Samsung Gear 2 Smartwatch - Silver/Black

CUSTOMER REVIEW



I received my new Gear 2 last Saturday morning via USPS, three days after ordering from a third party seller. I decided to order from a third party seller earlier in the week due to the fact that Amazon was still "Temporarily out of stock" on this item with no updates in over a week on when they'd get their stock and start shipping to customers. I had originally ordered from Amazon around a week prior and they still hadn't shipped or updated me at all, so I cancelled the order afterwards because I had no information on when Amazon would have the Gear 2 in stock. Being a Prime customer, it was upsetting that I had to "resort" to purchasing from a third party seller since usually shipping times are much longer. I expected better service and more specific communication from Amazon, especially since the demand for this product was so extensive. Luckily though, it seems that I made a lucky choice of third party seller to buy from because they shipped same-day and the product was packed safely and securely and arrived in about 3 days.



Something important to note is that some sellers are currently selling the Gear 2 for around $320. People avoid these prices, believing they are overpriced, not realizing that Amazon applies sales tax in most states only for items purchased from Amazon directly, which would have made the total cost rise to around $320 at checkout. In this case, there was pretty much no downside purchasing from a third party seller considering there was no estimate for when Amazon would receive their stock, so I decided to make my move and purchased from a seemingly reliable seller. It's also important to note that customers purchasing from third party sellers are exempt from sales tax if the customer resides outside of the seller's state. So, the Gear 2 was around the same price no matter where I purchased from.



Anyways, after having used the Gear 2 for a few days, my thoughts and views are overall positive. Something I found odd was, being in the Computer Science field and having done extensive online research before purchasing, I quickly realized that my views and experience with the Gear 2 hardly matched what negative comments were being spread by the media in news articles, reviews, and opinions and commentaries throughout the past week. The media's stories focused on the belief that the Gear 2 added no benefit and didn't provide any increased functionality due to the fact that it didn't offer anything "special" and didn't provide any extra functionality that couldn't be found on a typical smartphone. Various news articles blatantly state that buying a Gear 2 was a huge waste money.



I took these articles like a grain of salt. I saw the arguments mostly as opinions than anything else, I wanted to test it for myself and make up my own mind, and that's exactly what I did.



At first use, it was really easy to notice the key benefit of the Gear 2, the fact that it's an incredible time saver. Smartphones are not very when you're on the go, because they aren't generally something you can just glance at without diverting your attention entirely towards it temporarily. If this is at work, smartphone use negatively affects your productivity. If this is while driving, smartphones are unsafe and illegal because they take attention completely off the road.



For me, increase in time efficiency is the most important and obvious benefit offered by using the Gear 2. Unlike others, I don't care that the Gear 2 replicates smartphone functionality because of the aforementioned benefit. That doesn't make it any less of a useful device. What makes the Gear 2 useful is the fact that information that would have taken me 20 to 30 seconds to access on my smartphone can be accessed in just a couple seconds on the Gear 2 with a simple tilt of the wrist, swipe and tap. The Gear 2 clearly me saves time and effort, and it's shown me that it's an extremely handy device that has incredible potential.



Anyways...enough of me defending the Gear 2, that's not the purpose of reviews.



I've gotten in the habit of wearing the Gear 2 almost 24/7. I even keep it on while going to bed since it has so many uses. Just as a series of examples, right before bed, the Gear 2 allows me to: start tracking my sleep time, to set alarms for next morning just by speaking, check my appointments and calendar for tomorrow as well as the weather forecast, and replace the need to track down the TV remote control when I want to watch a late-night show right before bed.



Looking back, I can see that the Gear 2 has helped keep me on track, focused, and organized since I started using it. You've got to push yourself to improve though, you can't expect improvement otherwise. However, the Gear 2 seems like a Swiss Army knife in the form of a tech gadget. There are just so many features and so much beneficial functionality included just via the default Samsung apps, and these apps completely fulfilled my expectations and personally justify the expense.



Now, for the negative remark of my review, and as to why I took off a star.



Although Samsung provides excellent built-in apps, I'm sure there is a huge potential for development of even better, more beneficial apps. The possibilities are endless for user-developed apps. Unfortunately however, the major downside right now is that user-submitted apps are pretty much non-existent in the Gear 2 market. The reason for this is that the Tizen OS, which the Gear 2 runs on, has still been left largely unembraced and unsurpassed by most mobile app devs. This whole situation is upsetting since the lack of apps for the Gear 2 takes away from the device's potential and its ability for users to customize the app to fit their needs most closely. I honestly didn't expect the app store to literally have less than total 15 apps in the entire market, none of which are really any good at all. That's not the quality that I expected from Samsung. It seems like Samsung dropped the ball by not succeeding in stimulating the early adoption of Tizen by developers.



Although I feel the lack of apps is a mistake on Samsung's part that could maybe have been avoided by better planning, being knowledgeable about the Tizen situation I'm also sympathetic because it makes sense to me why there are almost no apps developed. The Gear 2 line of devices are essentially Samsung's first mainstream products to make use of their Tizen OS. Not many people have experience with how the OS works yet and people are just starting to become more acquainted with development for Tizen. In time, I don't have much doubt that developers will embrace Tizen, because where there's money to be made, they will come.



However, as someone who purchased a Gear 2 so early on, it's unfortunate that people like me need to wait, who knows how long, in order for the atmosphere to improve for Tizen.



Although it's not a deal breaker for me, for others who consider the current lack of user-made apps a much greater issue, I can see why they wouldn't be able to justify the expense until they start to see a community thriving around Gear 2 development.



Some further negatives that I feel are noteworthy for prospective buyers:



- The Gear 2 frame that covers the front face of the watch is aluminum, but the bottom half of the watch is actually a black plastic cover. Based on a description, I had expected that the entire watch exterior would be made of aluminum and I was disappointed when I saw the plastic bottom as it is more easily damaged.



- The Gear 2 expects to be firmly and statically strapped to your wrist, otherwise while operating the touchscreen by swiping fingers, you'll make the watch perform loops around your wrist, which starts getting annoying pretty quickly.



- The IR sensor's location being in the front-middle is slightly awkward to aim at the TV. It's something about having to tilt my wrist and tap on the screen with the other hand that just feels uncomfortable. It takes getting used to. In Samsung's defense I can't really think of a better place to put it to make it universally compatible with however a person enjoys wearing their watch. Same with the camera.



- Flicking left and right can sometimes be noticeably laggy. I expected better performance from the 1.0ghz dual core processor/512MB RAM and didn't expect to see basic swiping animations lag so noticeably. I suppose I'm so used to my smartphone operating seamlessly without any slow-downs or lag, that I was not used to the slower animations on the Gear 2 hardware. Note that although there is noticeable lag, it barely impacts usability in any way at all.



As a final note, nothing is ever 100% perfect, and there's always room for improvement.

For the current state I'm very satisfied with the progress Samsung has made with its Gear smartwatch line of products. The Gear 2 is well worth the money and I highly recommend it due to its elegant aesthetics, faster hardware, and software which offers useful features with an easy to follow and very functional user interface.



I'll continue to update my review if there's anything important to mention in the future that people should know, either positive or negative. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts, I welcome any questions or comments based on what I said.