Well, that didn’t take long. Samsung’s new, slim, heart-rate-monitoring Gear Fit2 fitness band goes on sale in Australia today, and it’s going up against the Fitbit Blaze, Microsoft’s Band 2 and some other great fitness trackers that also work double duty as smartwatches. It’s not the cheapest one out there, but it looks like a well-rounded package.
The Gear Fit 2 is the successor to the Gear Fit from 2014, and looks broadly similar while refining the curve of that screen and the integration between wristwatch and strap. We already know how durable the Gear S2 is, so here’s hoping the Fit 2 can live up to that standard as well — it’s IP68 certified, so that’s a very good start.
The Fit 2 uses a 216x432pixel 1.5-inch curved Super AMOLED display, and runs Samsung’s lightweight Tizen operating system on a dual-core 1GHz processor with 512MB RAM, talking with your phone and the S Health partner app through Bluetooth. There’s 4GB of onboard storage for up to 1000 MP3s to be stored, or a bunch of Tizen-compatible partner apps. It’s water resistant and includes sleep monitoring, so there are some significant improvements from the original Fit.
The fitness tracker’s 200mAh battery is half that of the Gear S2, but should give it at least a day of battery life with a fair bit of active tracking. Available in large or small, in black or blue or pink, the Gear Fit 2 also displays notifications as well as tracking passive and active workouts through an accelerometer and gyro, GPS, heart-rate monitor and barometer.
The Gear Fit2 will cost $289 in Australia, and it’s out right now. [Samsung]
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