There was a point in time where I wondered why would someone want a fitness tracker. But in today’s busy – and competitive – world, fitness trackers have found their places on the wrists of many, motivating us to move and exercise and show us progress over time. For any athlete – or anyone for that matter – the sense of progress is what keeps people going and moving. With the plethora of fitness trackers out there, how can we choose the best one?
Samsung’s Gear Fit 2 clearly distinguishes itself from the rest of Samsung’s wearables in that it dedicates itself to mostly fitness tracking. Sure, you do get some app notifications, but the watch’s primary function – and all the features built around it – focus on your fitness and activities. The not so good news is that it doesn’t truly break any new grounds, but on the up side, it’s got one of the best screens on a fitness tracker, and the watch is more affordable than the rest in its class (though there are caveats).
It only works on Android – for now
Before I continue with my review, though, be warned: if you’re on iOS, the Gear Fit 2 will not be that useful. Yes, it can function on its own without a phone, but it won’t sync your data anywhere, and its power comes from the companion apps which are only on android for now. Samsung has promised iOS support – eventually – but as of this writing, it’s not there.
The Gear Fit 2 follows a curved design that is beautiful. That 1.5″ screen is just gorgeous, and it seamlessly blends with the strap to give a unified body look and feel. The screen is almost edge to edge, giving the software plenty of vertical space to populate with numbers and data. The straps themselves can removed, though with some effort, should you ever require a replacement or a change of colour. The problem I have with the straps is that my skin gets too sweaty and I find myself often removing the watch to dry my skin and the straps before wearing it again. In all fairness, I face the same issue with the rubber bands on the Apple Watch, so my skin is more sensitive to the material than most people.
You mostly interact with the watch via touch, but there’s a power button and a back button on the side. Over at the belly you have your heart rate sensor and the charging connectors
In terms of power, the Gear Fit 2 now runs on a dual-core 1GHz processor with 512MB of RAM, as well as integrated GPS and 4GB to store your music for on-the-go listening.
The Gear Fit 2 runs on Tizen OS, and is compatible with any android 4.4 and above phone. Setting it up, you’ll need to install the Gear app as well as the S Health app for the watch to function fully if you’re not on a Samsung phone. The Gear app is used to do the initial set up for the watch, browse through watch faces, and control notifications; the S Health app will sync all your exercise and activity data for your tracking. It’s unfortunate that you need two different apps to actually use the watch, but one acts as a general wearable devices manager and the other is a dedicated health record app.
While the Gear Fit 2 doesn’t track swimming, practically everything else can be tracked
Using the Gear Fit 2 is a breeze. There are many types of workouts to choose from – from walking to cycling to yoga (sadly, no gym, so we still have to choose “other”) – and you can set your goals as well as interval reminders, a nice feature where the watch will buzz at your preset time intervals. Once you select a workout, it is saved for quick access the second time around, so you needn’t input the settings every time if you’re constantly doing the same type of exercises. Swiping left gives you access to different metrics, such as step count, stairs climbed and heart rate, as well as water and caffeine intake. Swiping to the left during a workout will give you your real time readings, such as heart rate, distance covered if applicable, time, pace, etc. The watch is water resistant, but not waterproof, so you shouldn’t take it for a swim.
In addition to manually inputting exercises, the watch detects some workouts and activities automatically, and often while walking to work, I get words of encouragement that I am doing a good job being active. These little positive reinforcements are nice features to have.
To put it to some accuracy test, I noted the number of steps on my Apple Watch as well as the Gear Fit 2, then manually counted 200, and 250 steps, then compared the readings on both. At 200 steps, the Apple Watch recorded 195 while the Gear Fit 2 recorded 203; at 250 steps, the Apple Watch recorded 221 while the Gear Fit 2 recorded 249.
Perhaps my most favourite feature is the 24-hour activity log, which shows you a timeline of your activities. However, for a detailed view, you will have to use the S Health app. It takes some getting used to, but it’s come a long way from previous iterations and Samsung is constantly improving the app UI and functionality.
While it functions good as a fitness band, the smartwatch features are rudimentary, but exist as a reminder that this is not just a fitness tracker. You can get notifications, but the thin, vertical display and centre-aligned fonts make emails and long texts a chore to read. You can tap “show on phone” to quickly hand over this particular notification on the phone, but the Gear Fit 2 is only ideal as a notification centre while you exercise, should you not want to miss a particular text.
As far as battery life is concerned, it lasted me around 2-3 days, which isn’t a deal breaker for me, but certainly well below the competition; that screen doest come with a trade-off, after all. You can charge it while you shower and prep for bed, for example, and I am ok with losing an hour or so worth of heart rate monitoring every couple of days.
All in all, the Gear Fit 2 is a very good fitness tracker. The major downside is that it’s tied to android for the moment, so should you eventually move over to iOS (and if Samsung does not release the Gear and S Health apps by then), you’d lose your fitness history, and render the Gear Fit 2 rather useless. Other fitness bands work across iOS as well as android, so it’s a point worth considering when making this purchase, although they do come at a higher price.
