This light and easy-to-strap-on Android smartwatch is quite a looker and has the best-looking screen among any smartwatch on the market to date. Samsung Gear Fit 2 still lacks the kind of statistics and tracking that a fitness freak may want, but for people who exercise casually or moderately, the watch gives you pretty much everything you need.
The Samsung Gear Fit is pitched at fitness tracking, hence the name. As a person who exercises three or four days a week, I found this watch useful for tracking my heart rate, providing me with heart zone information (a range of heart rates that you should stay within for best exercise results and will keep you from dying from over exercising), steps (which I normally do not care about but I got constant nagging from this watch to get my butt moving every now and then), tracks how well I sleep (who cares?) -- other than that it is pretty much another smartwatch that buzzes you for every little notification you get on your phone.
I mentioned earlier that it does provide "heart zone" information but it does so unobtrusively, not prominently, and does not get shown in real time during exercise routines. For hardcore cyclists like my friend (who used this on a couple of his rides), this can be a deal breaker. And somehow, I unsuccessfully attempted to get the smartwatch to track my sit-ups, even though it's listed as one of the exercises that it can track.
You certainly wouldn't be shy to wear this watch in public, and you can even swap straps if you want, but they are sold separately, in pink, blue and black colours. The watch can be easily strapped on and does not come undone accidentally unless you bang it on to some wall really hard, I guess.
IP68 water resistant capability means you can dunk this in 1.5m-deep water and it will survive as long as it's less than 30 minutes. In real life, this means that you can wear it in the rain and to wash dishes without worrying that it will explode.
The screen on this is large and has popping colours. It's very bright and can be read easily in bright sunlight (when you push the brightness up, of course). It is very responsive to swipes and touches and is as good as any smartphone screen for navigation and notification readings. Too bad notifications are not shown in full for many apps, but this is more to do with Android wear OS than the actual watch itself. At least, you can see email titles, read Line or Skype messages (and do some basic replies), choose music tracks and those kind of things.
Screen: 1.5-inch (216x432 pixels)
Sensor: Heart rate, accelerometer, gyro, barometer
Battery: 200mAh
Connectivity: Bluetooth, GPS
Internal memory: 4GB
Chipset: Exynos 3250 Dual-core 1GHz
RAM: 512MB
OS: Tizen
Colour variation: Pink, black, blue
Price: 6,500 baht
Three days is this watch's typical battery life cycle when used as a notification plus casual exercise tracking device, which is very acceptable. Although my friend, who used it to track his intense 4-hour cycling road trip, said that the battery drained from 100% to 52% after the session.
The watch has 4GB of internal storage which can be used for music files, but I think most people will keep their music files on their phones. So this is simply a nice feature just in case you forget to bring your phone with you.
If paired to a smartphone (it doesn't have to be a Samsung phone, I've tried it with Asus and Oppo phones), it means that it relies a lot on the one you've paired it with. Even time on the watch may freeze if you leave your phone behind. All the information the watch tracks is synchronised to the S Health app. The watch can run solely on its own without pairing to a phone, but you'll be losing quite a number of exercise stats and notification features.
This device costs 6,500 baht and can be considered cheap compared to other branded smartwatches, which can be a great starter point for anyone who wants a well-rounded fitness tracker/smartwatch.
