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AppleRobert

macrumors 603
Nov 12, 2012
5,726
1,132
I'm either at the gym lifting or outside doing cardio alternating each daily. I am not hardcore and do not feel a need for performance monitoring! Just exercising has been great, if you seen me you would just shake your head being the age I am.

Maybe at $100 for a cool toy but that would be it. :)
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
I'm either at the gym lifting or outside doing cardio alternating each daily. I am not hardcore and do not feel a need for performance monitoring! Just exercising has been great, if you seen me you would just shake your head being the age I am.

Maybe at $100 for a cool toy but that would be it. :)

Yep similar here. I do have a fitbit flex I use as my tracker; if the gear fit was $100 I'd snag one. Otherwise o just couldn't justfy it...
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Just picked one of these up, works well so far. I'll put it through the paces tomorrow at the gym.
 
Last edited:

Jspring86

Suspended
Oct 7, 2011
442
3
Tempe, AZ
I don't have the Fit, but I do have the Gear 2. I have been running with it the past week and I will say that the heart rate monitor is not very accurate if you're going hard, but it is quite accurate when lightly jogging or briskly walking. I didn't get the Gear 2 primarily for fitness but it is a nice thing to have. The calories burned and and other stats seem to align nicely with what the treadmill tells me, but the heart rate is often wildly off after sprint intervals.

That being said, I think the Gear 2 is pretty awesome, a big improvement in appearance over the first generation, and great for notifications.

Also, someone may have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but if you want to buy a Gear 2 or Gear fit you can get them for 25% off at AT&T's website. You just need to add two cheap $5 cases to your order to take advantage of their buy 3 accessories and save 25% promotion. I bought my Gear 2 there and saved $75 on it.
 

Switchback666

macrumors 68000
Nov 16, 2012
1,600
67
SXM
I don't have the Fit, but I do have the Gear 2. I have been running with it the past week and I will say that the heart rate monitor is not very accurate if you're going hard, but it is quite accurate when lightly jogging or briskly walking. I didn't get the Gear 2 primarily for fitness but it is a nice thing to have. The calories burned and and other stats seem to align nicely with what the treadmill tells me, but the heart rate is often wildly off after sprint intervals.

That being said, I think the Gear 2 is pretty awesome, a big improvement in appearance over the first generation, and great for notifications.

Also, someone may have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but if you want to buy a Gear 2 or Gear fit you can get them for 25% off at AT&T's website. You just need to add two cheap $5 cases to your order to take advantage of their buy 3 accessories and save 25% promotion. I bought my Gear 2 there and saved $75 on it.

How is the battery on the Gear 2 ?
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,273
19,488
UK
I don't have the Fit, but I do have the Gear 2. I have been running with it the past week and I will say that the heart rate monitor is not very accurate if you're going hard, but it is quite accurate when lightly jogging or briskly walking. I didn't get the Gear 2 primarily for fitness but it is a nice thing to have. The calories burned and and other stats seem to align nicely with what the treadmill tells me, but the heart rate is often wildly off after sprint intervals.

That being said, I think the Gear 2 is pretty awesome, a big improvement in appearance over the first generation, and great for notifications.

Also, someone may have mentioned this earlier in the thread, but if you want to buy a Gear 2 or Gear fit you can get them for 25% off at AT&T's website. You just need to add two cheap $5 cases to your order to take advantage of their buy 3 accessories and save 25% promotion. I bought my Gear 2 there and saved $75 on it.

I've decided I'm getting gear 2 at the end of the month. It's got the same fitness features as the gear fit and the other features is a good improvement on the gear 1

You tried cycling on it?
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
My inital impressions on the Gear Fit.

I decided on the fit over the full watch because I feel it's seriously handicapped with Tizen. If and when someone hacks full Android on it maybe I would consider one, but by then the Moto or google, or maybe even Apple's smartwatch would be out. Another reason is that the HR monitor seems to be much more accurate if worn with the sensor on the inside of the wrist, and that's an important feature for me. Thirdly I wanted to keep my existing watch and this way it just looks like I have a watch and a bracelet on the other hand instead of 2 watches.

Initial impressions are it's very cool. We went out for mothers day brunch with the family and everyone was impressed with it. My 2 brothers usually have some kind of fitness bracelet on so they understood the concept. Even my mom liked how you could get notifications on it. Getting emails and texts was super nice, very streamlined and you don't realize how convenient it is to leave your phone in your pocket until you have the ability to do so. The HR sensor was kind of meh, I had to stand still for it to be accurate. But someone else had mentioned that it's much more accurate when facing the inside of the wrist, I'll be trying that this afternoon when I do my sprint HITT interval training and put it to some serious grind.

The screen is very nice, BUT I'm a bit bummed as I can't really see it with my polarized sunglasses, which isn't a problem with my Note 3. Are polarized sunglasses really that rare where manufacturers don't care about them? Overall appearance is nice, if a bit thick but it doesn't bland badly. I'd rather not have the chrome surround though and would have highly preferred an innocuous black surround. Other gripes are the latching system, or lack of it. You just have 2 metal pegs that push into holes on the plastic band, not the most secure system. I've already popped it off my wrist my accident a couple of times. The band is ok, I wish it didn't have a large "Gear" imprint on it, but oh well.

Vertical orientation is SUPER nice. It brings me laughs at the debate we had months ago when someone was crying that the horizontal orientation was unreadable. This is a non issue.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, and I don't think there is anything else out there like it in terms of the screen itself, package and information you can get from it. Will be a nice little toy until the Moto, Google or Apple watches come out.
 

kdarling

macrumors P6
My inital impressions on the Gear Fit.

Yay! :)

Other gripes are the latching system, or lack of it. You just have 2 metal pegs that push into holes on the plastic band, not the most secure system. I've already popped it off my wrist my accident a couple of times.

Are you sure you pushed the pegs in all the way? I've had no problem except when I failed to do that.

-- Unrelated to your post...

Re: cycling mode. I thought I read somewhere that it won't work right on an exercise cycle, since it never moves location. (?)

Re: battery. I just read a review on Amazon where someone turned off the auto-light via motion, and instead simply relied on the side button (and notifications) to turn on the display. He claims he got five days instead of three that way. I might try it just for fun, although recharging has so far not been annoying at all.
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Just a follow up after my lunch workout, I usually do about 1 1/2 hours of weight training followed by 20 minutes of a sprint interval program. I wore the Fit during the entire training.

The HR sensor is meh at best, but I think I may have to play around with it. I didn't notice a difference with it either outside or inside of the wrist, and seem to have actually had slightly better results with it outside. The issues I had were the slowness of the real time display of HR. If the fit shut off the screen then the reading would be wildly off when turned on again, I ended up keeping the screen on my entire 20 minute cardio workout, which isn't a bad thing as battery is quite excellent on it.

The HR wasn't far off of the Cybex sled I was sprinting on, what was a fail was in how slow the HR took to read between sprint intervals. This probably won't affect the vast majority of gym dwellers and amateur athletes I figure because the antiquated 30-60 minutes of 70-80% max HR myth still pervades our athletic society, so if you are doing a sustained workout without appreciably changing your HR during the workout you might not notice how slow the HR read is.

This is compared to a Polar chest strap that I used to use before the inside rusted out, and currently I usually just put my hands on the HR sensor on the cybex immediately after my sprint, going off of Rate of Perceived Exertion mostly these days. In all fairness the Cybex takes 3-4 seconds to read my HR so I can't fault the Fit too much, but the Polar chest strap would monitor the HR very closely and keep up with any sprint I threw at it.

I'm undecided if I want to keep it. I absolutely love it for notifications, it's quite liberating to see your emails and texts pop up and not have to touch your phone. It's not terrible as a HR sensor, but not great either. It does look kind of dorky but it could look worse.

@kdarling yeah the pegs were pushed in all the way, this was mainly an issue if I brushed my wrist across something like a counter, which I should be more careful anyway. Today during a long workout with weights and sprinting I had no fear of it falling off, it's pretty secure. I hope the rubber holds up though and the holes don't become loose with time. I would have definitely preferred a latch system like the Gear watch though.
 

Jspring86

Suspended
Oct 7, 2011
442
3
Tempe, AZ
How is the battery on the Gear 2 ?

I get about 2.5 to 3 days of usage. It really depends on what you're doing and how many notifications you get. It also depends on if you have a habit of moving your wrist around a lot. I seem to turn the screen on a lot unintentionally by flicking my wrist. I guess during the week I average 2.5 days usage between charges because I get a bunch of email notifications for work related stuff and also use it to workout. On the weekends I have less notifications and it lasts a bit longer.
 

Switchback666

macrumors 68000
Nov 16, 2012
1,600
67
SXM
I get about 2.5 to 3 days of usage. It really depends on what you're doing and how many notifications you get. It also depends on if you have a habit of moving your wrist around a lot. I seem to turn the screen on a lot unintentionally by flicking my wrist. I guess during the week I average 2.5 days usage between charges because I get a bunch of email notifications for work related stuff and also use it to workout. On the weekends I have less notifications and it lasts a bit longer.

Btw I can't really tell from the pictures but will you consider the watch big in comparison with a regular watch?
 

Jspring86

Suspended
Oct 7, 2011
442
3
Tempe, AZ
Btw I can't really tell from the pictures but will you consider the watch big in comparison with a regular watch?

Here's a pic of the Gear 2 next to my Tissot:

qarahanu.jpg


I'd say it's not much bigger, just a different shape. It's certainly lighter on the hand than the Tissot.
 

Switchback666

macrumors 68000
Nov 16, 2012
1,600
67
SXM
Here's a pic of the Gear 2 next to my Tissot:

Image

I'd say it's not much bigger, just a different shape. It's certainly lighter on the hand than the Tissot.

Seems to have a pretty good size and the camera not on the bands is very welcome plus this time.

Thanks mate.
 

rockitdog

macrumors 68030
Mar 25, 2013
2,721
1,238
Is anyone still rocking their Gear Fit devices? Has Samsung released any software updates since they initial launch?
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,394
5,257
Is anyone still rocking their Gear Fit devices? Has Samsung released any software updates since they initial launch?

I returned mine, it was much too inaccurate to be worthwhile as a HR sensor. Otherwise I think I would prefer the full Gear watch for functionality, but I'm going to wait for the google watch and/or apple watch.
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
30,273
19,488
UK
I have the Gear 2 and it is very accurate. Pedometer and walking is exactly correct
 

AT101ET

macrumors 6502
Jun 21, 2012
294
1
UK (London)
I'm quite a fan. Just a shame it doesn't work with IOS. Could have made extra sales and would have been a blow to Apple's iWatch idea!
 

ChrisTX

macrumors 68030
Dec 30, 2009
2,690
54
Texas
So after several software updates to the Gear Fit, my Galaxy Note 3 is now unable to pair with the Gear Fit. Any ideas? I also noticed after the first update that was supposed to make the pedometer more accurate, it was less consistent with the "Map My Run" app. Not as concerned with the later as much as I am just being able to pair with my phone.
 
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