Does Gear Fit 2 Have Continuous Heart Rate Monitor

Samsung's first effort, the Gear Fit ($224.33 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , was an attractive and functional fitness tracker held back by some irritating limitations. Chief among them was the fact that you needed a Samsung Galaxy phone to use it. Samsung has solved this issue, along with many others, with the Gear Fit2 ($179.99). The company's latest fitness tracker pairs with any smartphone running Android 4.4 or higher, or can work without a phone. It also adds some handy new features, like built-in GPS and a music player, so you don't need your phone to listen to tunes or track your path on a run. And you can customize the tracker with downloadable apps and watch faces, though it doesn't offer as much functionality as a dedicated smartwatch. Overall, the Samsung Gear Fit2 is a solid high-end fitness tracker with plenty to offer, though the Fitbit Surge ($244.90 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) remains our top pick for its top-notch app, wider compatibility, and continuous heart rate monitoring.

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Design, Fit, and Battery Life
Sleeker and more streamlined, albeit larger than the original, the Fit2 ($299.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) has a 1.5-inch curved Super AMOLED touch screen that rests flush against the body of the tracker, flowing smoothly into the rubber wristband. Small Back and Apps buttons sit on the right (if worn on your left hand). It comes in black, blue, or pink versions, with two wristband sizes for each: Small, for wrists 4.9 to 6.7 inches around, and Large, for wrists 6.1 to 8.3 inches.

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The wristband has a small peg on one end, and a series of holes running up to a wide loop on the other end. The pegged end runs through the loop to pull the wristband securely around your wrist, and the peg presses into the appropriate hole. This holds the band comfortably in place, but it isn't quite as secure as a conventional buckle. The peg came loose once while testing, though fortunately the wristband didn't come undone.

Although it shares a similar design with the Microsoft Band 2 ($199.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , I found the Fit2 to be significantly more comfortable. I barely noticed it was on my wrist, feeling much closer to the Fitbit Charge HR ($100.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) in its evenly distributed weight and smooth wristband. It's also less noticeable than my Pebble Time ($78.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) smartwatch, with its prominent, heavy face.

An optical heart rate monitor is underneath the display, pressing against your wrist as you wear the Gear Fit2. The underside of the tracker also has two contact points for the included proprietary charging cradle, a small stand that holds the Fit2 horizontally when charging. The cradle is necessary for charging; the tracker doesn't have any ports for a wired connection.

According to Samsung, the Fit2 can last up to four days between charges. I found this to be a generous estimate; during testing, I saw about three days per charge with moderate use, and without taking much taking advantage of the built-in music player.

Like any good fitness tracker, the Fit2 is fairly rugged. It's rated IP68, which means it can handle being submerged in five feet of water for up to 30 minutes.

Interface
The tracker runs Tizen OS, an open source platform Samsung has adopted for its Gear devices that is neither Samsung's original proprietary Gear platform nor Google's Android Wear. The Fit2's Tizen implementation isn't as directly and simply compatible with Android as Android Wear is, but Android Wear has its own frustrations and problems, as we've seen on hybrid fitness trackers/smartwatches like the Moto 360 Sport . As its own interface, Tizen OS on the Fit2 is simple and relatively easy to navigate its various fitness functions and limited additional apps. While the tracker is compatible with all devices running Android 4.4 or later, it does not work with iOS, so iPhones and iPads are out. It also can work as a standalone device, though it significantly limits its features.

I tested the Fit2 with a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which connected to the watch easily, and the Google Nexus 6P, required some awkward manual app installation. You need to install the Samsung Gear app on your phone to connect with the Fit2, and Samsung's S Health app to complete the process. During that setup sequence, you also have to install two Android services to make sure the Fit2 communicates properly with your phone. Galaxy phones have these services and apps all set up, so it's much simpler, but the Nexus 6P worked perfectly well with the Fit2 after some troubleshooting. A tip for non-Samsung Android users: If the Samsung Gear app hangs while trying to connect to the Fit2 on setup, you might need to manually install the S Health app. That should get things running.

The 1.5-inch touch screen is bright, colorful, and responsive. It's laid out in a thin portrait orientation when you wear it on your wrist, which forces digital watch faces to either use small numbers or stack hours on top of minutes. The screen's shape can make information look cramped, particularly when displaying any sort of text in large amounts; message notifications in particular often trail off halfway through words. Trackers and smartwatches closer to the Apple Watch ($300.00 at eBay)(Opens in a new window) in form factor have a distinct advantage in their ability to display information, since a wider screen can show text much more comfortably. The screen is easily viewable in all but the brightest direct sunlight, where the E Ink-based Withings Go ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) has an advantage.

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Watch faces can show the time, number of steps taken, your heart rate, the weather, and a variety of other pieces of information, depending on the face you use. The Fit2 comes with a handful of fitness-oriented watch faces that display workout information alongside the time, and in the case of the heart face, offers on-demand heart rate monitoring with a tap. Simpler watch faces, like the digital clock I settled with, let you add complications to show additional information. By default the digital clock shows a step counter, but I changed it to a weather widget through the Samsung Gear app.

Your watch face of choice appears by default whenever you push one of the buttons on the tracker, or raise your wrist to your face, a gesture I found reliable. Swiping down from the watch face brings a simplified control panel that shows Bluetooth status and battery life, a Do Not Disturb control, the ability to adjust screen brightness, and quick access to the Fit2's music player. Swiping left from the watch face displays any notifications you've received on your connected phone or the tracker itself. The notifications history goes back surprisingly far, with colorful icons showing if each notification is an email, text message, phone call, fitness update, or something else. Tapping a notification brings up the first few words of the message (if it's a text or email), which can be scrolled through by swiping the screen up or down. If it's a message that can be replied to, the option to send a canned response shows up at the bottom. You can add your own responses through the Samsung Gear app, but they're limited to 20 characters.

Swiping right on the watch face takes you to the Fit2's different exercise panes. You can swipe through your progress and status in terms of calories burned, steps taken, stairs climbed, and your heart rate. You can even add additional health-oriented panes like counters for how much water and coffee you drink through the day.

The two physical buttons are only used for returning to the watch face and navigating backward from different screens; every other function depends on the screen. I found the touch screen responsive, but not always perfectly accurate. I could swipe easily left and right between the different exercise panes most of the time, but the Fit2 occasionally registered my gesture as a tap rather than a swipe, telling the active pane to go into a more detailed view, start an exercise activity, or measure my heart rate.

App Integration and Standalone Functionality
Apps and watch faces are available through the Samsung Gear app and the Samsung Galaxy store (which the Gear app automatically sends you to), though I found few examples of either when testing the Fit2 ahead of its official launch. The most useful apps available were updates of Samsung's own Stopwatch and Timer apps. Besides that, I only found three Fit2 watch faces from an unknown developer, and a few additional pieces of software, like a Weather Channel app/watch face combination and Asphalt 6, which are clearly intended for the round Samsung Gear smartwatches, and not the Fit2's narrow, rectangular screen. The Weather Channel watch face installed, but the Fit2 could only show a portion of the round layout. Watch faces and apps for the Fit2 have already begun trickling onto the Galaxy Store trhe morning of the watch's launch, so hopefully a steady supply of customization options and applications will come to the device over time.

You can also use the Gear app to send music directly to the Fit2 in order to use the tracker as a standalone music player. It can make a separate connection to Bluetooth headphones, even when it's connected to your smartphone. The Fit2 has 4GB of built-in storage, but about half of that is taken up with Tizen OS and other system software; the rest can be used for music, or for additional apps and watch faces. You can swipe up in the music player to navigate by albums, artists, and playlists, making it a bit more flexible than just a directory to dump tracks to listen to on shuffle.

The Fit2 also supports Spotify, but not for streaming music directly from the watch to your earphones. It's a control system that works in conjunction with Spotify on your smartphone to control it, and it's your phone that streams music to your Bluetooth earphones. The Fit2's Spotify app shows album art and can navigate your library's playlists, albums, and songs. It can also play music from Spotify's automatically generated workout playlists. However, you can't browse other music or search from the Fit2.

You can also use the Fit2 without a smartphone, and it's surprisingly functional this way. Obviously, notifications, music uploads, and syncing fitness information cannot be performed when the tracker is running in phone-free mode, but it can still do a great deal. The fitness elements, including the heart rate monitor, are still available when not connected to a phone, along with many settings and customization options like different watch faces and rearranging how apps appear in the Fit2's menu. It works as a perfectly functional watch, too, with the ability to set the display to always-on and manually set the time through the touch screen.

Fitness Features
Samsung loaded the Fit2 with sensors, including a pedometer, GPS, and a heart rate monitor, which is rare in the sub-$200 realm. Most of these sensors function automatically depending on the active watch face or fitness pane open. They also work automatically to detect when you're exercising and exactly what you're doing. The Fit2 clearly tracked when I walked, jogged, and ran on an elliptical. It also noticed when I sat still for too long, and gave me a nudge to get moving for a bit (these notificaitons, as well as exercise detection, can be disabled if you wish).

Thanks to built-in GPS, the Fit2 can track your walks and runs, recording the routes you take. It won't track your location when it automatically detects exercise, however; you need to manually set your runs through the Exercise pane. Once you enter the activity and desired time, the Fit2 will track your movements as soon as you tap Start. While the Fit2 will record your location and display the shape of the route you take on its own (which you can check in the watch's exercise log), it won't display a map to provide context for your route until you can sync it with your smartphone so it can download map information. Once it does this, however, the results are detailed and accurate.

The heart rate monitor requires a few seconds of not moving to measure your heart rate, and isn't ongoing, like the Fitbit Charge HR's monitor. The Fit2 will automatically record and track your heart rate when you're still, but when you're active you'll need to stop for a moment to check your pulse.

I wore the Fit2 along with a Fitbit Charge HR for a long run on an elliptical, a short power walk after, and a long stroll through the East Village after that (with a subway ride between them). The Fit2's pedometer stayed within 50 steps of the Fitbit's the whole way. The heart rate results were similar as well, within about 5bpm. The Fit2 was slightly less generous when counting stairs than the Fitbit, recording a flight less than the Charge HR.

Conclusions
The Gear Fit2 shows just how far Samsung has come in the field of fitness trackers. It's a major improvement over the original Gear Fit, adding support for non-Samsung Android devices, standalone functionality, and more sensors than you'll often find at this price point. That said, the smartwatch functionality isn't terribly robust, with few apps and watch faces to choose from at launch. But overall, the Fit2's additional functionality and fairly reasonable price tag make it an attractive option for users who want a fitness tracker that can do much more than just tell time and track your workout. But if you're truly dedicated to fitness, the Fitbit Surge remains our Editors' Choice for its more reliable, continuous heart rate monitoring and longer battery life.

The Bottom Line

With some solid improvements over its predecessor, the Samsung Gear Fit2 is a powerful fitness tracker and a fairly functional smartwatch.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-gear-fit2

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