The Galaxy Watch 6 is the smartwatch you should buy this Black Friday, but you need to buy it fast

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6

$150 $300 Save $150

The Galaxy Watch 6 is only getting better with age thanks to its recent upgrade to Wear OS 5, and it's a true bargain this Black Friday.

$150 at Best Buy

Black Friday is going full steam ahead, and there are an overwhelming number of deals. At times like this, we tend to focus on the latest and greatest gadgets, but for smartwatches, you should buy last year's Galaxy Watch 6 over the Watch 7 or Watch FE. It might not be the shiny new model, but it offers incredible value for its price.

You can get the Watch 6 40mm for $150 or the 44mm for $170 at Best Buy right now. If that sounds like as good a deal, you should get one right now. In the time I've spent writing this article, the Watch 6 went out of stock, came back, and sold out again at Amazon, leaving Best Buy as the last place you can get this incredible deal.

Related

Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 review: Bright but never bold

Call it boring, but it’s still the best Android smartwatch, hands down

Posts

The Watch 6 is unbeatable for $150

It should be the watch you pick this Black Friday

I've been using the Galaxy Watch 6 44mm for over a year now, and it's never disappointed me. It may have been replaced by the Watch 7, but unless you need 32GB of storage on a watch (you don't), there's no reason to opt for the newer model, when the Watch 6 is as cheap as it is right now.

The Galaxy Watch 6's display is almost identical to the Watch 7, reaching 2,000 nits in sunlight, making it easy to see outside. That screen is protected by sapphire crystal, and I can't overstate its durability. I usually use a screen protector on my watch, but I decided to forgo that with the Watch 6 to determine how well it would last. This watch has endured moving house, getting banged and scraped against furniture, and doesn't have a single mark.

Performance is solid, too. 2GB of RAM is plenty for a watch, and the Exynos W930 is a champ, unlike Samsung's mobile Exynos chips. I do quite a lot on my watch, from replying to messages to organizing my tasks in Tick Tick, and at no point has it ever struggled. Battery life has also been strong, lasting a total of 48 hours with AOD and sleep tracking on. The 40mm won't last quite that long, but it should still be competitive for its size.

The Galaxy Watch 6 also ticks all the boxes for health tracking. Aside from the usual step and heart rate tracking, it can measure skin temperature, blood oxygen, ECG, and blood pressure. The comprehensive health tracking Samsung watches are capable of quite possibly saved my life. My older Galaxy Watch 4 warned that my blood oxygen was getting dangerously low in my sleep. A hospital visit later, I was told I had one of the most extreme cases of Sleep Apnea my doctor has ever seen, and if I hadn't caught it as early as I did, things wouldn't have ended well.

Is there a reason not to get the Galaxy Watch 6?

It's a minor upgrade from its predecessor

Owning a functional Galaxy Watch 5 is the only reason to avoid upgrading to the Galaxy Watch 6. I upgraded from the Watch 4 because my battery deteriorated with age, but if you have a Galaxy Watch 5 and the battery still holds up, you can skip this deal.

But if you're choosing between the Watch 6 and 7, I see no reason to opt for the newer watch. One UI Watch 6, based on Wear OS 5, is now available for the Watch 6, bringing feature parity with the newer model. All Galaxy Watches are promised four generations of updates, so the Watch 6 will still be supported when the Galaxy Watch 10 is released, so software longevity isn't a reason to pick the Watch 7 either.

For $150 (or $170 for the 44mm), the Galaxy Watch 6 is the best smartwatch you can buy this Black Friday, and after using one for a year, I wholeheartedly recommend it; it's the best smartwatch I have ever used.