Wanted to pick up a Google Wear OS watch to see how it compared to my Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2. When Citizen came out with the CZ Smart watch I had to try it as I already had a Echo Drive watch from years ago and wore it up to where I started using smart watches.
Unboxing and first impressions:
The CZ came in nicely boxed and cradled in a high density foam insert. Inside is the Watch, bands, charging cable, quick start guide, and manual, “a power adapter is was not included”. The bands aren’t are just loose in the box but they are very simple to attach, you just take and insert one end of the spring bar into the hole on the frame and then press the lever on the underside of the band to retract the pin, align it with the hole and release. Just give it a tug to make sure the band is attached “it popped off my first try”, but it’s pretty much the same as my Active2.
The watch itself if pretty substantial and feels very well built. It does weigh more than my Active2, and the dial is a good bit bigger than the 40mm size of the Active2. Weight wise the Active2 comes in at 47.6 g and the CZ is 77.6, that’s a 30g difference. I have to say though, I’ve been wearing the CZ for a few days now and the weight really isn’t that noticeable.
There are three buttons on the right side of the watch with the Middle “Crown” button that pushing that in brings up the apps list, or returning back to the main screen, it also rotates so you can scroll through items, “really liking that feature”. The two other top/bottom buttons are configurable and is a big welcome. There’s a microphone slit on the left side and back on the right side almost unnoticeable on one of the crown ears is a microphone hole. The bottom side has three small windows for sensors.
The CZ comes with 8gb of memory compared to the 1.4gb for the Active2, that’s a pretty big jump there.
The display is 1.28” compared to 1.2” for the Active2, they are both bright and very clear, but that little bit extra size does seem to make a difference to me. The watch also has a barometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, and hear rate monitor. It doesn’t have the ECG sensor of the Active2 but honestly I never used it after trying it out a few times.
Setting up and first use:
To start the setup you just plug the charging cable in your phone charging adapter, attach the phone “the charger is held on magnetically”, “this charging adapter uses pogo pins to charge so I’m hoping this holds up compared to the Samsung wireless Qi charging. As soon as the watch started to get power the startup screen came up and I went through the setup “including installing Google Fit”. There was also an update to the watch so I had to wait for that to finish downloading and installing.
Next I went to work getting the watch set up to my liking and initially I was pretty disappointed that there were only 5 watch faces available, even when checking the download option, just those 5 were available. While I did find that the included faces could be somewhat customized I really wanted more, especially for what this watch costs, “the Active2 has 100s of watch faces available for download, some paid and some free. What I did find is there’s an app in the Google Play Store called “Watchmaker” and they have a lot of faces available there that work perfectly with this CZ. I ended up using the Watchmaker app and making a watch face I wanted, so now I’m really getting to like this watch, especially designing my own watch face. I never bothered with the Samsung since they had so many available.
I have paired this with my Pixel 5 phone and S21 it connected flawlessly with either one. I’m able to answer calls and they are clearer / louder than the Active 2 which is a big plus. I’ve also had some problems getting email and message notifications on my S21 in a timely manner and sometimes are 10-15 minutes late “I like being prompt”, but with the Pixel 5 and the CZ the alerts come in the instant I get them.
Now for battery life, it’s not as good as the Active2 but I have it set on normal which according to the Citizen website is a 24hr mode and I am definitely getting that. The other power modes are supposed to extend the life a good bit but as long as it lasts just over a day I’m good with that as I can charge it while getting ready in the AM. I try to charge around the same time every day and it’s right around 20% when I put it on the charge, it takes about 40 minutes to get to 100%.
There are a couple irritating things I don’t get, like how the watch cannot sync DND “do not disturb” with my phone, the Active2 does this and it’s an extra step to remember when needing to silence everything. Also the “what looks like a movable bezel” isn’t moveable at all, it’s pretty much just decoration “and probably a good bit of protection too”.
I really am liking Wear OS, it’s quite a bit different from Tizen and I just read that Google and Samsung are merging the two creating one OS called “Wear”, hopefully that will merge the best of both systems. But accessing the play store on the CZ is simple and there are plenty of apps that I will use “most duplicating apps on my phone already” I also tried Google Maps on it and it was very accurate, equal to my phone when walking down to our mail cluster box and around the neighborhood. Was even surprised my weather radar app is on there, and it works perfectly “just small :) “.
The heartrate monitoring is on par with my Active2, close enough for me not to worry about accuracy. The step counter seems very sensitive and is higher than the Active2 but I don’t count my steps personally and have no idea which one is more accurate. I did notice the CZ picks up more arm movement and counts it towards steps over the Active2 but I really don’t count that much. When I’m using my seated elliptical the calorie and distance between the two are very close, again they aren’t so far apart that I’m concerned with accuracy.
Conclusion:
I’ve found that I really don’t notice the extra weight that much, and the size “while larger” is ok. I don’t have large wrists and didn’t want something that was overly large. The band is every bit as comfortable as the Active2, it also feels a heavier duty that the Active 2 “will see how it holds up over time”.
I’ve only been using this this new CZ Smart watch a few days and am getting used to the Wear OS and it’s growing on me. The CZ is doing everything my Active2 does “with a couple small exceptions”, it’s not perfect but I’m very impressed with it, and hopefully Citizen will upgrade the OS to the new “Wear”. Overall if you are looking for a new smart watch and want something that looks like a premium piece then this one is a good one to put at the top of your list.