When comparing Samsung Gear S3 vs Fitbit Versa, the Slant community recommends Fitbit Versa for most people. In the question“What are the best smartwatches for Android phones?” Fitbit Versa is ranked 3rd while Samsung Gear S3 is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Fitbit Versa is:
Since the Fitbit Versa is light, flat and waterproof, it’s comfortable to wear all the time – while sleeping, showering, working out or in your everyday life. The LCD screen is made of guerilla glass, which ensures scratch protection and durability for active use. The Fitbit Versa has a clear and bright display, making it easily visible both underwater and in direct sunlight. Even though the watch’s UI is already designed to give users easy access to everything, the three buttons on the watch can be customizable for shortcuts and commands. The visual design might not suit everyone, and it might seem cheap and childish to some, but customizability and comfort outweigh this con. The app store offers many watch faces, so you can find whichever suits you best.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Unique and comfortable interface browsing
The Samsung Gear S3 has an original and easy-to-use rotating bezel around the face of the watch that is used for cycling through screens, apps, menus and seeing new notifications. The timepiece has two buttons on the right side, the upper one being the “Back” button and the lower one being the “Home” button, which can be pressed multiple times to do different things. All of this combined with a touchscreen makes browsing an effortless experience.
Pro Provides an immense amount of features
Some built-in highlights of the Samsung Gear S3 include a SOS command, health and fitness tracking (heart rate, daily steps, sleep tracking, distance data via GPS), weather reports, a calendar for scheduling, a music player (the device offers 4 GB of internal storage, so songs can be put straight on the smartwatch), a news reader and an optional LTE connection for making calls and sending messages (though this requires a monthly sum of 10$ and users have reported the loudspeaker not being loud enough, crackling and not dealing too great with higher pitches), all offering the possibility of using the watch as a standalone machine to your smartphone.
Tizen Wearable also offers over 10,000 (and growing) apps, many of which can effortlessly be installed on the watch without any communication to a phone. The Gear S3 is compatible with a lot of popular third-party apps, such as Spotify, Uber, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Gmail and more. Another popular highlight is Samsung Pay, letting the user pay at credit card terminals with literally only a flick of the wrist by adding their credit and debit card information to the timepiece.
Pro Well-built
The Samsung Gear S3 is a powerful-looking watch with the appearance of a real wristwatch. Since it is IP68-certified and has passed military specification (MIL-STD-810G), providing protection against water (check specifications for more), dust, drops from 4.9 feet, extreme temperatures, shock/vibration, low pressure/high altitude, it lives up to the visual impression.
In terms of aesthetics, Samsung Gear S3 is compatible with standard 22mm bands which can be exchanged to better suit casual, formal or fitness attire. The timepiece also comes with 15 preloaded watch face designs and offers many more at the Gear App Store, adding to the already big scope of customizability.
The display itself is also proportionally big, the 1.3” AMOLED screen is covered by Gorilla Glass SR+ and is colorful, bright and easily visible from any angle.
Regarding battery life, the Samsung Gear S3 can last up to 4 days and can be charged fully in approximately two hours.
Pro Provides a great blend of design, quality and comfort
Since the Fitbit Versa is light, flat and waterproof, it’s comfortable to wear all the time – while sleeping, showering, working out or in your everyday life. The LCD screen is made of guerilla glass, which ensures scratch protection and durability for active use. The Fitbit Versa has a clear and bright display, making it easily visible both underwater and in direct sunlight.
Even though the watch’s UI is already designed to give users easy access to everything, the three buttons on the watch can be customizable for shortcuts and commands.
The visual design might not suit everyone, and it might seem cheap and childish to some, but customizability and comfort outweigh this con. The app store offers many watch faces, so you can find whichever suits you best.
Pro Tracks a comprehensive amount of health and fitness data
Fitbit Versa offers all-day heart rate tracking, reminders to move, guided breathing sessions, 15+ exercise modes, sleep tracking, female health tracking and subscription-based on-screen workout sessions, all of which is traced and displayed on the Fitbit app. Although the watch does not have built-in GPS tracking, it can easily be connected to your smartphone in a 30 ft range for accurate tracking of speed and distance.
Pro Long-lasting battery life
The battery life of the Fitbit Versa varies between 3 and 6 days depending on use and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth settings. This also means that you usually don’t have to worry about charging your watch at night and you can properly use the “Sleep tracking & stages” feature. Regarding the charging itself, it takes only two hours to get from 0% to a fully charged battery.
Cons
Con Massive
Since there is no smaller, more compact design of the timepiece, it simply won’t comfortably fit everyone, for the watch might look to big for people with smaller wrists, particularly women.
Con Pricey
Coming at a retail price of 349$ and potentially 10$ per month for LTE, there might not be enough features to justify the price.
Con Setting up music is a hassle
The watch offers 300+ song internal storage, but transferring songs takes a long while and it's different for everyone. On this forum post a user has said that it took 7 hours to upload ~5.5 hours of music on their Fitbit, but another has reported that it took 9 hours to sync 9 hours of audio. There are many posts on the official Fitbit community forum referring to this problem.
In terms of streaming, the app store only offers Pandora and Deezer as of now.
Con Relatively small app library
Since Fitbit is a relatively new arrival in the smartwatch scene and has a smaller community, its app store offers only a fraction of what other competitors can provide in the third-party app and integration field.
The app store itself is not perfect – some apps and watch faces offer trial versions and need payment for full-time use, which is not always disclosed at first.