Last Oct. 2, the Samsung Gear S2, Samsung's latest smartwatch, was released in the United States. Aside from a few questionable assessments, the initial impressions were mostly positive. But how does the wearable fare now that reviewers have had ample time to evaluate it?
The Price
The Gear S2 was introduced to the market as a basic model, which doesn't have 3G or GPS, at $299. For the same price, a good midrange smartphone can be had, but those who got the Gear S2 aren't complaining. In fact, the positive initial impressions echo in the reviews of people who have had it for quite some time.
"[The Gear S2 has] a reasonable price compared to fruity watches," Ray Shaw of iTWire says. "Yes, I think it is a watch that I would wear daily."
Design And UI Navigation
Unlike its unusual four-sided predecessors, the Gear S2 looks just like the common round wristwatches that a lot of people use. It can be worn as a daily driver without worries of looking weird or attracting attention. Even other smartwatch brands, such as Motorola and LG, are also going with the round face. However, Samsung separates its offering with its rotating bezel, which surprised a lot of people with the way it redefined smartwatch UI navigation.
"[The S2 is] surrounded by this very unique, rotating bezel to quickly cycle through apps and screens," YouTuber Jimmy of JimsReviewRoom says. "At first, I honestly thought it was a bit gimmicky ... since you can use the touch screen for everything else. But in real-world use, I actually found myself using it."
Jimmy also explains that the bezel helps out a lot when navigating the smartwatch since it eliminates the need to swipe the screen and block the small display. He describes his dial experience as super smooth yet clicky and satisfying to rotate.
Dimensions, Technical Specs And Build Quality
At 42 x 50 x 11.4 millimeters (1.65 x 1.97 x 0.45 inches), the Gear S2 is smaller than most smartwatches. Moreover, it only has a 1.2-inch Super AMOLED display that is set to a native 360 x 360 resolution. It comes fitted with an Exynos 3250 dual-core SoC, with each core clocked at 1GHz. The RAM is at 512MB and the on-board storage stands at 4GB. The combination of the said components seems to work based on reviewers' smooth experience.
For Alex Dobie of Android Central, the curved body of the watch "resembles an actual sports watch, and not some sort of futuristic bangle like the original Gear S."
"It's relatively lightweight, but the materials give it a heft that's lacking in a lot of Android watches. And the gentle curve of the lugs into the strap makes the entire assembly feel like a cohesive whole," Dobie adds.
Battery Life
Battery longevity is perhaps the biggest problem with smartwatches. There just doesn't seem to be enough juice. The Samsung Gear S2 has a 250mAh battery pack, which, by any standard, doesn't sound much even if Samsung claims that it can last up to several days. Luckily, reviewers have tested it to get to the truth.
"This is a two-day watch," Shaw says. "Charging is very fast. From 50 percent to full in about 20 minutes and zero percent to full in under 60 minutes."
It takes roughly two hours to be fully-charged from 2 percent.
Sensors, Connectivity, Phone Pairing And Security
The Gear S2 comes equipped with an accelerometer and barometer, as well as heart rate, gyro and light sensors. For connectivity, it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even NFC, which Samsung Pay uses.
Phone pairing is somewhat a gray area for the Samsung Gear S2. Some reviewers note that they have experienced connectivity issues while connected to a phone.
"If you wear it until it runs out of battery, it will never reconnect to your phone again. The only solution is a factory reset, where you lose all your data and apps," Jeffrey Van Camp of Digital Trends says. "In addition to these crippling bugs, the watch repeatedly had trouble staying connected or reconnecting at a decent speed."
Van Camp's biggest complaint, however, comes from the Gear S2's Reactivation Lock, which is a feature that Samsung put in place to prevent theft of the device.
"DT Mobile Editor Malarie Gokey and I swapped the Gear S2 between us (a family might try to do this as well), but even though she factory reset it, it would not connect to my Galaxy S6 Edge Plus because she had turned on the Reactivation Lock," he adds. "In the end, I had to log in as Malarie on my phone to make it work."
Van Camp also complains of lags due to a big volume of notifications from a paired phone. However, a lot of users refute his allegations, claiming that the connectiviy issues and the lag were not happening on their units and that Van Camp must have a faulty device. Some went on to question his assessment of the Reactivation Lock.
Tizen OS
While the Gear S2 comes with some neat watch faces, the biggest problem lies with Tizen, Samsung's proprietary operating system. The Samsung Gear app store has the "essentials" in it but it's not nearly as curated as that of iOS and Android. Users of the device have limited options for third-party apps.
"There are a few good apps available, like Nike+ Running, CNN (both of which are preinstalled), Yelp and Voxer, which allows you to send and receive voice messages with another smartwatch wearer, but otherwise, very few big players are onboard," James Archer of The Inquirer says.
Water And Dust Resistant
Having this section at the end of an article seems awkward, but what better way to showcase the Samsung Gear S2 than having a video of it getting submerged in water for almost 30 minutes? And yes, it is rated at IP68, which means that the $299 device won't turn into a brick with a quick dip in the tub.
