Samsung Gear Fit 2 Review
If wearables are never going to be awesome. It’s likely going to happen in baby steps. Not in leaps and bounds like we’ve all been hoping for. That’s what determine from wearing the Samsung Gear Fit 2 over the past few weeks. How does this mean is it a bad wearable? not at all. It’s actually a pretty good activity tracker. It’s just getting harder to stand out of it all of the activity trackers out there now the Gear fit as a sports band, not a smartwatch that manages to cram a pretty display. GPS into a wristband form factor which is something that not many steps counting wristbands have for the most part smart watches doesn’t make great fitness trackers. So Samsung is offering something way more than sport focused and an attempt to get more people into its hardware ecosystem.
The good news is that the Gear Fit 2 has improved in a lot of ways it needed to from the first Samsung Gear fit. From two years ago the bad news is that I had a really spotty experience with battery life which is still one of the biggest drawbacks of wearables with full resolution displays. But the bigger question is whether you should spend $180 on this thing. I’m guessing you might already be interested in it or you have an Android phone. If you don’t have an Android phone I’m going to save you some time you can stop reading right now. Because the Samsung Gear fit 2 only works with Android phones hardware wise it’s pretty standard all of the usual suspects are in the build.
There’s a flexible plastic respond with a railroad style strap and has two physical buttons one that acts as a power and home button, another that acts as a back button the display though is what really stands out. It’s a rich glossy curved super AMOLED touchscreen and you’ll notice the displays information and vertical formats that you don’t have to twist your wrist to see stuff. The only downside to this super AMOLED display is that it’s not that easy to see an outdoor lighting.
There are optical sensors on the underside of the band for measuring your heart rate and stable workout environments I found heart rate readings to be very consistent with a chest monitor and bonus time Gear fit 2 has built in GPS as I mentioned earlier. This makes it one of the very few respond style trackers to include GPS along with the Microsoft Band 2.
It’s more like what doesn’t it in the previous version. Track the records of running, walking, hiking, cycling, stair stepper stationary, biking elliptical training, treadmill running, a whole bunch of other stuff including yoga. Then there is another tile that will let you record any other type of activity that might not be categorized like a lot of other fitness trackers these days the band will automatically recognize some activities. Samsung has tried to display the data in an interesting way. So, for example, there is a 24hours timeline view of your activity and if you use GPS you’ll see a map after your workout is completed.
All of your data from the band is going to send to Samsung’s S health application. I like to ask help app and it seems pretty quickly but I will say as with a lot of Samsung software. Samsung smart watches and the S health the gear up is really going to manage all the notifications that appear on your band and yes, health app is where you’re going to manage your health settings. So you’ll see a bunch of titles here which you can tap on to measure your stress or log your food or see more information about a specific workout but personally, I’d rather see it in a linear or a chronological format. Then the Apple share data with partner apps like but this is where it gets confusing. There are a bunch of partner apps under more in the app and then there’s a different set of partner apps in the settings area of the app. Then even when you go to download something like the Spotify app onto the wristband you have to go to the Galaxy App Store. It’s not in the partner apps list. So yeah sharing data and getting apps onto the device that sort of all over the place another downside to this band.
It is flexible but its big display takes up a lot of space. I would not call this delicate second it’s water resistant. But it’s not fully waterproof so you can’t swim with it. OK And then there’s battery life. Samsung is promising three to four days but my first review unit may have been a does because in a couple of occasions it didn’t even last a day especially if I worked out using GPS.
My second review unit seemed much more consistent at Samsung’s promises but then my colleague Dan C for Tried another review unit and his lasted about a day. The bottom line is the battery life seems to be a crap shoot with early versions of this which is part of the reason why I can’t give it a full hearted recommendation. Despite all that I have to give Samsung credit where it’s due. It’s first here if it responds all kind of like I need to wearable like hey let’s just make a wearable of the guess everyone and their mother and their cousin is making an activity tracker right now this one shows commitment. It’s a more serious sport than the tracks a whole bunch of different fitness activities and tries it. This makes it a pretty serious contender among all the other bands out there.
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