REVIEW: Samsung's New Fitness Gadget Makes A Sleek Smartwatch
Apr 8, 2014, 09:31 IST
How It Works
The Gear Fit connects to your phone using Bluetooth and a special app called the Gear Fit Manager, which you have to download separately from the Google Play store for Android apps. It'll only sync with Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets, so other Android phone users are out of luck. The device itself is a pill-shaped mini computer with a bright, eye-catching 1.84-inch color touchscreen. It pops into a rubbery band that comes in a variety of colors so you can customize it whenever you want. It's incredibly light - just 27 grams - and largely mimics the feel of other popular fitness-tracking bands. After pairing the Gear Fit to your phone, you can use it to track your steps with a built-in pedometer, measure your heart rate, and display notifications like incoming calls, texts, emails and tweets from the apps installed on your smartphone. The health data syncs with Samsung's fitness app called S Health, which comes preinstalled on Galaxy phones and tablets. S Health helps you get a broad overview of your calories burned, average pulse, and other activities. You manage the other functions like incoming notifications and software updates using the Gear Fit Manager app on your phone. Whenever you get a new notification, the Gear Fit displays the text on the screen. You can tap a button to launch the corresponding app on your phone, or delete the notification and view it later. For incoming calls and texts, you can use the Gear Fit Manager to preprogram a few common responses like "I can't talk now…I'm in a meeting" so you don't have to pull out your phone. But for everything else, you'll need your phone to respond to incoming notifications.
What It's Like
You can think of the Gear Fit as a stripped-down version of last year's Galaxy Gear smartwatch. (Samsung has a new version of the Galaxy Gear, the Gear 2, that will launch the same day as the Fit.) The Gear Fit is more focused, beautiful and functional than the regular Gear line, which seems to be packed with a lot of unnecessary extras like a camera, universal remote control, and third-party apps. Instead, the Gear Fit concentrates on what's important: monitoring your fitness and displaying the notifications from your phone. I think that's a much more logical solution for a wearable device. The Gear Fit is also light and comfortable to wear thanks to its rubbery, flexible band and curved display that matches the contour of your wrist. It's more like a Fitbit or Nike FuelBand than the current generation of bulky smartwatches. With the Gear Fit, you won't look like a super geek wearing a wrist-computer from the future. The Gear Fit's design blends right in, yet still includes the added benefit of an attractive color display. And don't let it turn you off that the Gear Fit can't do as much as its big brother the Gear 2. Wearable computing is still in its infancy, and we're seeing too may companies - Samsung included- trying to shrink the smartphone down to a wearable size. But all those features and apps get in the way. A good wearable should be there when you need it and then disappear. The Gear Fit comes very close to that experience.