Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 (Open Box)

Among the few good things about this watch is that I got my repaired watch back from Samsung with no issues (took about ten days) and the sensor cover has stayed put ever since. I think the fact that I had the sensor cover and sent it in with my watch kept Samsung from claiming it was water damaged. Others who didn't realize theirs was missing until it was too late seem to have had different experiences. The battery life is still really good. I take the stairs at work and it seems to track the flights climbed pretty accurately. It makes me aware of my general activity level and keeps me from sitting too much. The bad: The Spotify app is still pretty bad even after app updates. It's very finicky to pair and sync offline playlists. Supposedly it should automatically sync my downloaded playlist over wifi, but it has never done that, not once. There are no official instructions anywhere to help you figure out how to set up Spotify to play offline. The app will not ever remember to repeat my playlist - it remembers to shuffle, but I have to go in and tap the 'repeat' symbol every. single. time. The inactivity reminder still doesn't register activity unless I get up and sprint or do burpees or something - I can't just get up and stretch and move around. That's not enough to clear the reminder. The worst thing about this watch by far is how inaccurate the calorie/workout tracking is. Here's an example: as an experiment I did a workout today that was strictly core and stability exercises and using my foam roller. I did it for exactly the same length of time as a workout I did last week that was HIIT (high intensity interval). I used the 'circuit training' workout for both. Today's workout: 109 average heart rate and 245 calories burned. The other workout: 135 average heart rate, 238 calories burned. So, not accurate at all. You're better off putting your stats and average heart rate into a calculator on the internet and getting your calorie burn there. Another super annoying thing about the workout functions is that by default, there is a 'workout coach' turned on for each. After thirty minutes of a workout, a robotic female voice comes on and slowly recites all your stats to you. If you are listening to Spotify offline from your watch, your music stops while this happens. With a recent update you CANNOT TURN OFF THE WORKOUT COACH for the running function. The 'workaround' is to use the walking function instead. Who thought that TAKING AWAY YOUR CHOICE to use the workout coach was a good idea?? In short, I still would not recommend this watch. Prior edited review: After three months of use, the sensor cover (underside of the watch) came off. The Samsung forums are full of similar complaints that the cover came off and that Samsung will weasel out of the warranty by claiming that your watch has water damage and therefore voids the warranty. I've never bought the replacement warranty that Amazon offers whenever I buy something electronic, but you might want to consider doing that if you have your heart set on this watch. original review: I bought this to replace my ancient Garmin Forerunner and iPod shuffle. I wanted a GPS watch that would also play a Spotify playlist without my phone nearby. I did a lot of research and ultimately decided on this watch, since I have an Android phone. The phone was easy enough to set up - when paired with my phone, it transferred all my data. It looks cool. It offers other nice features that I like, such as sleep tracking, step counting, and reminders to get up and move after an hour. There are a bunch of features that I will probably never use, like making phone calls or getting notifications. The research I did on the phone liked to talk about the flashy stuff like live watch faces and the rotating bezel. But I dont care about that stuff either. Live watch faces are a battery drain, and swiping the screens is easier than rotating the watch bezel. So that stuff doesn't matter to me and I certainly wouldn't have bought it just for those things. One of the biggest problems with this watch is the dearth of how-tos for all the features on this phone. To further confuse things, some features you tweak direclty on the watch and some through the Galaxy Wearables app but it takes a lot of trial and error to figure it out. The Samsung website doesn't even have a user's manual for this watch. I finally found one on another website but it only has the basics and did not answer any of the myriad questions I had about all the features. And the handy inactivity reminder - why can't I dismiss it when I've gotten up and moved? Why do I have to do the five stretches the watch tells me to do, but half the time it can't detect that I've actually done them? Why can't I just get up, move around, then tap 'dismiss'? The only other option is to turn the reminders off completely. I'm not a hardcore runner, and the running and workout tracking functions work fine for me. And the Spotify offline function, the main reason I chose this watch. It's terrible. YouTube, Samsung and Spotify forums are full of people pulling their hair out, as I am, about the uselessness of the Spotify app. You may as well sprinkle fairy dust over the watch to get an offline playlist to download, for all the good any instructions are. There is no way to force the phone to sync with your Spotify playlist, so if you, say, reorder your playlists on your phone to move your workout playlist to the top for easy access, or if you add or remove songs from an offline playlist, it is completely random as to whether the phone app will sync and receive those changes. I rearranged my playlists and added songs to my workout playlist three days ago. I have confirmed repeatedly that my watch is connected to Wifi and Bluetooth, yet if I toggle the playlist's "download" switch in hopes of forcing a download, my watch tells me to go online! If you DO somehow get a playlist to download, don't be surprised if, when you go to play it, your watch tells you that there is no downloaded music. Neither Samsung nor Spotify offer any guidance whatsoever and you're left trying the fixes offered by the other frustrated users. Turn bluetooth off. No, turn it on. Delete the Spotify app, then reinstall. Download songs one at a time. It's ridiculous and way too much work. I wish I had bought the latest Fitbit instead, which I passed on because it didn't have offline music capabilities.