Samsung Gear Fit 2 hands-on: a gorgeous, but pricey fitness tracker

Whoa! Can you believe it took Samsung almost two whole years before finally coming out with a true successor to Gear Fit? That’s certainly a shocking revelation, knowing that the Korean giant is known to move at such a feverish pace when it comes to device refreshes, especially on a yearly basis. Despite that lengthy wait, the Samsung Gear Fit 2 is finally here to bring the attention back to fitness, first and foremost.

First of all, we will certainly say that the Gear Fit 2 is a significantly better designed fitness tracker than its predecessor. The time in between the two helped Samsung fashion together a beautiful looking wrist strapped fitness tracker.

There’s no more that feeling of bulkiness, which some considered to be the original Gear Fit’s biggest flaw, as the new Gear Fit 2 has been slimmed down tremendously. Also, there’s no more confusion about its operating orientation, since it’s now all done vertically.

While the curved screen is used again here, allowing the Gear Fit 2 to follow the contours of your wrist, it’s still one of the bigger looking fitness trackers out there. In comparison to things like the Fitbit Alta, Jawbone UP3, and even the UA Band from HTC, the Samsung Gear Fit 2 looks chunkier – albeit, it’s still not as chunky as those smartwatch-sized fitness trackers (Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band 2, Basis Peak).

Part of the reason why the Gear Fit 2 is larger than some of those other fitness trackers is because it features a larger 1.5-inch 216 x 432 curved Super AMOLED display. And boy does it look pretty! Colors are super potent and punchy, giving it that ability to instantly attract attention on your wrist. Thanks to the high resolution, everything that’s displayed is exquisitely sharp and detailed. Trust us, the screen is by far the biggest attention grabber with the Gear Fit 2.

Nearly every aspect of the Gear Fit 2 has been improved to meet the needs and demands of hardcore fitness junkies. So with that, they’ve added an IP68 rating, built-in GPS, Barometer, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage. Of course, it also comes with a heart rate sensor on its underside to measure your pulse during workouts, as well as a gyro. The addition of GPS is key here, as the Gear Fit 2 can now track your runs independently – without the need of relying on your phone’s GPS. On top of that, it can act also as an independent music player, thanks to the Tizen-based software and 4GB of internal storage.

While spending just a brief time with it, the Samsung Gear Fit 2 looks fabulous no matter how you look at it. The bands are easily replaceable, similar to the implementation used by the Gear S2, which simply relies on a latch for quick and easy removal. It should be noted, however, that two sizes will be made available for it – small and large, so you’ll want to size up beforehand to know which one is right for you.

The design and features set of the Gear Fit 2 are incredible to say the least, but its worth among users will most likely lie in its ability to focus on fitness. It’ll leverage the S Health app to deliver all of the information and tracking it accrues during use, but we’ll need to spend a bit more time with that before proclaiming it a winner amongst other things.

With a price tag of $180, the Gear Fit 2 clearly grazing into smartwatch territory – placing it in the same caliber as some of the most advanced fitness trackers already on the market. It’s going to compete head-on with the likes of Fitbit Blaze and Microsoft Band 2, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of adoption we’ll see come June 10th, when the Gear Fit 2 officially goes on sale.

What do you think?