I wasn’t going to go into the rabbit hole this morning. At least not this rabbit hole. I thought I was starting my day with a much narrower hole to demonstrate quickly and efficiently that the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro’s thickness specifications were pathetically incorrect and confusing. This particular scavenger hunt was initiated by Reddit this weekend after seeing my early Samsung Galaxy Watch5 Pro review and noticing that there was no way the 10.5mm thickness listed for this watch was accurate given the much sleeker / older the Galaxy Watch Active 2 has been replaced with 10.9 mm. It seemed impossible.
And it was true.
It wasn’t even close. The measured thickness of the Galaxy Watch5 Pro was ~ 15.2mm, about 50% thicker than the stated 10.5mm specification. And the weight? More than twice the specification. As you can see, Samsung does not include the weight of the band in its measurements (despite the lack of declared / mentioned reservations).
At this point in the morning, I figured I’d just take an Apple Watch and a Garmin watch and then illustrate that both of these companies know how to use a ruler. Except that this journey ended shortly after I measured both watches and they too were thicker than the spec, though not as much as the Samsung. Here you can see the Apple Watch Series 7 at 13.1mm (declared 10.7mm) and the Garmin Forerunner 255 Music at 14mm (declared 12.9). I assume my margin of error is around 0.1mm with this tool.
So down the list I went. First Watch5 40mm, then Watch5 44mm – both thicker than specs. Then I grabbed the Polar Pacer Pro (thicker than specs), Suunto 9 Peak (thicker than specs) and Garmin Enduro 2 (thicker than specs). And finally I got the Fitbit Sense and the Wahoo Rival.
Holy cow! Finally, I have two companies that know how to use the measurement tool. Both the Fitbit Sense and Wahoo RIVAL were exactly on spec (within my margin of error).
I suspect for various reasons. With Fitbit, they’ve always been fairly honest about spec-specific things. For example, battery life says Fitbit is always very conservative, and battery life is practically always in line with what they list (or better than the list). I may not agree with them on the accuracy, but when it comes to the basic specs, they are right. And in the case of the Wahoo, I suspect this is their first Wahoo brand watch, I suspect no one just told them to lie about the thickness measurements.
So I took the path further, trying to figure out what those exact specs contained, and it turns out they were replacing a part of the case excluding the optical HR sensor. If you measured everything except this, they all fit (except for Samsung, more on that in a second). So if we look at the Garmin Forerunner 255 Music its spec is 12.9mm and measures 12.93mm if I ignored the impact of the optical heart rate sensor. Same with the Apple Watch Series 7 (10.68mm measured versus 10.7mm).
On the one hand, I understand why a company might want to mention it this way. Theoretically, these 1-2mm bumps effectively “blend” into the skin / wrist when you wear it. So practical apparent depth is all but this. However, while I appreciate the creativity in this line of thought, let’s be clear: it’s not true. The more that none of these companies puts an asterisk or other such documented reservation there. Apple, Samsung, Garmin, and others have many reservations on their site regarding many other claims. But for that, they just ignore it (the same goes for the weight which is only under, not including the team). Moreover, it makes it impossible to make meaningful comparisons between different watches, as companies like Wahoo and Fitbit contain everything – a sensor bump (no matter how small) and everything. Philosophically I do not oppose the inclusion of this measurement, but it has to be reserved somewhere as far as it is not about the entire thickness of the device – just like any other caveat. After all, there are people who actually * WANT * a thicker watch.
However, we have to go back to Samsung for a moment. Because it wasn’t just a 1-2mm bulge. It was a 5mm difference between specification and reality – 50% increase in the stated thickness of the product. What the hell is Samsung measuring?
It turns out they just measure the sidewall of the watch, that’s all. This ignores the entire back cover as well as the sensor bulge. Their rear housing is a rounded hump that rises 3mm before the sensor bump rises another 2mm.
Remember that this has changed with the way Samsung has measured watches in the past years that previously covered everything. And then Samsung took the apparent approval of the gentleman that it does not measure the protrusion of the sensor and then does not measure any part of the back of the case. The good news is that Samsung at least agrees with the measurement inaccuracy, based on their battery claims – my tests show they are significantly short there as well.
But more on that later, thanks for reading!