Samsung wants the upcoming Galaxy Watch 9 to not only track your health, but also serve as your personal coach. It’s releasing a major Samsung Health app update on June 8 that will turn tracking data into “simple, actionable guidance” — effectively, it’s the company’s answer to the AI coaching in the Fitbit Air with Google Health Premium.
The redesigned app will center around a simpler layout with five key sections: Activity, Mindfulness, Nutrition, Sleep, and Vitals. Each one will feature AI-driven insights, rather than simply handing you raw data or lumping everything under the general Energy Score.
Brand
Samsung
Operating System
Wear OS
Vitals, for instance, will compare your sleep data (heart rate patterns, breathing, blood oxygen, and skin temperature) against your baseline, and alert you only if it sees significant changes. Instead of tracking heart wellness through a Vascular Load metric, you’ll instead get a Heart Health Score that melds activity, sleep, and stress with body composition data. You should have a better sense of your overall well-being.
The coaching extends to workouts. A new Daily Cardio Load tracks the total strain and will suggest training goals and rest days to minimize the risk of burning out. You’ll also get a Fitness Index that shows the effectiveness of your exercise by comparing your data against peers. You’ll ideally know what you’re doing well and what needs to improve.
Samsung Health will also provide clearer trend insights into your nutritional choices through an Antioxidant Index, while the AGEs Index will now quietly gather overnight data to show how “lifestyle choices” are affecting you over time. Hearing Health, meanwhile, will use the Galaxy Watch to determine if loud ambient noises and music are hurting your ears.
The upgrades will first be available through the Galaxy Watch 9 family, but are expected to reach other devices too.
Samsung Health vs. Google Health Premium: Which is better?
Your tastes in advice and devices will matter most
If the Samsung Health upgrade reminds you of Google Health Premium, it should. While the features vary between services, they share the same underlying AI coaching concept: you’re getting advice, not just data.
Google’s service costs $10 per month ($100 per year), but is more explicitly built around creating fitness plans and asking questions. You can change your workout routine if you’re on a business trip, or ask if your heart rate variability is healthy. Vitals, nutritional intake, and sleep quality are present as well, but you’ll theoretically never be in doubt as to what to do next.
Samsung Health is free apart from the cost of a watch, but it puts more of an emphasis on insights than action. You can get workout recommendations and drill down into specifics, but you won’t have a plan ready and waiting. Your AI coach also won’t be on call like it is with Google Health Premium.
Some nifty features are locked behind a phone requirement.
There’s also the question of device choices. Google Health Premium launched with the Fitbit Air, but it isn’t tied to that one device or even to Android. Samsung’s revamp needs a Galaxy Watch, and the company reserves its best smartwatch features for Galaxy phones. What you save by skipping a membership, you might lose by locking yourself into an ecosystem.
That’s no issue if you already prefer Samsung devices, though, and it might be worthwhile if you’re willing to give up some choice in devices to avoid yet another subscription fee. Moreover, Google Health Premium might be unnecessary if you’re already diligent about monitoring your health — why pay AI to tell you what you already know?
The perfect robot mower for you is not nearly as fancy and feature-heavy as you may think. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s not the lawn mower, it’s all about the yard. A robot mower may be a market leader with top-of-the-line specs and still not be a good fit for your yard.
Here’s the great news: There’s a perfect robot mower for almost any yard. As someone who’s tested numerous types of robot lawn mowers, I’ve learned that many of the specs that brands market as groundbreaking are simply not vital for most shoppers. A mostly flat, fenced-in 0.10-acre yard doesn’t need the power that a hilly, sectioned, unfenced one-acre yard does.
A LiDAR, GPS, or wired boundary robot mower works for these yards. If you choose a wired boundary, you may have to bury wire around the flower beds, unless the borders are tall enough for the mower to avoid.
1. Don’t focus on: ‘AI-powered’ or other marketing buzzwords
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Artificial intelligence (AI) has surpassed the popularity of acid-wash jeans in the 80s and Baby G watches in the early 2000s. And tech companies — including robot lawn mower manufacturers — are capitalizing on its appeal.
Most of these “AI-powered” or “intelligent mowing” terms are vague, geared to grab shoppers’ attention with buzzwords. That doesn’t mean that the robots don’t use AI to navigate, however.
The key is to find out how the robot uses AI to its benefit, and whether that will meet your AI expectations.
AI algorithms typically process data captured by the robot’s hardware to help it make quick decisions and adjustments. For example, a robot lawn mower may have a set of sensors and cameras to capture its surroundings. The robot’s processor then uses AI to convert that information into actionable data, so it knows whether to swerve to avoid an obstacle or slow down around a retaining wall.
Instead, look for: The navigation tech under (and on) the hood
Instead of AI and other buzzwords, you should focus on matching the robot lawn mower’s hardware and navigation system to your yard. This includes whether the robot uses RTK (Real-Time Kinematic) for positioning, and whether it features LiDAR, cameras, and sensors.
Then look at real user reviews to assess how accurately the robot mower maps and how well it performs around various types of obstacles.
There’s no blanket rule for robot mowers, but most do well with the following guidelines.
2. Don’t focus on: Premium extras
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Skip the premium extras that don’t match your yard. You really don’t need the most advanced robot mower; you need the one that will best handle your lawn.
Most US homeowners have mostly flat lawns, simple rectangular layouts, minimal obstacles, and small yards. Yet some of the most popular mowers advertise features that don’t match this, and you don’t want to spend an extra few hundred dollars on advanced features that won’t deliver a noticeable difference in your yard.
Instead, look for: Only as much as you need
Do you have a mostly flat lawn with no fences and need a robot that can navigate to several sections separated by paths? Then you can skip AWD models and commit to superior mapping and navigation features, like multi-zone intelligence.
Similarly, if you have a yard with dense trees covering most of it, it’s safe to skip the RTK models and go for LiDAR or boundary wire options instead.
3. Don’t focus on: Flashy app features
The path lines created by the Mammotion Luba 2, as captured by our Bink Outdoor camera, is one flashy app feature I can’t quit.
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
Any dependable robot lawn mower requires an equally reliable mobile app to let you use it effectively. However, manufacturers market many flashy app features that end up being unnecessary for many users.
Don’t make app features the deciding factor unless it’s something you genuinely care about. Many users don’t rely on voice control to run their mowers and don’t mind using a separate app for their robot rather than integrating it into an existing home automation system.
A robot lawn mower with mediocre navigation and cutting performance can still have a flashy app — all while leaving behind missed patches or taking longer to finish mowing.
Instead, look for: The features you’ll actually use
Most robot mower users keep them running on a schedule to get the lawn-cutting chore off their minds. The majority of the most popular models offer basic features beyond scheduling, such as remote start and stop, basic mapping, automatic rain delay, and theft protection.
It’s easy to find robot lawn mowers with these features, but if you’re looking for anything beyond that, just be sure that the feature is worth it, especially if you’re paying extra for that model.
An example of a flashy app feature that is completely unnecessary, but I love having? The Mammotion’s pattern cutting. I can select the cutting pattern I want on the Mammotion app, whether I want lines or checkered, but I can also have the robot cut in custom patterns, like letters and numbers. I don’t care for mowed letters in my yard, but I like that it always has that freshly mowed checkered patterned with no effort from me.
4. Don’t focus on: Cutting system extras
Maria Diaz/ZDNET
The cutting width and system specs are important, as they can determine whether a robot can cover a given area in a day. However, most robot mowers use similar multiple-blade mulching systems.
Unlike traditional lawn mowers with large blades for aggressive cutting in a single pass, robot mowers typically feature a set of small blades that constantly spin. Because of this, robot mowers trim smaller amounts of grass with each pass than a traditional mower, but they also cut more frequently and leave behind smaller grass clippings that decompose naturally.
Because the robot mowers have a smaller, compounding cutting system, the real-world differences between the cutting systems from one brand to another are often smaller than you’d expect. Other issues, like poor navigation, will be glaringly obvious before small differences in blade design.
Instead, look for: Cutting width and yard size
The average US yard would benefit more from navigation quality, consistency, and connectivity than blade design. Instead, you should focus on matching the mower to your yard size.
The robot’s capacity is measured in how many acres it can cover in a day. Among other features, this is calculated based on your robot’s battery size and cutting width. Essentially, most users want a robot that can mow an entire yard in a day, so you can set it and forget it and always come home to a mowed yard. You get this by getting the appropriate robot for your yard size.
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