We’re just putting the finishing touches to our full review – so stay tuned to see if Samsung has found a real foothold in the fitness band market.
Even though Samsung is rolling out its new pair of Gear smartwatches for 2014 (the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo) it knows that there’s also a lot of life in the humble fitness band.
With that in mind it’s also putting out a third Gear sibling in the form of the Gear Fit, a wearable band that aims to be big on style, but a little less function-heavy than its brothers.
Most of that style comes in the form of a curved 1.85-inch OLED screen, which can’t be flexed but looks absolutely gorgeous. Truly, it’s stunning, and a tad futuristic with its silver border.
But more importantly, it also feels incredibly comfortable on the arm. I don’t have the biggest wrists and the Gear Fit is a tad more chunky than the likes of the Garmin Vivofit and the Nike Fuelband. But even with that considered, it’s surprisingly more comfortable than a lot of its competitors – in fact it’s so light that after an hour of wearing it I forgot it was even there.
The interface is also quite different to the Garmin Vivofit (which opts for a much simpler always-on, mostly monochrome LCD) or the Jawbone Up24 (which doesn’t have a display at all). It’s beautiful, vibrant, and even offers the ability to change the wallpaper if you so wish.
Gliding around the OS is as smooth as butter – swipe right from the screen and keep swiping to move through the different applications, and then just tap to start one up.
So far I’ve found that the touchscreen can be a tad too sensitive though, which can make jumping around the settings a little more fiddly than it should be given the size constraints. It’s very easy to hit the wrong icons, but it’s something you’ll do less of once you calibrate your swiping finger.
Move to the top of the device and you’ve got a single button to turn the screen on or off. One little feature I’m particularly fond of is Double Press, which lets you assign a function of your choice that can be instantly opened from sleep by tapping the button twice. Useful for seeing your notifications in a flash, or getting a quick update of the amount of steps you’ve taken so far that day.
In my brief play time so far I’ve had a tiny bit of quality outdoors time with the band. Knowing all too well that the screen gives off a lot of glare, Samsung lets you dial up the brightness from 1 to 6 – 6 being “Outdoor mode” – so you’re guaranteed to always have a clear reading and a nice vibrant screen in the daylight.
After 5 minutes at maximum brightness the Fit will turn the dial down to 4, which helps Samsung keep the battery life at 3-4 days. Or at least that’s what it claims – I’ll need to put that number to the test to be sure.
On the downside, the screen isn’t always on – as obviously that would obliterate the battery – but the Fit can be woken up to check the time with a 90-degree turn of the wrist. It’s a nice addition but you’ll probably find yourself more frequently using the button.
After the screen, the other big feature here is the heart rate monitor which you can access from the menu or enable when you start a run.
Building it into the device (something TomTom also decided to do this year for its Cardio Runner) is a very welcome move and means you’ll no longer have to worry about strapping any monitors to your chest. Mostly it picks up your heart rate pretty quickly, however it does requires you to keep your wrist almost perfectly still.
My first few attempts at getting a pulse proved futile as the Fit kept telling me off for moving. But once I’d nailed it the readings aligned accurately with the S5’s, which is good news, however I’ll need to compare it against a separate heart rate monitor before being able to draw any broader conclusions on accuracy.
Of course, there’s also a pedometer inside, and once running it’ll continue to track your movement throughout the day. A bare-bones feature of any fitness tracker, but worth mentioning that it’s in there.
So far, the smartphone notifications are proving a nice additional extra too and continue to blur the divide between “fitness band” and “smartwatch”.
So how you feel about this aspect of the Fit will depend on whether you like the idea of smartwatches in general. I paired mine up with the Gear Fit with a Galaxy S5, and connecting to the Gear Fit Manager app didn’t take too long.
You’ll need to set up a Samsung account if you haven’t already got one and enter your height, weight and a few other personal details into the S Health app before you get started.
As for the non-fitness notifications, it’s nice being able to read my emails and SMS messages on the display, but the shape of the screen means it’s not exactly ideal and demands a fair bit of scrolling.
There’s a handy “quick reply” option that lets you fire back a pre-tailored response (which you can write yourself), although it’s not an idea I’ve ever been keen on – very rarely do I find that a generic response will suffice.
One very welcome smartwatch-common feature that Samsung has thrown in is a media controller. As someone who needs music on a jog, I’m all too used to the the pains of having to get my phone out to change tracks/search/change the volume. So I’m pretty thankful to Samsung for that one.
Early Verdict
I need to spend a bit more time with the Gear Fit before I can cast a proper judgement but so far it’s making for a nifty fitness companion. The limit to Samsung devices will be a bugbear for a lot of people, especially when they see how nice that screen looks on the wrist.
However, if you’ve got a Samsung and you’re tempted by the Gear 2 or Gear 2 Neo, but aren’t sure you want to pay for the full parade of features, the Gear Fit was made with you in mind.
I’ll be updating this review with more thoughts once I’ve had some longer, quality time with Samsung’s new fitness band.
Powered by WPeMatico