What to know

  • Samsung has released a new budget smartwatch – Galaxy Watch FE.
  • The two versions of the Galaxy Watch FE are available at $199 and $249, the price at which more premium Samsung smartwatches were earlier sold. 
  • Samsung Galaxy Watch FE has mostly the same features as the flagship models with only a few of them sacrificed to bring the price down.

Samsung just launched a new smartwatch – the Galaxy Watch FE, an entry level product that offers similar features to its flagship models but at a more affordable price. This is Samsung’s third smartwatch, which brings it more in line with Apple’s own smartwatch lineup which also have three different models. Here’s a quick look at what features you get on the Galaxy Watch FE for the price.

Galaxy Watch FE: A new entry level smartwatch 

The Galaxy Watch FE is priced at $199 (for Bluetooth-only version) and $249 (for the LTE version), which is what Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatches were priced at earlier. As expected, in order to bring down the price to more affordable levels, Samsung has foregone a few fancy features. 

Galaxy Watch FE only comes in single size – 40mm with 1.2-inch OLED display, which is slightly smaller. The watch has 1.5GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, which is welcome, along with only a year-old Exynos W920 chip. There’s also a smaller 247mAh battery.

There is no temperature sensor on Galaxy Watch FE. But otherwise, all the sensors are the same as last year. Apart from the few changes made to bring down the price, most of the features are similar to the other Galaxy smartwatches. This means the FE model has the same one-click strap mechanism, a sapphire crystal lens, IP68 rating, NFC payments, and built-in GPS. 

The operating system on the Galaxy Watch FE is the same as the more premium models, that is, the OneUI Watch 5 and Wear OS 4. 

With new Samsung Galaxy smartwatches slated to be launched next month, possibly at even higher prices, the budget Galaxy Watch FE provides some relief for those who don’t have deep pockets. The Bluetooth version of the smartwatch will go on sale starting June 24th, while the LTE version will arrive a few months later.