Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsMy long winded, slightly nerdish review.
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2017
I'm usually an early adopter of new tech but I waited a bit to get a smartwatch/wearable. I was keeping an eye open for the moment that wearables became viable for me as a real tool and not just as a vanity tech item, and I believe the Gear Fit 2 is it.
Picked up a Gear Fit 2 from Amazon. @$150 and so far that seems like a steal. The fitness trackers I've used (calorie, step, heart rate) all work well, syncd up with the Gear app on my phone ( Nexus 6) with no problems, S Health app works well and the sleep tracker is an amazing little "Never knew I needed it till I got it" kind of thing. Battery life hasn't been an issue at all, with a pretty good bit of use I still haven"t used more than 60% of the charge in a single day. Charging is relatively fast and convenient.
The alarm was the most unexpected perk. I've always needed a very loud audio alarm to wake me up, and sometimes that's still not enough. The silent, gentle vibration from the wristband has yet to fail to rouse me, and no one else gets disturbed.
I'm a grill cook by trade, so I was worried about the extremes of kitchen life. So far so good. I have a wireless blue tooth speaker paired to my phones Poweramp media player (MP3's on my phones internal memory) to provide tunes to the kitchen. The media player app on my Fit 2 acts like a remote for my phone, changes songs, volume etc. which comes in handy at times I can't come off the line to do it on my phone. It's also nice to receive remote notifications from my various conversations across several messaging apps ( txt, Facebook, email, Twitter) so even though I can't engage in a full conversations, from time to time, I can at least monitor things like running conversations from group chats and make sure that the last text that came in wasn't some emergency or situation that needs my immediate attention.
A few reviews I read while I was researching before purchase said the band had a tendency to come unfastened, but so far it hasn't happened a single time in all the reaching, grabbing, flipping, turning and general motion and abuse required from me throughout the night at work. The streamlined, minimalist design of the watch and band work for me as well. Not a lot of places for food to get trapped and you can imagine how nice the water resistance is in a busy kitchen.
There are a few things that aren't 100% yet. The Spotify app for the Fit 2 does not work for me. It downloaded to my phone using the Gear app and installed on the Fit 2 just fine, but when I attempt to actually open the app on my Fit 2, it will open Spotify on my phone, but on the Fit 2 it says "Unable to start Spotify BT dissconnected" although the BT is in fact not dissconnected. I Googled it and at the time of this review it seems to be a known bug, but I can't tell how common it is, so maybe see if a search returns any info on your specific phone if thats's a deal breaker. I will add that the Fit 2 Media Player will actually still remotely control general playback from Spotify on my phone the same way it controls my Poweramp/internal MP3's on my phone, but i don't get to browse songs/playlists etc. Just general track forward and back, volume pause and so forth. I can live with that, but I do hope the bug gets a fix soon. The full use of Spotify's functionality available remotely would be great. Also the advertised ability to stream songs from my phone to the FIt and then to wireless earbuds doesn't work. It may be a Spotify only thing, and if so then it obviously won"t work until the previous bug gets fixed, but I can tell you that it doesn't work trying to stream songs from my phone in my gym bag to my Fit @ on my wrist and then to my wireless earbuds (proximity is king with the wireless headphones).
The software involved in all of this is really sort of "Still getting it together". The Gear app keeps trying to get me to change certain permissions EVERY time I open it. There's apparently no way to remove some of the notifications from displaying on the home screen ( inactivity, loss of blue tooth connectivity) no matter what the settings are. Some of the on/off switches seemed unintuitive ( "I thought the slash meant off, but it's lit up, now so I don't know?!?!?!") and it takes some work to get everything set as close to perfect as you'd like. It would be nice to be able to change the time my "Day" starts for the tracking apps. Counts run from midnight to midnight, but my day, unfortunately, doesn't. I work nights so my day runs from 3pm to 7am. I can't for the life of me figure out how to change this, but it would sure help when tracking calories etc.
Also, the UI is a little stale right out of the box. I have to keep reminding myself that the Fit 2 was primarily designed as a piece of sports gear, and the various screens and apps show it. Information is supplied in easy to read, if not attractive ways. Third party clock faces and apps do help to curb the utilitarian feel of the Fit 2 a bit, but that's another area you can feel is not quite all there. I like making my FIt look like a Pip Boy as much as the next guy, but finding usable functionality app that's attractive AND reliable still seems a bit away.
All that having been said, this is still an amazing piece of kit. Within the span of a week it has already almost seamlessly established itself through use and convenience as part of my daily life. Watch, alarm, timer, calorie counter, remote notifications and music management. It does so much, so well for so little, and even though there are still kinks to work out, I can say that the Samsung Gear Fit 2 is the affordable and reliable wearable that I waited for: A great starting point.
