Samsung Gear 2 Review, Offers More Than First-Gen Gear But Not For Everyone
With the launch of the first Samsung Gear, the company had to hear a lot against its product due to its design and features. Samsung thought of bringing everything in the smartwatch but it ended up with overflow of elements seeming to look ugly and priced at a premium rate.
Though the Samsung Gear 2 got introduced pretty soon, it has some upgraded features that might help it to move to another league. But again, the price of the product is high targeting only a niche market.
With the Gear 2, Samsung has decided to shift from the Android and its now running the jointly developed Tizen OS. It offers great new features like more battery life, heart rate monitor, full metal body, camera and customisable straps.
Design and Build
The Gear 2 comes in a unique feature of its own and certainly looks better than the Glaxy Gear in terms of its aesthetics and build. Samsung gives the freedom of changing the straps of the smartwatch by providing colour options. While doing this, it has managed to move all the electronics such as home button and camera to the body of the device rather than being a small plastic button on the side of the watch.
With the metallic button on the front and the 2MP camera and IR blaster at the other end, the Gear 2 has a premium look due to its stainless steel body which is highly durable. Samsung is glued to its docking system for charging and brought the heart-rate monitor from the S5 to the Gear 2.
Features
The Gear 2 has a 1.6 inch Super AMOLED display, good touch sensitivity and colours and black levels. It is dust resistant and water resistant as it is also IP67 certified. The interface is somewhat smooth as the screen sometimes doesn't respond to the intensity of the swipes which might be due to Tizen or the dual core CPU and 512MB RAM onboard. The S voice works a bit faster when the voice is really loud and clear.
Performance and Battery Life
The Gear 2 takes all the features of the Galaxy Gear and the Samsung Gear Fit, giving it a well solid feature device. The Gear 2 lets you measure your heart-rate, sleep cycle, exercise routine and keep a track of the steps you've walked. Other bundled apps include Media Controller, Music player, Schedule, stop watch, timer, voice memo, weather and WatchON remote. It has a 4GB onboard storage and can record videos up to 720p.
While using all these features like taking calls, using the fitness features, camera, music player, the battery life seems to be better than the Galaxy Gear.
Gear 2 has managed to bring in some key specs and improve the design, it is still expensive priced at $295.