Samsung Gear 2 vs Gear 2 Neo vs Gear Fit review

The smartwatch concept may carry some geeky baggage from the days of the Casio calculator watch, but Samsung’s new wrist-borne devices are nothing if not elegant. The flagship is the imposing brushed-metal Gear 2, but the understated plastic of the Gear 2 Neo is no less pleasing in its own way. The lightweight Gear Fit, meanwhile, reaches out to a more minimalist audience. Depending on the model you choose, colour options range from a sober black to a rich, rusty orange.

The screens too are a world apart from the LCD displays of yore. Both the Gear 2 and the Neo boast 1.6in square Super AMOLED screens that radiate with vibrant, bright colour. A 320 x 320 resolution works out at 278ppi, yielding perfectly sharp text and graphics at typical viewing distances.
The band-style Gear Fit uses an attractive curved 432 x 128 display at 244ppi.

The only thing spoiling this excellent first impression is the design of the thick rubber straps on the Gear 2 and Neo: the bulky clips get in the way when you’re typing, and we found the metal clasp dug into the flesh. Still, unlike the original Galaxy Gear (which embedded a camera into the wristband), these models use a standard 22mm strap fitting, so you can easily fit a replacement of your choice. It’s also possible to replace the band on the Fit, should you so wish; here the rubber band simply pulls off to allow a replacement to be snapped on.

Staying in touch

The Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo are very similar devices, and while the Gear Fit is evidently aimed at a different market, it offers the same basic interface. All three are controlled by touchscreen, with the only mechanical control being a single power button below the screen (or alongside it in the case of the Fit). The difference in price comes largely down to features: where the Gear 2 sports a built-in camera and an IR transmitter, the Neo drops the camera and the Gear Fit lacks either.

Whichever model you choose, the first job of your Samsung smartwatch is likely to be advising you of the arrival of new emails, text messages, calendar appointments, Twitter notifications and so forth. The watch has no data connection of its own, but the Gear Manager app for Android hooks it up via Bluetooth to any of 17 Samsung Galaxy devices, ranging from the 4.3in Galaxy S4 Mini up to the outsized NotePRO 12.2. Thereafter, any alert that pops up on that device can be echoed on the watch: the body optionally beeps and vibrates while flashing up the icon of the app, and a short preview of the notification appears, which you can read at more length by swiping across the watch’s face with a finger.

Interestingly, you’re not limited to textual notifications. On all three devices you can screen and reject incoming phone calls with a simple tap of the touchscreen, and on the Gear 2 and Neo, you can also make and answer calls, either via a headset or by using the watch as a sci-fi style wrist communicator. To place a call, you can browse your contacts on the device, tap a number into the built-in dialler app, or use the S Voice feature to issue verbal instructions via the tiny built-in microphone. The speaker isn’t loud, but so long as you’re not on a crowded train platform, you can make out the other end of the conversation well enough.

What you can’t do is type out answers to emails, SMS messages and the like directly on the watch. In most cases this is because there’s no direct interface between the watch and the relevant app; instead you get a tappable link that opens the originating app on your phone or tablet, so you can respond directly from there. If you’re using Samsung’s default Messaging app then you can respond to text messages with a template, or use the S Voice voice-recognition system. The forthcoming third-party Fleksy app promises a keyboard that can be used to tap out replies to text messages on the Gear 2 and Neo, but we’ve yet to lay eyes on it.

Health and fitness

The other major selling point of Samsung’s new watches is their potential as health-and-fitness devices – something that’s overt with the Gear Fit, but no less a feature of the Gear 2 and Neo. On the back of the watch, an optical sensor measures your heart rate, while the pedometer makes use of the integrated accelerometer to count your daily footsteps. Using the Exercise app, you can tell the device when you’re running, walking, cycling or hiking, and thereby set goals and collect information, which can in turn be fed back to Samsung’s S Health app on the Galaxy S4 and S5 for more detailed monitoring.

If you’re worried about taking the watch with you while you exercise, you needn’t be: all models are dust- and rain-proof, and the Gear 2 and Neo models even offer 4GB of internal storage that can be loaded up with music, so you can listen on a Bluetooth headset while you exercise. Fit owners can get almost the same effect by using the device to control the music player on their smartphone.

Sad to say, practising fitness freaks won’t find Samsung’s Gear 2 range satisfactory at all. The heart-rate monitor doesn’t work while you’re moving about, so it’s not a convenient way to track whether you’re exercising in the appropriate cardio zone; and even when you’re standing still we’ve reservations about its accuracy (see box). The pedometer is better than nothing, but there’s so much guesswork involved in translating paces into calories burnt that it’s impossible to recommend any of the Gear 2 models as a real fitness accessory.

Other functions

The high price of the full-fat Gear 2 is partly justified by the 2-megapixel camera built into its body, which enables you to grab quick snaps of interesting sights. Image quality is pretty terrible, however, and since the natural instinct is to shoot from wrist height, it’s alarmingly easy to take very unflattering pictures of people. Still, if you just want to grab a quick reminder of a scene, it works; captured images are immediately transferred to your phone by Bluetooth, and filed by default in a special Gear 2 gallery.

The Gear 2 and Neo models also come with a TV remote-control app that makes use of the built-in infrared transmitter. The small touchscreen is nowhere near as ergonomic as a real hand-sized remote control with physical buttons, but if you can’t immediately find the remote it’s nice to have as an alternative. On a similar note, those without a landline may appreciate the Find My Device app, which makes a mislaid phone or tablet sing out its location – so long as it’s within Bluetooth range.

Additional apps can be downloaded onto the Gear 2 and Neo models from Samsung’s own app store; in theory, the 1GHz dual-core Exynos processor should be able to do much more than simply show notifications and track sensor data. However, unlike the Sony SmartWatch, and indeed unlike Samsung’s original Galaxy Gear, these models run not Android but the Linux-based Tizen operating system (hence Samsung’s quiet dropping of the Galaxy brand, which it reserves for Android devices). As a result, software support is extremely limited; at present the store offers fewer than 40 Gear 2-compatible downloads in total. The Fit, meanwhile, uses a low-power 180MHz processor and a custom OS, and as a result doesn’t support external apps at all.

Practical issues

One concern that’s dogged previous smartwatch concepts is battery life; after all, nobody wants to have to take their watch off to charge it every night. In our tests with the Gear 2 model, things weren’t quite that bad, but we found ourselves having to top up the device every three days, lest it expire on the fourth. When you’re used to a conventional watch that runs for years between battery replacements, that’s an adjustment to say the least. Charging up the 300mAh battery takes around two hours (the Gear Fit’s 210mAh battery is naturally slightly faster), and all models require you to remove the watch for charging: the supplied 0.5A micro-USB charger connects to a small dock that clips onto a set of contacts at the rear of the watch.

In fairness, with current mainstream technology, we doubt any smartwatch worthy of the name could possibly last much longer, although solar cells and kinetic energy harvesting techniques might help in the future. And while it’s annoying to have to deal with a fiddly, proprietary clip, building a charging socket directly into the watch would have increased its bulk and compromised its weather-proof credentials.

A few other foibles of these devices are harder to excuse. For one, we found the built-in vibrator distinctly weedy, to the extent that we occasionally missed incoming notifications unless audio alerts were also enabled. Reading the full text of received messages isn’t a terribly convenient experience either: even at the smallest font size, reading a tweet involves scrolling through three full screen-heights.

Another big disappointment is the “wake-up gesture”. The principle here is sound enough: in order to conserve battery, the watch’s screen automatically switches off after a configurable timeout, just like a smartphone. This means that the time and date aren’t normally visible. You can of course tap the power button to wake up the watch, but the device can also be configured to automatically turn the screen on whenever it detects you raising your arm – an admirably intuitive approach.

Unfortunately, in use this feature proves far too trigger-happy. The watch responds not only to a decisive raising of the wrist, but also to a whole range of more ambiguous movements, including the involuntary action of rolling over in one’s sleep – lending an unwelcome secondary meaning to the term “wake-up gesture” through the sudden illumination of its bright screen.

An idea whose time has come?

Clearly, the Gear 2 isn’t perfect. As a fitness device it’s a failure, and even as a simple notification centre it’s compromised in several ways – some forgivable, others downright stupid. The physical design may be confident, but it’s evident that Samsung is still feeling its way with regard to what a smartwatch can and should do. It’s a near certainty that the next models to appear will work a lot better than these ones do, and the ones that follow that will be better still.

That being the case, it’s very hard to recommend any of Samsung’s three contenders. In theory, future updates and third-party apps could evolve the Gear 2 and Neo into more friendly and flexible devices – but it must be said that developers haven’t exactly flocked to Tizen so far. Even Samsung itself seems reluctant to commit to the OS, having already announced plans for a new generation of smartwatches based on Google’s new Android Wear platform later this year.

And yet, despite all that, there’s something seductive about the Gear 2. Glancing at your wrist to check incoming notifications rapidly becomes second nature, and once it does the idea of having to delve into your pocket or rummage in a handbag for the phone itself seems absurdly backward. For those who spend a lot of time driving or otherwise preoccupied, it’s a godsend. Factor in the bold design and sumptuous screen and you’ve got something surprisingly desirable, at a price that, by watch standards, isn’t entirely off-putting.

That’s what makes the Gear 2 special. It may feel more like a prototype than a finished product, but it’s the first device we’ve seen to really show how smartwatches can add a new dimension to our relationships with the online world. There’s still everything to play for in the race for our wrists, but Samsung has fired the starting pistol, and we’re excited to see what happens next.