I’ve used a lot of Android phones over the years, and while I appreciate what Samsung brings to the table with its hardware, I’ve never really found myself sticking with their phones long-term. Yet, despite my distaste for their smartphones, there’s one Samsung product I’ve stuck with for a long time: Samsung Health.

You might think of Samsung Health as just another pre-installed app from the manufacturer to ignore. I’m usually not someone who goes out of my way to try these apps, but I was essentially forced to use Samsung Health when I got my first Galaxy Watch. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it, and I’ve continued to use it on all of my devices to this day. Unlike a lot of Samsung apps, you don’t need a Samsung phone to use this one. All Android users can install Samsung Health from the Google Play Store.

Health Tracking Galore

Let’s talk about the essentials: Samsung Health comes equipped with all the health-tracking capabilities you’d expect, and then some. It can meticulously track your steps, whether you’re wearing a smartwatch or just carrying your phone in your pocket. Beyond steps, it monitors your heart rate (with a compatible device), weight and BMI, calorie intake, water consumption, blood sugar, blood pressure, menstrual cycles, sleep patterns, and can remind you of medications. All this data is presented in clear, insightful graphs, making it easy to visualize your progress over time—be it your weight fluctuations, daily heart rate trends, or anything else.

Track Any Exercise You Can Imagine

Then there’s exercise tracking, which is what I’ve come to appreciate the most. Samsung Health is great at logging common activities like running, walking, biking, and swimming. But it goes deeper. For instance, running isn’t just “Running”—you can get a “Running Coach” for guided workouts and a “Treadmill” mode. Similarly, “Cycling” expands to “Mountain Biking” and “Exercise Bike.” If you’re a gym rat, you’ll find an abundance of specific activities like Circuit Training, Weight Machines, Arm Curls, Bench Press, and Deadlifts. It even tracks niche activities like “Hang Gliding.” Just as with health metrics, all your exercise data is presented with detailed charts and graphs, allowing you to track your gains monthly and yearly.

Many activities within Samsung Health offer an impressive depth of information, especially if you’re using a smartwatch. For a run or bike ride, you can see charts detailing your pace, elevation, cadence, and heart rate throughout the entire activity. You can even delve into which heart rate zones you hit during your workout. For runners, there’s also an “Advanced Running Metrics” section that provides fascinating insights into your form. While not every activity gets this level of detail, many do.

That’s what I miss the most whenever I try a different fitness app or a Pixel Watch with Fitbit. Strava is a great fitness app if you want a social network, but its best fitness tracking features are behind a paywall. Fitbit on the Pixel Watch has a nice interface, but the amount of information you get when tracking activities is far less than Samsung Health. Plus, it also has some of its better features behind a paywall. I’ve never been able to find a free health and fitness app with as much detailed workout information as Samsung Health.

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Friendly Information For Casuals

If you prefer a simpler overview, Samsung Health provides a user-friendly “Daily Activity” graph shaped like a heart. This visual tracker helps you keep tabs on your steps, active time, and calories burned. You can customize these metrics to fit your personal goals, so if 6,000 steps isn’t realistic for your daily routine, you can adjust it to a more achievable target. The app even integrates this little graph into a calendar, allowing you to quickly glance at your past activity and see how well you’ve filled those daily rings. It’s a straightforward way to gauge your daily activity.

Finally, for those who thrive on friendly rivalry, the “Together” tab is fun. You can set up challenges with friends, whether it’s a race to a certain number of steps or distance, competing individually or as teams. If your friends don’t use Samsung Health, you can join public challenges with other users. A leaderboard keeps track of everyone’s progress, and there are even achievements to unlock.

The lesson here is don’t dismiss apps just because they came preloaded on your device. You might have assumed Samsung Health was just a basic attempt to rival other fitness apps, but in reality, it often surpasses them. This also happens to be one of the reasons why I’m disappointed in Samsung’s latest batch of Galaxy Watches. While you can install Samsung Health on any Android phone, the Wear OS app is only compatible with Galaxy Watches. Switching away from a Galaxy Watch also means losing Samsung Health.

I may be critical of Samsung for many things, but I have to hand it to them—they made a darn good fitness app.