mix right. Knock the price down to $180, offer the same battery as the Watch 7, and focus on the core features that make a smartwatch great. But until then, the Galaxy Watch FE feels like overpaying for a ‘new’ Galaxy Watch 4.
Agreeing to Terms: A Necessary Evil
Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit ‘agree’ to use devices when we review them, since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.
Using the Galaxy Watch FE: A Series of Agreements
To use the Galaxy Watch FE, you must pair it with an Android phone. That includes whatever terms of service or privacy policies that phone requires. As for Samsung and Wear OS, you’ll have five mandatory agreements:
- Samsung Terms and Conditions: The standard contract for using a Samsung device.
- **Samsung Privacy