Gear Fit 2 review: A thoughtful marriage of smartwatch and fitness band

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn.

It has been a couple of years since Samsung upgraded its Gear Fit activity tracker, and the new Gear Fit 2 is competing in a much more crowded market. While Fitbit still reigns as king, Apple unveiled its Watch and Microsoft came out with two versions of its own band. That’s also not to mention that what people expect from their fitness trackers has changed rapidly: built-in heart rate monitors are now commonplace, and the basic step and distance tracking and calorie counting metrics just aren’t enough to warrant a permanent spot on your wrist. Samsung clearly took all of that into account when making the Gear Fit 2 and, in turn, created a strong device that’s made even stronger by its competitive $179 price.

Design: Gadget-y done right

The slightly redesigned Gear Fit 2 is a subtle improvement on the original. But more importantly, it’s what the newest Microsoft Band should have been. The Gear Fit 2 is rounder and more seamless than the first, blurring the lines that separate the band from the display module. The band is your typical silicone wrap that we’re used to seeing on fitness trackers now, and the closure is a simple snap-in design. The band comes in small and large sizes, so the Gear Fit 2 is easy to put on and even easier to wear, even if it’s not the most fashionable piece.

When compared to the new Microsoft Band, it’s like night and day. Hat-tip to Microsoft for fixing many issues about its original Band design with the second iteration, but the new Band is still bulky when placed next to the Gear Fit 2. Also, the Band’s display is smaller and surrounded by a large bezel, the pinch-and-slide clasp is frustrating to say the least, and its bulbous bottom (caused by the Band’s additional skin sensors) is cumbersome. The Gear Fit 2 doesn’t lead the pack when it comes to style (although it does come in black, blue, and pink colors), but it achieves a better aesthetic than the Microsoft Band.

Much like the Microsoft Band, you can change the watch faces on the Gear Fit 2 whenever you like. Its 1.5-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen is a pleasure to use, and Samsung’s interactive watch faces (like the Starry Night-esque option in which the dots of light move around the display when you touch it) make it interesting and personable. There are just two side buttons on the device: the Home bottom button that will take you back to the home screen, bring up the on-screen menu, and turn on and off the device, as well as the Back upper button.

Underneath the display is the optical heart rate monitor, which can be set to measure your pulse every few minutes. That will drain the battery more quickly, though, just as constant use of the built-in GPS would. You can measure your pulse manually at any time, and it took the Gear Fit 2 only about seven seconds to read my heart rate each time. As long as I wore the band snug on my wrist, the heart rate readings were accurate whether I was resting or in the middle of a workout. I also appreciate that, if you manually take a reading, you can tag it with labels like general, resting, after workout, during workout, happy, angry, and more so you can remember why your pulse was what it was.

Compared to the Microsoft Band and the Fitbit Surge, the Gear Fit 2 is the most water-resistant since it can be submerged in 1.5 meters of water for up to 30 minutes, though none of the three trackers monitors swimming. The Gear Fit 2’s battery life takes a hit compared to the original, which lasted around five days when we tested it. The new model and the Microsoft Band are comparable, lasting at least two days before needing more juice (since the Fitbit Surge only has a monochrome LCD and receives fewer smartphone notifications, it can last up to a week). My Gear Fit 2 was down to 40 percent battery after a day and a half of moderate use, with no notifications coming through and only three workouts tracked. If you’re a heavy user, plan to charge this device at least once every two days.

Features: Only one thing left to be desired

For its $179 price tag, the Gear Fit 2 has a lot of features commonly associated with trackers that cost $200 or more. It tracks daily steps, calories, distance, floors climbed, and sleep, while delivering all of your smartphone’s notifications to your wrist. The biggest issue for me was the fact that, currently, the Gear Fit 2 is only fully compatible with Samsung Galaxy smartphones and Android phones running 4.4 or higher. iPhone owners will be out of luck, and that dramatically decreases the number of potential users.

From the display, you can swipe to the left to see nearly any stat you’d want, and you can add dedicated pages for caffeine and water intake. Tapping on any of the individual displays will pull up a backlog of information from previous days. I loved being able to tap on the calories page and see a timeline of my day, including all the workouts I recorded, the times I was inactive or just lightly active, and when I was sleeping. The best part is that you can tap on any of those specific chunks of time and see how many calories you burned and your heart rate range just within that time block. The Gear Fit 2 was quite good at knowing when I was just walking around my apartment, sitting around, and even when I took it off my wrist so I could take a shower.

Going hand-in-hand with sitting around, the Gear Fit 2 will buzz when you’ve been inactive for a long period of time. The device calls these alerts “health nudges,” and you can turn them on or off just like you can auto-activity detection. This is a feature most new trackers are coming out with, letting you go about your daily runs, walks, bike rides, and elliptical and rowing sessions while the device does the heavy lifting by recognizing what you’re doing. After 10 minutes of walking to the subway one morning, my Gear Fit 2 vibrated and displayed a timer on its screen. It only captured the duration of my walk, though, and not my heart rate throughout that time.

But you can always start tracking an activity directly from the band, choosing from options like running, walking, hiking, step machine, exercise bike, crunches, and yoga. The only issue I had with these choices is that some of them, like crunches, require you to be in a certain position in order to begin tracking. For crunches, the screen instructs you to lay down with your arms crossed over your chest before the timer starts. Sometimes when I do crunch sets, I place a balancer underneath my lower back for support—when I did this, the band didn’t recognize my position (my back wasn’t flat on the ground) so it didn’t start tracking. Other than that, though, the Gear Fit 2 is very capable: its duration, distance, and even calorie expenditure estimations were close to what the gym machines recorded.

Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn.

If you choose an outdoor activity like running, you can turn on or off the location feature that controls the GPS. The GPS was very accurate in that the maps that the device and the app show follow my route almost to a T. Compared to the periodic sluggishness of the Microsoft Band’s GPS, the Gear Fit 2’s sensor was fast to acquire a signal, and it didn’t make me wait to start my running so it could do so. I was surprised, though, that the on-screen map only showed the line of my route, rather than the full, data-rich map that includes surrounding streets, blocks, parks, and more. A Samsung representative told me this was the intent, and after you sync data to the S Health app, you’ll be able to see a full map on your smartphone.

When you have connected the Gear Fit 2 to your smartphone, you can receive notifications to your wrist and download the Spotify app for the band. There’s 4GB of storage in the band, so you can put your own music on it, but the Spotify app will be loaded with a bunch of playlists curated by athletes. Since the band is Bluetooth-capable, you can connect a pair of wireless headphones to it and listen to music while you workout without your phone present.

In the Gear app on your smartphone, you can actually choose which apps you want to receive wrist notifications from. Similarly to Fossil’s Q companion app, you just tick boxes of apps that you want to buzz you—others will continue to deliver notifications to your phone, just not your wrist. You can also reply to messages and calls using prefab texts, and you can add to this list whenever you want.

Those features cover nearly everything you would need in an all-purpose fitness watch. The only thing I wish the Gear Fit 2 supported is some form of guided workouts. This is where the Microsoft Band truly shines—you can pick from a number of prefab workouts supplied by companies like Shape and Gold’s Gym to follow directly from the band. You can also create your own workout circuit using Microsoft’s Health app, which brings exercise customization to a new level. Fitbit’s Blaze even has a version of this—you can follow a couple of FitStar on-screen workouts, although your selection is currently limited.

As of now, this is the one feature I wish the Gear Fit 2 had, especially since the potential is there. When you begin some workouts, like crunches, a small animation pops up on the display to show you the correct form. Samsung could expand upon this UI feature to include guided workouts with proper-form animations.

S Health and Galaxy Gear apps: Your activity and control panels

When you pair the Gear Fit 2 to a Samsung smartphone, it connects to the Galaxy Gear app and S Health. The Gear app is much like the Android Wear app for those smartwatches—it controls a bunch of settings for the device, including which apps feed their smartphone notifications to the band. You can choose which apps you want, so you’re not stuck with unnecessary buzzing on your wrist from apps you don’t care about. New apps are added to that list whenever you download compatible ones, too. Also in the Gear app, you can download new watchfaces and customize some of the preset ones using the colors of your choice, which is really fun.

With both the Gear and S Health, syncing to the band is nearly instantaneous. S Health is already used by Samsung smartphones to estimate your step counts (when your phone is on your person), but a plethora of new information is added when you sync the Gear Fit 2 to it. It’s much like any other fitness tracker companion app with your activity log front-and-center, and you can swipe to see a summary of your sleep time and quality.

S Health is fairly self-explanatory, if a little crowded with ad-like info cards at the bottom for other apps that you could download (thankfully, you can delete these). To keep users in the app a bit longer, Samsung added Tips, which are long article-like cards that relay fitness and health information you can use in your daily life. Some suggest new exercises to try while others explore topics like “is too much cardio bad for your heart?” I was surprised by the length of these Tips at first, since other apps like Jawbone’s keep the smart facts to a maximum of a few sentences for easy digestion. But since you can star these Tips and save them for later, they could make good reading when you have some time on your hands or when you’re at the gym and want something new to do.

So while the Gear Fit 2 doesn’t have any guided workouts, Samsung created a few programs you could try that are accessible within the app. Tapping the menu button at the top right corner and then “Manage Items” brings you to a page where you can edit your health goals, change the order of apps on your device, and select a running program to try. Currently there are only schedules for 5K and 10K practice, but each of them lays out how you’ll be training for a 5K or a 10K, which days you’ll train, and what’s involved in each workout (as in, how many miles you’ll run). It’s similar, yet more basic, to the app C25K; I was happy to see those options in there since I really enjoy the guided workouts available in other devices.

A solid second attempt from Samsung

Lots of companies are trying to make the perfect all-in-one fitness watch. There are certain boxes you need to tick to even get past the first level, such as having a heart rate monitor, some level of smartphone alert delivery, auto-tracking, and a decent companion app. But once GPS is added into the mix and design comes into play, something often goes wrong in the execution. Samsung clearly paid attention to the rest of the devices in this space and took the original Gear Fit into account when it made the Gear Fit 2. It does all the activity tracking basics well, its touchscreen is pleasant to use and look at, the customization of watch faces and notifications make it more personal, and it’s comfortable to wear.

While it had to make some sacrifices (namely battery life) Samsung made a fitness watch that will have all the necessary features a moderately active Android user would need in a great wearable. While it’s not the most attractive device, its clock and smart notifications are enough to keep it on your wrist all day. Otherwise, its main purpose is to be a comprehensive fitness device, and it achieves that.

Finally, the $179 price tag is enticing. The Microsoft Band originally started at $200 but has been discounted now to $175. If you like guided workouts, it’s worth it to go with Microsoft’s device, but for nearly any other purpose the Gear Fit 2 is the better deal. In comparison to Fitbit devices, the Gear Fit 2 manages to make the top-tier Blaze and Surge look outdated. The $200 Blaze has a heart rate monitor but needs a phone to provide GPS. The $229 Surge has both built in but is larger, has a smaller monochrome display, and costs much more. The main thing Fitbit’s devices have going for them is their universal support for Android, iOS, and Windows Phones. If Samsung adds iOS support in the future, the Gear Fit 2 would be the fitness watch to beat.