Samsung Gear Fit 2 review

The Gear Fit 2 is Samsung's second take on a wearable fitness tracking device. Their first attempt was a pretty clunky and awkward device, which is probably why you haven't seen many people walking around with the original Gear Fit from the company.

With those criticisms in mind, Samsung went back to the drawing board to try and bring forward all of the good features of the Gear Fit (namely that large, curved screen on a relatively small and thin band) while cutting out the negatives. That's a tall order, especially in a market that's crowded with Fitbit, the Apple Watch, Android Wear, and even Samsung's own other wearables.

Hit the break for our review of the Samsung Gear Fit 2.

Design

The Gear Fit 2 mostly keeps the design of the original Gear Fit, but nearly every change has been for the better. Where the original Gear Fit had a long, thin screen, the Fit 2 has adopted a long, slightly less thin screen. It doesn't sound like a huge difference, but in practice, this makes reading text on screen much better.

The band itself is made of a new material that feels legitimately sporty, too. The original Gear Fit had a cheap, plastic band that did not feel sporty, it just felt cheap. With that being said, the clasp on the Fit 2 is one of the most frustrating bands I've ever worked with on a wearable device. It's difficult to put on and lock with one hand and just doesn't feel like it would be secure, although the clasping mechanism has held strong and it's pretty difficult to accidentally undo. It's a fitness tracking device, so obviously it needs to be difficult to undo so it doesn't fall off mid-exercise, so this is a minor complaint. I'd rather have a band that's difficult to put on that won't fall off as opposed to one that's simple to put on but falls off easily.

Beside the screen you'll find an unmarked back and home button, and if you're like me it's going to take several days to remember which is which. The top is back, the middle is home, in case you were wondering.

There's no power button, as the Fit 2 uses gestures and motion detecting to determine when to turn the screen on and off.

Behind the screen lies a heart rate monitor that works automatically this time around, so you won't need to manually run the HR monitor like you had to do with the Gear Fit.

Hardware

Performance

There isn't much to say about performance of the Gear Fit 2. It runs Tizen, which is Samsung's home grown OS that's seen most of its popularity from the company's wearables. Unlike Android Wear, there's no Google Play for tons of third party apps here, so you're mostly running what Samsung has developed for the watch.

Galaxy Apps handles loading apps onto the Gear Fit 2, but pretty much everything that's available to download is either developed by Samsung, or a watch face. The apps are all lightweight things like alarms and timers, or things that expand on fitness tracking. There are very few apps that require actual user interaction, and pretty much no apps are intensive on the Fit's processor.

The good news there is that you'll never notice any lag swiping over to any particular widget or checking your notifications. Everything is quick and responsive, and I've yet to encounter any kind of crash or lockup on the device. It's easy to control performance when your device really only does a handful of things.

Battery

The battery life on the Gear Fit 2 is decent for a smartwatch with a colorful screen, and pretty poor for a fitness tracker. I could typically stretch out to about three days before getting bugged about low battery.

Compared to most fitness trackers that offer over a week of battery life on a single charge, that's rough. Many people looking for a reliable fitness tracker are looking for something that they don't have to charge with their phone every night, and charging it overnight is counterintuitive to its sleep tracking capability.

However, compared to most smartwatches that can barely last 24 hours, scraping three days out of a single charge is fantastic. Granted, that's not a high bar to clear, but if you're considering the Fit 2 for its smartwatch features, that's a big plus.

Charging the device is pretty quick on its wireless charging stand, but keep in mind that's a proprietary dock that doesn't use any kind of standard cable. It looks cool, but it's not as simple to replace as ordering a new microUSB cable from Amazon.

Software

If you've used a Samsung Gear S2, you'll feel right at home with the software on the Gear Fit 2. Just about everything on the bigger Gear S2 is present on the Fit, with a few exceptions, and that includes the useful raise-to-wake gesture and the cover-to-sleep gesture.

Since the screen is so much smaller, Samsung removed most of the texting and communication functionality. The Gear Fit 2 will display text messages on your wrist, and you can use canned responses to shoot out replies, but you won't be typing anything here.

Otherwise, all of the fitness stuff is here, and just as functional as it would be on the Gear S2. The Fit tracks steps, stairs, sleep, heart rate, and exercise, and it has a nice breakdown of your entire day so you can see what times you were active, when you were resting, and so on. There are extra apps for tracking your caffeine and water intake, and if you have friends with Samsung wearables, Together will allow you to track everyone's step counts to see who walks the most.

The exercise portion of the tracker can handle a ton of different kinds of exercise, too. The original Gear Fit simply had “exercise,” but the Fit 2 will track bicycling, yoga, a treadmill, crunches, and many, many more. It will keep up with your heart rate, track your GPS location (depending on exercise) and set a target time for your workout, then log everything. It's very simple, but very detailed.

The Gear Fit 2 is also a standalone music player if you pair Bluetooth headphones to it, so you can load some tunes on your wrist for when you're exercising. The Fit 2 works by itself so you don't even need to bring your phone along, and everything will sync back up when it gets into Bluetooth range again.

One standout feature for the Gear Fit 2 is that it does have a dedicated GPS chip that can track your exercise without a phone. Most fitness trackers rely on the phone for GPS data, but the Fit 2 can handle that all on its own.

There's a power saving mode and a do not disturb mode, both of which are accessed from a pulldown menu from the top of the screen. Notifications are all displayed on the far-left screen, and pretty much anything that shows up on your phone can be displayed on your wrist. Texts, Twitter, emails, game notifications, you name it. Samsung offers fine-tuned control to pick and choose what you want, however, so if you don't want to get bothered on your wrist every time you get a Facebook message, you can set that up.

Closing

Samsung's originally Gear Fit felt like a half-baked, half-finished device, but the Gear Fit 2 corrects nearly all of the faults of its predecessor. Stronger battery life would be nice, but that's a necessary trade-off to get a device that handles fitness tracking while still managing to act as a full-fledged smartwatch. Most other fitness trackers that have better battery can't touch the Fit 2's features, but the Fit 2 still manages to nail the actual fitness tracking thing.

Things are much more automatic this time around, the interface and gestures are mostly intuitive, and being able to use the device without a phone for tracking and music playing are both major advantages here.

If you're in the market for a fitness tracker, the $179 price tag puts Gear Fit 2 towards the higher end of the spectrum. You're mostly paying for smartwatch features, but if you really want those smartwatch features you can typically get a decent watch for less, like my personal favorite, the Pebble Time. However, you'll lose the fitness tracking.

If you want a fitness tracker but don't care about smartwatch features, or if you want a smartwatch but don't care about fitness features, the Gear Fit probably won't be a great option for you.

However, if you do want both a smartwatch and a fitness tracker but don't want to buy two separate devices, the Gear Fit 2 can scratch that itch. It isn't top of the line with anything it does, but it does do a ton of things with as few compromises as possible. In a market where customers are trying to shave down to as few devices as possible, that might be a hit for Samsung.

Buy it now: Samsung, Best Buy, Amazon