Samsung has furthered its ambitions in the fitness wearables market with a new fitness tracker and a set of wireless earbuds.
The original Samsung Gear Fit wasn’t fit for purpose, thanks to poor battery life and inconsistent or just plain unhelpful data – two instant no-nos in this competitive field.
Samsung has taken a while to follow that flawed device up, but after two years it’s just done that with the announcement of the Samsung Gear Fit 2. It looks to be an improvement in every way.
The Samsung Gear Fit 2 has a more compact (but sharper) 1.5-inch AMOLED display, improved four day battery life, integrated GPS, a heart rate monitor, and the promise of better activity tracking. It also has a waterproof rating of IP68.
Like the original, it also has a couple of features that carry it into smartwatch territory. The Gear Fit 2 has 4GB of storage, so you’ll be able to load it up with music for your run. It can also pull notifications from your smartphone, and provide one-tap responses to messages.
To that end, the Samsung Gear Fit 2 runs on a customised version of Samsung’s Tizen OS.
In truth we all knew that the Samsung Gear Fit 2 was coming, and even what it would look like thanks to a couple of major leaks.
Related: Best fitness trackers
Perhaps more of a surprise was Samsung’s announcement of the Gear Icon X wireless earbuds. Not only do these Bluetooth ‘buds pump tunes to your ears while you’re exercising, they’ll also help track the distance, speed, duration, heart rate and calories burned during your fitness activities.
The Icon X can provide vocal feedback on your progress, and even has some local storage so that you can store music on them. Basically, they’ve been designed so that you don’t need to take your smartphone out with you on your run.
The Gear Fit 2 will be available from June 10 for $180 (the original was $200 / £170) while the Gear Icon X will hit some time in Q3 for $200.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
