Gear Fit 2 - Samsung's next generation of Fitness Tracker

If fitness tracking is your thing, you should take a look at the Gear Fit 2. Samsung's refresh of the Gear Fit line includes GPS and an altimeter sensor as well as all the previous features like heart rate monitor.

I had the original Gear Fit and really liked it so I was interested to get a review unit of the Gear Fit 2. The screen is as brilliant as the original and the Samsung Gear software has really improved. Syncing with S Health is seamless. This really is a great stand alone option for runners and cyclists. The Fit 2 holds lots of music/podcasts you can listen to using BT headphones. The GPS maps your trail and syncs with your software of choice when you get reconnected to your phone. I usually charge my tech overnight and even on my most active days, never had to do a top up of the battery. The physical buttons are flush enough not to be affected by wrist movement and have a good firm feel.

Tizen runs very smooth on the Gear Fit2 and the same gestures are used as the Gear S2. The main screen has the watch face. Slide left to right to get to notifications - they are indicated by the orange dot. To get back to the watchface you can slide, tap the home button (bottom hard button) or back button (top hard button). Slide down and you open the connection screen that also allows you to start the music player. Right of the watch face are the health widgets. You can select which ones you want to use.

More about the fitness tracking. The Fit2 includes the life log so you can track your activity through the day. It will give reminders when it's time to move and automatically logs walks and intermittent heartrates. A weeks worth of workouts are stored on your wrist so you can see how you're doing with your goals. Data is really well presented, graphs are used to give "at a glance" information. If you go to the activity screen, you can tap to see your activity log. Tap on a log entry and it will tell you the type of activity, how long and how far you went as well as calorie used. Slide the screen down and you will see how your pace changed during the activity and your average speed. Great for endurance work.

Integral to the fitness tracking is SHealth. If you haven't bothered with it lately and have a Samsung device, you really should check it again. You can access a snapshot of your Gear Fit 2 for the day; daily logs can be reviewed through SHealth. SHealth also provides food and sleep tracking and integration with partner apps. You can form teams with goals or just use the comparison provided by the SHealth app.

Notifications are really robust, I received and replied to SMS and Telegram meassages using quick replies and the T9 keyboard. If you are looking for a fitness tracker with robust notifications, the Gear Fit 2 may be for you.

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