This year is a year of smart wearables, every company tries to come out with their own smartwatch, most of them claiming to have the best features and form factor. Samsung is a company that never misses such a product category, having rushed for the release of the GALAXY Gear last year, which has failed to live up to its expectations while having impressive features, the company has now learnt its lesson and released the successor to its smartwatch, revamping both software and hardware, the new smartwatch is now called the Samsung Gear 2.
Video Review
Same Same, But Different
This is an Asian quote, which means that though things look the same, it is totally different. The Gear 2 has the very same design as its predecessor, however Samsung has made a few changes here. The smartwatch is running on TIZEN OS and had its GALAXYbranding stripped off, the power/home button is now located right below the display, the camera is now located at the top edge of the watch face instead on the strap, and the loudspeaker is now located below the device instead of the watch clip. Besides all of these hardware changes, Samsung has also bumped the specs of the Gear 2.
Samsung Gear 2 Hardware Specifications
Processor: Dual-core 1GHz Samsung Exynos
RAM: 512MB
Storage: 4GB
Display: 1.63″ Super AMOLED 320×320
Camera: 2MP Autofocus, video recording up to 720p
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0, A2DP, IR Blaster
Features: Heart Rate Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyro Sensor, Built-in Music Player, S-Voice
Battery: 300mAh
Samsung has made major changes and addition to the Gear 2’s hardware, we see a processor speed bump from 800MHz, a built-in Heart Rate Sensor and IR Blaster for controlling your TV.
A true companion for your Samsung GALAXY smartphone
The Gear 2 has quickly become our favorite companion for our Samsung GALAXY S5, we mainly use it for receiving notifications and making phone calls with it, and we are really happy to report that all notifications configured via the Gear Manager app were received almost instantly without missing a single one and performing phone calls with the Gear 2 is very pleasant, callers have reported clear voice even if we do not speak directly to the smartwatch, you’ll look as if you’re talking to the air or through an invisible Bluetooth headset. Emails and messages were displayed very nicely on the Gear 2’s display, we are able to perform quick replies using preconfigured templates or view on phone.
The Gear 2 is a great help when you’re out of your phone’s reach, its pretty useful if your GALAXY device is really huge where you can’t simply take it out of your pocket or bag.
Humble selection of apps
The Gear 2 has an app store to go with it, in fact its actually part of the Samsung App Store which can be easily accessed via the Gear Manager. Although the number of apps that you can download on your Gear is very little, there are some nice apps that is great to go with such as Feedly Reader, an app that basically shows RSS feeds that you’re following, you can simply just read your news feeds conveniently on the Gear 2 unless you want to read the full article on your phone.
Most essential apps for the Gear 2 are fortunately free, and we certainly hope that Samsung will improve the App Store over time given the fact that TIZEN is still fairly young at its development stage.
Fitness features that works but not perfect
The Gear 2 features fitness features to track your fitness activities, which is where the heart rate sensor and gyro sensor kicks into action. The Gear 2 is able to track Walking, Running, Biking and Hiking activities and sync data back to S-Health on yourGALAXY smartphone after you’ve finished tracking, and we find it pretty very useful though we didn’t do much workouts with it.
The Heart Rate Sensor serves as a great reference, though we can’t really tell if it is really accurate. The Pedometer on the other hand is probably the most encouraging but inaccurate feature – Yes, it shows you the number of steps you’ve walked, but even if we are sitting still and sometimes moving our hands, the Pedometer still calculates our steps, which means the gyro sensor isn’t functioning well, it can capture more than a 100 steps before you even noticed it.
We merely treat the fitness features as an additional feature to the Gear 2 and never took it seriously, but we still wish Samsungcould address these issues.
Camera
When we first saw the GALAXY Gear with a built-in camera, we are awed but skeptical at the same time, it’s amazing howSamsung could think of fitting a camera into a smartwatch form factor, we also laughed at the fact that nobody wants to take pictures using the watch’s camera. The Gear 2’s 2-Megapixel camera has impressed us this time, we find ourselves taking pictures with the watch at times when it isn’t convenient to take our phone out. Pictures taken with the Gear 2’s camera is surprisingly good at colour reproduction and not as grainy looking as we can imagine, sharpness is still lacking a little but it is good enough for a smartwatch camera. Check out pictures taken with the Gear 2’s camera down below.
The Gear 2 is also able to shoot videos in 720p resolution, you’ll need to configure the resolution manually and it’s only records up to 15 seconds.
Pictures and videos taken with the Gear 2 will be synchronized back to your GALAXY smartphone and it works reliably.
Battery Life
The Gear 2’s battery life is amazing, while we haven’t used the GALAXY Gear before, we heard that battery life was terrible and only lasted for a day. We used the Gear 2 moderately, by making 2-3 phone calls with it and receiving about 15 notifications a day, the watch manage to last us 6 days as what Samsung has quoted on its specifications. Judging by the watch’s hardware and display, such battery life should only exist on the Pebble Steel which uses an E-Ink display. Of course, if you tend to use a lot of its fitness features, expect the battery life decrease to 3-4 days, but nevertheless, it is still good.
One complain that we have over here is the charging clip the Samsung provides in the package, the clip isn’t our favorite and it is a thing that we tend to forget if we want to travel with the watch, and it is a really small thing that you can misplace easily. Why can’t they just have a built-in MicroUSB port at the side of the watch and cover it with a plastic flap?
Verdict
The Samsung Gear 2 is a major improvement from the Galaxy Gear, its great hardware and reliable software makes it one of the best smartwatch to invest on. We really wish that the company could one day turn the support switch ON for other Android devices and we don’t mind losing some Samsung proprietary features such as S-Voice and WatchON. The Samsung Gear 2 retails at RM899 with a range of strap and watch colors, it isn’t cheap but if you need a wearable companion for your GALAXYsmartphone, this is the best choice that you’ve got.
The Good
+ Beautiful Super AMOLED display
+ Responsive touch display
+ Great battery life
+ Acts as a standalone music player
+ Supports A2DP music streaming
+ IP67 Water/Dust resistant
+ Decent camera
+ Reliable software and connection
+ Decent speakerphone call quality
The Bad
-Apps still limited
-Fitness features require improvement
-Charging clip not convenient
-Only works with Samsung GALAXY devices with Android 4.3 and above.
We rate the Samsung Gear 2 at 4 out of 5 stars.
