My wife and I just came back from a wonderful trip to Whistler BC Canada where we stayed 5 nights, then we traveled a few hours to Birch Bay Washington US for 3 more nights.
We stayed in our WorldMark Timeshare which is always very enjoyable and invited up some good friends and relatives to come and join us for part of each trip. It was a lot of fun being able to spend some of our vacation time with good people!
It was a vacation first and foremost but I like to document my trips al least to some degree with video. So I am able to share parts of the vacation with everyone using my Meta Glasses, HoverAir X1 Selfie Drone, Insta360 X4 and GO2 cameras and even a drone shot of me playing around flying my mini Pavo Pico FPV Drone around the hotel in Whistler.
I hope you enjoy the video of our various walks, outings and just simpel hotel lounging around. If you are thinking of going for a vacation in Whistler or Birch Bay, this video may give you a bit of an idea of what you can expect.
I have been rocking my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra now for almost 2 years and before that I had several Samsung Galaxy Phones along with several version of Samsung Galaxy Watches. I even have a pair of their Pro Earbuds so I guess you could say I might just be a Samsung fanboy. I use ot own Apple iPhones and I still have several Apple products in my home including my MacBook Air which is my main computer. The rest of my family also has Apple iPhone and to be honest Android and Apple really do integrate better than you might think, you just need to use Google cloud services on all your devices which makes sharing information super easy. The only real thing I am missing is FaceTime but again there are other services that work similar and are cross platform.
I generally update my phone every 2 years or so as in most cases I have found that a single update to a phone model, at least for me does not offer enough of an upgrade to entice me into buying the new version. The new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra does offer a lot of new features so it was time for an upgrade.
This is really just an unboxing video, so if you want all the details and goods on the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, then there are a ton of videos on YouTube you can checkout comparing it to older versions and also to the iPhone Pro.
For me this upgrade was important since I use my phone a ton and my older S22 Ultra battery was starting to go a bit flat, the new Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra has some significant photo and video upgrades, not so much with the lenses and sensors, but with how it processes images and video utilizing AI for editing and to make the images even better looking. There are also a bunch of other AI features incorporated into the S22 Ultra for language translation and to assist in finding information about something simply by circling it with your finger and completing a search.
In this Video I talk about some of the reasons why I stuck with my Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and why I am now upgrading to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro. I also do a bit of an unboxing of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro and talk a bit about the differences between the 4 and 5 Pro and why these differences are important to me.
I do plan on making a follow review of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro after using it for a couple of weeks, so far I can tell you the experience on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro is much like my experience on the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 which is a good thing! And I am happy to say I can see some slight improvements but want to use it for a little bit longer to figure out what is the same, better or worse.
This is far from a review, more of an update on my plans to test out the new Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 to see if perhaps this is the best solution for my needs?
I just recently switched from my Garmin Fenix 5X to a TicWatch Pro GPS. Now the Garmin Fenix 5X was a fantastic fitness Watch but lacked in the SmartWatch category. On the other hand the TicWatch Pro 3 GPS is a really great OS Wear SmartWatch and the Fitness integration is there but is cumbersome and not as refined as what you get on a dedicated Fitness Watch like what Garmin offers.
So here we are with the new Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 running a new version of Wear OS 3. I have used Samsung Galaxy Watches in the past and liked them a lot even the Samsung App which runs on your SmartPhone and watch is a very full featured App. So I am hoping maybe this solution will get me not only an awesome SmartWatch experience but also solid Fitness tracking capabilities.
Right now I am in the testing stage so the jury is not out yet but so far things are look positive overall with a few hiccups that may or may not be an issue! Stay posted for my more in depth review of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and if it is up to the task at least for my requirements...
I've been rocking my Samsung Galaxy S3 Fitness Smartwatch for a few years now and it has been a bit of a love hate relationship. I really like the watch, I love the way it looks and feels, it has all the latest Smartwatch features I could want including an awesome screen, lots of downloadable Apps and even the ability to answer and take calls right on the watch via BT.
The problem I have right out of the box with the Samsung Galaxy S3 is there is no way to link an external Bluetooth heart rate strap to it in the settings so none of the installed Apps can us an external heart rate monitor, only the built in optical heart rate monitor can be used with the Samsung Galaxy S3. For some people that may be fine but for me I find built in optical heart rate monitors are very unreliable and inaccurate. Sometimes I don't even get a heart rate reading from the watch.
I did find a work around that required me to use a watch face called Sporty Watch that was able to connect to external BT heart rate monitors and then record a workout and send that data to Strata where I could then sync my data with MyFitnessPal but this is a bit of a clumsy way to manage your fitness. For simple walks and other basic activity where I did not use an external heart rate monitor I would use the built in Samsung Fitness Apps with hit and miss results.
What I am saying is I could get my Samsung Galaxy S3 to work for me but there was a certain amount of work on my end to make that happen and this should really just be seamless and it's not. It can be very frustrating at times.
The last straw was this past weekend when I wanted to record a bike ride and some walks only to have Apps crash constantly and lose my data and Strava decided when it did finally record a bike ride that it was not going to sycn the data anywhere...
That brings us to my decision to drop my Samsung Galaxy S3 and go with another option. I have always liked what Garmin is doing in terms of their Fitness Watches. Their focus is fitness first and being a Smartwatch second. Garmin is big into the outdoors but does support other indoor activities. Garmin also links with a ton of external Bluetooth and Ant+ sensors out of the box and what I really love about Garmin is the software. It has to be the smartest health tracking software out there mainly because it records your heart rate constantly and uses that data to figure out when you are active or not, this seems simple right but it is not a common practice with health Apps, most health Apps simply base your activity on steps which can be misleading because not all daily activity is step based and so if you're performing something that gets your heart rate up that doesn't involve a lot of steps you are missing out on those potential calories you burned.
So which Garmin Watch did I get? I decided on the Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire since it was about half the price of Garmin's current 6 series lineup and for me it has all of the feature I need in a Fitness Smartwatch. I even got mine on sale $100 off for only $399 which is about $600 less than a similar 6 series watch from Garmin.
Once I have had some time to fully explore the Garmin Fenix 5X Sapphire I will follow up with a review with my take on it.
Friday, August 16, 2024 at 11:49AM ;)
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