as
the holiday season approaches and New Year's and its inevitable
fitness-related resolutions draw near, wearables makers are scrambling.
Major brands like Apple and Samsung have realized that smartwatches need to at least
be good activity trackers for users to keep wearing them. Samsung
decided that "good activity tracker" wasn't enough, though, and built a device around exercise
that also packs a slew of smartwatch features. The Gear Sport does so
much that it's one of the most versatile health-centric smartwatches in
this price range.
Pros
- Attractive case
- Useful rotating bezel
- Bright, colorful screen
- Four-day battery
Cons
- Unreliable sleep tracking
- New calorie tracking feature doesn’t feel complete
Summary
The Gear Sport is a jack
of many trades and master of few. Samsung stuffed the smartwatch with an
ambitious array of features -- from fitness, calorie and sleep-tracking
to smart home control, contactless payments, music playback and more.
Some of these, like guided workouts and smartphone notifications, work
well. Others, like sleep-tracking, lag the competition. Still, this is a
powerful, versatile and attractive smartwatch for the price.
Hardware
I adore
the Gear Sport's round face and shiny chrome finish. I especially love
my review unit's subtle blue case that manages to be at once unique and
understated. The body itself feels sophisticated, but it's a tad chunky
even for a sport watch. It's heavier than the Fitbit Ionic, Garmin
Vivoactive 3 and the Apple Watch series 3, although slightly smaller
than the Gear S3. In fact, it's hefty enough that I dreaded wearing it to track my sleep. But I did anyway, for you, dear Engadget readers
The Gear Sport's standard blue rubber strap isn't the most
attractive, and almost makes the watch feel cheap. But at least it's
easy to swap this out for any better-looking 20mm band. With the
original strap, though, the Gear Sport is water-resistant up to 50
meters, and can even withstand a salty dip in the ocean. I didn't get to
go to the beach, so I haven't tested that claim, but it survived being
stuck under a running tap.
Like most Samsung smartwatches, the
Sport runs Tizen OS and features a rotating bezel that you use to
navigate the interface. I love how easy this makes scrolling through
notifications and apps, plus it clicks satisfyingly each time I turn it a
notch. In fact, this may be my favorite way to use a smartwatch. Those
who prefer to swipe may swipe away, too, but I prefer not to smudge up
the vibrant, round 1.2-inch Super AMOLED display, which is a pretty
crisp 360 x 360.
In Use
Tizen OS has come a long way since its birth five years ago. It's easy to use, if somewhat cluttered. It now supports thousands of apps, and there are plenty of useful options you can download, including Uber, MyFitnessPal and Spotify
.
.
Even if you don't add any apps yourself, the Gear Sport comes chock
full of pre-installed options, most of which you can't delete. Some of
these are useful, like Messages, Samsung's own S Health and S Voice. But
some, like Flipboard's "News Briefing" just add clutter. Install too
many, and your app menu quickly loads up. Luckily, you can rearrange
them so your favorites are up front and easier to access.
Something
the Gear Sport does that the competition can't is let you track your
calorie input from the watch itself. No need to whip out your phone to
enter how much you're stuffing your belly. It's a lot more convenient,
and also gives a clearer picture of your progress throughout the day.
Since the Gear Sport knows your net calorie performance all day, it can
remind you to either work harder to burn more calories to reach your
goal, or eat more if you're under your target.
That never happened
during my testing, though, even when the numbers I estimated for
breakfast and lunch never added up to my daily target. It's not clear if
I had to be off my goal by a certain number before the alerts would
kick in, either. Guessing my calories consumed isn't a very accurate way
to track my progress, and you can't search for food from a database
from the watch itself. But for someone who already knows how much they
typically consume, this is a welcome convenience
This also makes the Gear Sport feel like a health-first device. Of
course, you can map your runs with built-in GPS, and even get your heart
rate underwater while you're taking a break between laps. Plus, it will
automatically detect workouts like running, cycling and elliptical
activity once you've been at it for at least 10 minutes.
If you're using the Gear Sport with a recent Samsung phone
or TV, you can get training guides and your heart rate cast to the
bigger screens. There are more than 60 workouts available, and the
company says more are coming. You'll have to go to the Programs section
of the app's menu on your phone, but once you're there, you'll find a
comprehensive array of tutorials across categories like "Weight loss,"
"Endurance training," "Muscle training" and "Running".
I picked
"Tabata 4-minute Beginner Fat Burn" from the weight loss group, which
added a schedule to my profile, as well as an icon to the watch's
Workout widget that would start the tutorial. I tapped the symbol, and a
countdown appeared simultaneously on the Gear Sport and my Galaxy Note
8. Both the watch and phone told me what exercise to do, kept me updated
on each set's duration and let me skip ahead or pause if I needed. Only
the phone displayed a video of each exercise, though.
It felt
slightly cumbersome to keep looking at the phone while working out,
especially for exercises like planks and leg lifts that made it
difficult to see the device. But I can see how convenient this would be
on a TV. Fitbit offers a similar guided workout feature on the Ionic,
except it shows the tutorials directly on the watch face, which is
easier to follow. Fitbit only provides three to five guides for free
though, and those who want more need to subscribe to the company's
premium plan. Personally, I prefer Samsung's generosity over Fitbit's
convenience.
.
Like rival fitness trackers, the Gear Sport also monitors your sleep,
although from my experience it's not as accurate as the Fitbit Ionic. I
woke up one night to grab a stray pillow before it fell off my bed, but
the Gear Sport didn't register even a blip in my slumber. It also
counted an hour I spent looking at my phone one morning as time spent
asleep.
The Gear Sport is better at being a smartwatch than it is
at being an activity tracker. Not only does it let you send and receive
messages, it also stores up to 4GB or so of music. If you're a Spotify
Premium user, you can even save your playlists locally. You can stream
your tunes to any Bluetooth headphones, but connecting to the $200 IconX
earbuds that Samsung launched in tandem is easiest. They feel
comfortable, last for two days with my 40-minute commute and deliver
decent audio quality.
Being able to play music from your watch is
one of a few features meant to make it easier to leave your house
without your phone. There's also Samsung Pay, although it works only
with NFC and doesn't support magnetic-swipe transmissions like it does
on the phone, so you can't use it at terminals that only accept MST.
When you're home, you can also use the watch to control connected
devices if you own a SmartThings hub
.
A fun, if slightly gimmicky, thing the Gear Sport can do is act as a
remote control for PowerPoint slides on your PC. This was surprisingly
easy to set up -- I just had to connect my watch and laptop via
Bluetooth, fire up my presentation and use the Gear Sport's bezel to
click through pages. I could also draw on the wearable's screen to move
the laptop's cursor -- neat!
So far, I hadn't been pushing the
Gear Sport very hard. It was 60 percent charged when I first put it on
and lasted about three-and-a-half days before asking me to enable
low-power mode. That's in line with Samsung's estimate of about three to
four days depending on use and beats the Apple Watch 3 by about two
days.
The competition
The Gear Sport occupies an awkward niche in the $300 smartwatch category. On one end, you have the Apple Watch Series 3, which, by virtue of its better messaging and Siri integration, makes the most sense for iPhone users.
On the other end of the spectrum sits the Garmin Vivoactive 3,
which uses the company's own operating system and tracks a wide variety
of workouts. It's not as stylish as Samsung's watch, but serious
runners may prefer Garmin for its established GPS expertise. Plus, the
Vivoactive 3 is supposed to last up to seven days on a charge (though,
we haven't tested the device for ourselves and can't vouch for its
performance.
There's also the Fitbit Ionic,
which offers better sleep-tracking and more comprehensive fitness
features than the Gear Sport. The Ionic's battery also lasts five days
with typical use, which is longer than the Gear. But Fitbit's first real
smartwatch doesn't offer many of the apps or features we've come to
expect. Plus, its geometric design isn't for everyone. The Ionic will
most likely appeal to existing Fitbit fans.
Android Wear watches, like the Huawei Watch 2,
are the most similar to the Sport. They often pack a heart-rate monitor
and track your activity via Google Fit. On the downside, they typically
don't last as long as the Gear Sport, aren't as water-resistant and
tend to lack the built-in fitness-tracking features like calorie
monitoring or automatic activity-detection.
Wrap-up
Ultimately,
the Gear Sport is almost as robust a fitness tracker as it is a
smartwatch, and is one of the most versatile in the category, especially
for those who already own Samsung's phones and TVs. Plus, its unique
rotating bezel continues to stand out as the best way to interact with a
smartwatch. Despite its ambitious array of helpful tools, it still
manages to squeeze out impressive battery life. Samsung's
fitness-tracking features may not be as accurate as the competition, but
the Gear Sport does enough to satisfy casual gym-goers.
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