14 DAY TRIAL // Apple launched the Apple Watch Series 3 earlier this year with LTE support and only some other subtle improvements, so it’s now Samsung’s turn to refresh its wearable lineup with a new model.
After the Gear S3, which was received with much enthusiasm by customers across the world, Samsung took the wraps off the so-called Gear Sport, a device that doesn’t give up on the watch look, but whose name suggests a somewhat increased focus on activity tracking.
At first glance, the Gear Sport seems more of a successor of the Gear S2, though by putting it in the sports category, Samsung doesn’t seem to be interested in marketing the device as such. Instead, the Gear Sport appears to be positioned somewhere in between the Fit2 Pro and the Gear S3, offering a mix of the two with a focus on fitness borrowed from the first and a classic watch look inspired by the latter.
At $299, the Gear Sport is an intriguing device, and it is available in either black or blue, both versions manufactured from stainless steel and coming with a soft silicone band that matches the color of the case.
First of all, let’s review the essentials. The Gear Sport comes with a 1.2-inch Super AMOLED screen protected by Gorilla Glass 3 and features a 360x360 pixel resolution. At 67 grams with the standard band, it’s pretty light, and the 42.9 x 44.6 mm case finally makes it appropriate for people with normally-sized wrists.
The Gear Sport seems to fit pretty much any wrist just perfectly, as compared to the Gear S3 which looks ridiculously especially in the case of people with small wrists. I like to think that my wrists aren't the size of Hulk's and whenever I am wearing the Gear S3 I just feel like I’m carrying a hockey puck with me wherever I’m going. The Gear Sport, on the other hand, is feather light and it’s a watch that looks like a watch, so there’s little to complain about here.
The stainless steel case comes with a shiny finish, so it looks kind of premium. The watch features a rotating bezel just like the one on the Samsung Gear S2 and which can quickly generate some sort of addiction thanks to the feedback it provides when being rotated. I’ve found myself rotating the bezel for no reason just because I was bored and my subconscious apparently loved the feeling it offered.
Before actually discussing the features of the watch, there’s something that’s worth knowing about the bands. The Gear Sport comes with soft silicone bands which not only that serve their purpose very well during workouts, but they also look good and seem to fit both casual and sports outfits.
Naturally, the blue version of the smartwatch comes with a blue band, while the black model features a black strap. We tested both of them, but in the case of the blue watch, the band had a strong toxic smell that wouldn’t go off with the typical washing and cleaning methods.
Needless to say, a toxic smell raises questions as to how safe it is to wear the band 24/7, so what we did was contact Samsung to ask for more information on the possible reasons that might have caused the unexpected odor. While no such details were shared, Samsung provided us with another band and offered the following statement:
“ This is the only report concerning the blue Gear Sport smartwatch, and we haven’t received any other complaints on the local market or globally. We recommend our customers to purchase the Samsung Gear Sport and accessories from authorized Samsung partners. ”
Our recommendation: should you discover any problem with your Gear Sport band, make sure you get in touch with Samsung as soon as possible to receive assistance.Getting back to the device itself, it’s powered by Tizen 3.0, Samsung’s in-house operating system for wearables (and which at some point was aimed at smartphones as well) and comes with hardware that you typically expect from such a powerful device, including an accelerometer, a gyroscope sensor, barometer, heart-rate monitoring, and ambient light sensor. There’s Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, GPS, and NFC for Samsung Pay.
One of the things I enjoyed the most is water resistance, as the Gear Sport supports water up to 50 meters deep, which makes it just perfect for swimming. Samsung has developed advanced swimming support that can count laps and event detect the style, with the typical stats presented at the end of the session like calories burned and covered distance.
There’s support for a wide variety of activities, and as compared to the Apple Watch but just like the bigger Gear S3 and the activity-focused Gear Fit2 Pro, the Gear Sport features auto-detection of new workouts.
This means that you can always jump on your bike and start pedaling without having to worry that you’d lose stats because the Gear Sport does the whole job for you. GPS tracking kicks in when activity tracking starts and the connection is established, with an estimate of your workout from the starting point to the beginning of monitoring.
“It can track eve-ry-thing.”
The Gear Sport obviously provides notifications when you’ve been sitting for too long, and in case you can’t stand up and walk a bit, the watch asks you to perform five torso twists to remain active. Should you ignore the notification, it remains in the action center, and you can launch it at a later time whenever you feel like beating chronic laziness.
The 1.2-inch Super AMOLED display looks absolutely stunning, and it confirms once again that Samsung makes some of the best screen panels out there. Colors are vivid, the contrast is perfect, and brightness is optimized even for use in direct sunlight. This is particularly important for athletes, so not necessarily for me, but I had no problem checking out my notifications outdoors while heading to McDonald’s.
The screen, however, is protected with Gorilla Glass 3 and not Gorilla Glass 5, which is the latest generation, and this is most likely a cost-cutting measure to make the watch a bit more affordable.
The Gear Sport comes with a 300 mAh battery that should generally be enough to get you through the day, but we experienced different behavior on our test units. On the black version, battery life has been better most of the time, lasting for around one day and a half, while on the blue model, it barely got 24 hours per charge.
That wouldn’t be a problem if fast charging were available. But charging the Gear Sport is so slow that it’s becoming frustrating and close to turning into a reason for not buying the device at all. Using the included accessories, the Gear Sport charges from 10 percent to 100 percent in nearly 2 hours and a half, so you can forget about quick charging sessions when taking a shower.
If you think of using a Samsung fast charger to overcome this, we already tried that, and there’s no visible improvement. Charging is without a doubt one of the most significant drawbacks that makes it nearly impossible to use the device 24/7.
You can choose between several heart-rate monitoring modes, and while Samsung recommends the “frequent” option for optimal battery life, switching to “always” is what many people who want to keep an eye on their heart activity might do. This has a strong impact on battery life, but it’s no surprise here, with Samsung itself warning that autonomy could drop significantly with this feature.
But on the other hand, that’s a bit unexpected from a device that’s supposed to compete against full-time activity trackers from other brands. Both the Fitbit Ionic and the Garmin Fenix 5s offer continuous heart-rate monitoring with little impact on battery life, so Samsung needs to spend a bit more time in this area.
“Charging is painful. Like 2 hours and a half painful.”
There are also more subtle things that need to be improved, such as the charger, which provides no visible feedback when charging. The LED light on the charger is always red and does not turn green when 100 percent level is reached, even though it would simply make sense to change colors. (UPDATE: as it turns out, the LED does turn green when the charging cycle is complete, but this does not happen every time, but on random occasions).
The Gear Sport can be used with both Android and iOS, but it goes without saying that you’ll be getting the best experience with a Samsung smartphone. I’ve tested it on other Android phones, and you need to install six different apps and services to make the most of the Gear Sport.
On the iPhone, the experience is a little bit different. Until recently, Samsung Health only supported the Gear Fit2 Pro, but during our test, Samsung actually rolled out support for Gear Sport as well. This means that Samsung’s fitness app is now available on the iPhone with support for this latest device, and this is certainly good news given that previously there was absolutely no way to sync activity data with your iPhone. Apple Health isn’t supported, obviously.
Also, on the iPhone there’s no way to download new watch faces from the Gear app, so you need to do the whole thing on the watch itself. If you close the Samsung Gear app on the iPhone, you also lose sync features between the phone and the watch, so make sure you always keep it running.
The Samsung Gear Sport comes with all the bells and whistles of a modern smartwatch, and while it does feature some advantages over the Gear S3, it also comes with a series of drawbacks. The 300 vs. 380 mAh battery can easily be a deal-breaker for many, but on the other hand, it features water resistance up to 50 meters and military grade protection.
The slow charging makes the battery difference even more painful, especially because it takes at least a couple of hours to fully charge the device. I typically charge my smartwatches while taking a shower, and on devices like the Apple Watch or even the Fitbit Ionic, 10 or 15 minutes are enough to get enough juice for half a day. On the Gear Sport, you barely get 5 percent of battery.
The Samsung Gear Sport looks premium on the outside but feels mediocre on the inside. It has a high-quality finish, an addictive rotating bezel, and a stunning display, but on the other hand, it loses my vote when it comes to iOS connectivity, battery life, and charging. Is it worth the $300? Not with so many alternatives offering much more than that for an even smaller price tag.
My verdict: the Samsung Gear Sport is nice and pretty at first glance, but it hides too many weak points at closer inspection. It's a red herring.
UPDATE, November 17: Samsung Gear Sport experiences a weird color issue on the display, with every watch face using a different color tone than the one configured on the smartphone. Learn more about the Gear Sport color issue here.
