Samsung Gear S2 Smartwatch - Silver

I currently have this and the Apple Watch. I own an iPhone 6 Plus and a Galaxy Note 5. At this time, I currently prefer this watch over my Apple Watch. It has way more customization options. It presents data in a clear and concise manner. Any app I choose to receive notifications from, it does so in a very clean and easy to use interface. S-voice on phones and tablets seem to be sub-par compared to Google Now and Siri; but on this watch, it satisfactorily fulfills its functions as needed. Compared to my Apple Watch, it is very light. This makes it easy to wear all day. With my Apple Watch, I can't wait to take it off at the end of the day. This watch, I have to remember to take it off at the end of the day. I may buy the 'Classic' version of this watch with the cellular radio inside it, but I'm not sure how much that will be needed since this watch performs all of the functions I need without it. However, the 3G version of this watch appears to be bigger so I may not: Dimension BT 42.3 x 49.8 x 11.4 mm BT classic 39.9 x 43.6 x 11.4 mm 3G 44.0 x 51.8 x 13.4 mm (information obtained from Samsung's official website for the Gear S2) The bezel is a great dual function feature. Not only does it allow fast and easy navigation through the watch's interface (Tizen OS), but it already has paid itself off by protecting my watch screen from damage since the bezel is a 'lip' around the watch's screen. My Apple Watch screen already has dings and scratches on it, but not on the S2 because the bezel helps protect the Gear S2's screen. This is a big plus for me since I always seem to like to take tight turns around corners while I'm walking and always seem to somehow bang my watch against the corners of walls, doors, etc. The only thing I can see that might turn people off from this watch is the band may 'feel' cheap. But rest assured it is not. It is very light and yet durable enough for the rigors of 'normal' daily life. I'm not an avid sports activity type of person, so I cannot vouch for it on that level. For me I do a lot of walking and hiking. There's not much 'contact' as someone who plays basketball, hockey or football or whatever. Although if I were that kind of person, I would be taking it off before I did any of those things anyway. Battery Life. It's been great so far. On light use (checking notifications as they actually come in), I get down to about 65-68% by the end of the day. If I'm playing around with it and demonstrating it to someone (family/friends) because they asked me to, I've seen it go down to about 50-53%. With my type of usage, I've yet to see it drop below 50%. So for me, I could probably get 2 days out of it. I doubt I could get 3 days though, even with how light my usage of the device is. I've heard that some people were able to pair up this watch with their iPhones (albeit at the expense of less functionality), but I have not tried it and really don't intend to. The universe might implode in on itself if people were to actually wear that combo in public on a large scale (this is a joke)! All in all, it is a great watch. Is it the best watch? In my honest opinion, I believe so. This is if you consider the Apple Watch to be the King of the Hill right now. I still think Android Wear has a long way to go; but this watch (with Tizen OS) proves that it can be very flexible in its use, many customization options for its appearances, and still be very useful and presentable all in one package. If your usage and/or beliefs in how a 'smart' watch should function mirrors my own, then you will love this watch too. But if you want a 'smart' watch that acts just like a phone with 3 billion apps that you can wear on your wrist, then maybe not so much. Samsung has demonstrated that it can be innovative on its own merit, and what they did here with the Tizen OS is a giant step in the right direction. Thank you.

This rating is for my initial impressions/experiences with the Gear S2. I have also briefly owned a Moto 360 2nd gen, and I have "tinkered" with the Apple Watch and a few other smart watches, so this will largely be a review in comparison to those other watches. Design is excellent - futuristic and yet classy and elegant. Smooth lines and well placed buttons, and the bezel, of course, not just a decoration like you find on other watches. I have the non-Classic model, and contrary to a few other reviews, I do not find the material of the straps to be cheap in any way. They are soft, yet durable, and very comfortable so far. Two sizes of straps are provided, and I opted to use one side Large, and the other side Small (I have small wrists, but flat, so this worked for me). I had a little trouble figuring out the system to remove the straps, but once you understand it it isn't that difficult (still requires a little bit of pressure, but I wouldn't want them to come off too easily, that defeats the purpose). Size is perfect for a man with smaller wrists. One reason I haven't purchased a smart watch to date was due to size... And manufacturers are all catching on to this fact by offering smaller versions for everyone. I couldn't imagine that it would be considered "too small" for any but the largest people (or people who are simply used to having massive devices strapped to their wrists). It is most comparable to the Moto 360 2nd gen 42 mm in size. It responds very well to wrist gestures. Also I love how the gestures not only turn the display on, but off as well. I did not have the same experience on the Moto 360 (granted, it turned out to be defective and gestures stopped working completely, so that may have been a factor). The display quality is typical Samsung - stunning and deep rich colors, true blacks, etc. And OLED is a great battery saver for a device like this. Anticipating a good battery life (havent had it long enough to provide an accurate assessment). Though the screen is small, Samsung works their magic and gives you as many pixels as possible within the 1.2 inch screen, to the point where I don't miss the larger screen of the Moto 360 2 at all. Tizen UI works great paired with the bezel design. I have used Android Wear (latest version), and tinkered with an Apple Watch a few times. Both OSs seemed ok at first, but could become awkward in a hurry, and I could actually get sort of lost...and switching from one app to another could be cumbersome. But not with the Tizen UI on the Gear S2. So far, everything is simple, quick, and straightforward, which is what I want in a smart watch... I want to be able to move from one thing to another quickly and without fuss. To me this is the best UI, hands down, for a smart-watch - it just makes sense. Apps and app selection. Definitely poor in that arena. Samsung is going it alone here, and may have trouble getting some of the major app developers to provide something useable just for Tizen - only time will tell. But for my needs there are definitely enough apps, and the ones they do have work within Tizen UI with the bezel, which is to me a big advantage over others. Plus, you have to remember - this is for a smart watch. not a tablet... Realistically, I can't see myself ever needing more than a dozen apps at the most. I barely use that many on my phone. My only real con, so far (aside from app selection), is with the bezel design that I love. The bezel itself is a little stiff in response when I turn it with a finger. A little too much resistance, and my finger slides without moving the bezel. I read where another reviewer had similar issues and mentioned wetting their fingertip to make it "stick" better. I do think this will go away with use, however. I have used the display model at a nearby retail store, and the bezel is quite responsive - not nearly as resistant. Or I will simply get used to the amount of pressure required to make it move. Either way, this is not a huge con, and one I can live with. TLDR version: Beautiful design, perfect size for smaller wrists, best UI for a smart watch. Limited app selection, and the bezel can be a little stiff

All in all I have to say I really do like this watch. There are quite a few things I like about it and really only a couple of things I didn't. Let's start with the good stuff. Pros: * It has a number of nice features and there are ton of apps that you can use with the watch; the fitness apps work very well. * The screen is bright and clear and the ability to move around the different screens is very smooth. * The messaging feature is quite nice. As with any voice recognition software, I think it's going to take a little time for it to get used to your voice patterns before it functions extremely well, though. * It stays charged for quite a long time and you can easily go all day without having to re-charge the unit. *The charging unit itself is fantastic. Nothing to plug in; just set it on the unit, it magnetizes itself for nice hold, and charges quickly. *It has a nice stylish design and the fact that there are a number of clock faces you can choose from makes it look even better. Cons: *What's disappointing about the watch is that you cannot use it as a phone. Sure, you can answer or reject phone calls but if you do answer, you have to pick up your actual phone to have a conversation. I would think that since you are synced to your phone, has voice software and voice activated features you would be able to talk via the watch and not have to go looking for your phone. *It is BluTooth only. Your phone has to be near the unit in order for it to work and you cannot connect to a service provider to link the watch. I purchased this in order to be able to run and not have to carry my phone. I guess I didn't read well enough into the features when I bought it I still have to wear a waistband to carry the phone so the watch can receive messages, however, all the apps such as the fitness apps do work without having to have the phone nearby. Despite the few drawbacks, I'm happy with the unit. One thing I would say be be sure of. Don't use the Gear App that you get from Play Store to initialize setup and pairing of the phone..it don't work worth a crap. Go to the Samsung website (the phone actually names the site on the screen) and download it directly. It will pair, setup, and update in very little time. In general, I'm happy with the watch despite a couple of drawbacks.

I love this watch! I'll admit, I haven't read a whole lot of the reviews on Amazon, but I did do my research on other sites and trusted Youtube channels. I recommend checking them out. First - in case you got this watch and the battery life has started to die after an update, uninstall the CNN app and the Mr Time app. I don't know the real reason why they would cause such a drain, but my battery life would go from 100% to almost nil in 8-10 hours, even if I turned off all notifications. I bought the watch for fitness tracking, so I want to wear it as much as possible. I found the described fix online and it worked! I can now go more than 24 hrs without charging. I'm so glad I don't have to recharge three times a day. Anywho - I bought this because I was tired of fitness trackers with less than stellar fitness apps. I wanted to use the Samsung health app. Samsung has a Gear Fit2, but it was the same price as the Gear S2, so I went with the smart watch. It comes with an extra pair of straps, which is good since they are custom for standard S2. I also like the wireless charge dock. The watch allows me to receive notifications from my phone apps. contrary to what your phone may say, you do not need to set your default messaging app to the default phone messaging app. I use Mood and I still receive and send texts on my watch. I can set quick messages or I can write on the touch screen, use 9-key predictive text, and send emojis. I like the bezel since swiping sometimes opens the widget instead of going to the next one. I also like that the wake up gesture is more sensitive than on my last fitness watch. I can change the watch faces straight from the watch instead of always going to the gear app on my phone. Now for a few complaints: I can't get the voice memo to work. I can use the S voice feature, so I know the mic works, but I can't record. There may be a missing step, but I haven't found it yet. The heart monitor can only be set to check bpm if I sit absolutely still for more than hour. There is a sedentary reminder that also comes up after an hour of sitting near motionless. Despite my sedentary job, I do sometimes move my arms around enough to make the watch think I got some movement in, and so it resets for another hour. There is no way to customize this for shorter intervals, and I'm really not sure if the it's the watch or the health app that's to blame. The sleep monitor is not accurate. The band isn't very comfortable on my wrist. My two options are too loose or too tight. I'd rather have it too loose, and that causes the sleep monitoring to be inaccurate. Sometimes it'll record that I fell asleep 1-2 hours later than I actually did. last night it said I fell asleep at 2:00 and woke up at 4:30. but most nights it's only off by a half hour. Overall I have to give it 5 stars because I really do love the watch. The pros far out weight the cons for me.

So here's the tough thing, reviewing regular products is one thing, reviewing tech is another entirely. Over my month or so of ownership so far, I've found the quirks that I like and I don't in regards to this watch. Pro's *Long battery life, oh my lord this thing can go 2 days, I kid you not, it may not seem like much, but my boyfriend has to charge his after mild use every day, heck he'll continually have his watch die on him and mine will be around 70%, now I don't use it heavily, but the background features and alerts are super awesome. *Background monitoring- Ok so I have been trying to keep track of my heart rate and such on a regular basis, but I've found it difficult even at the best of times, this watch really takes the work out of it for me, it takes my heart rate roughly once per hour, and the app on my phone keeps track of it all (including steps etc), which hey, if you wear it to sleep you wouldn't even know it took your heart rate. *Comfortable- I barely feel it on my wrist at times, and I have really tiny/bony wrists, I can wear it in my sleep and not even notice it. Con's *Pre-installed fitness apps you can't remove. Ok so things like the Nike fitness app, Buddy, ESPN, News Briefing, World Clock, etc, can't be removed, and will automatically update even if you don't want them to. *Pre-set widgets you can't remove. Yep, so another annoying thing is you can't simplify the widgets, not easily anyways. *You have to check your phone a lot of the time. Some alerts can't be shown on the watch, in those cases it will tell you to check your phone, now it will automatically (in most cases) pull up the notification on your phone, sometimes it won't. Either way it can be annoying. *Voice recognition set up is a pain. Half the time I just give up and type things out on the keyboard, others I just pull out my phone, simply put the voice recognition is a bit wonky, but it's not the watches' fault, the microphone is on the side of the unit. Overall I would still recommend this to anyone that asked, it's not quite to the future we want (yet) but it's still a really good smart watch.

I want two basic things out of a smartwatch-- to tell the time and alert me with notifications so I don't have to pull my phone out all the time. This watch sucks at both. To tell the time, you need to activate the display. The watch is supposed to use gyroscopic measures to wake up when you raise your wrist, but this feature has been inconsistent and laggy at best. Recently, (after 1 month of ownership), the wakeup gesture stopped working all together. I've tried a factory reset and troubleshooting with no luck. To tell the time, have to rotate the bezel or press a side button, taking two hands and often starting up the wrong screen or app. Secondly, despite asking Samsung customer service, the Amazon community, and browsing forums, I can find no way to get notifications to work properly. When you get more than one notification from the same app-- be it email, messaging, WhatsApp, or anything else-- you can only see the most recent message. With texts, it is possible through several steps to access your text messaging history and see all of your messages, but not with WhatsApp, Gmail, or Yahoo mail. The watch gives you the unhelpful option to "clear all notifications" instead of "read all notifications". Infuriating. The whole point of a smartwatch-- for me is to check his stuff with out pulling out my phone, unlocking it, and reading everything there where there is already cluttered information. This watch does not solve that problem. Recently, this Gear S2 stopped alerting me when I get notifications of any kind. I think it's broken after 1 month of light use. Before it stopped entirely, it was inconsistent-- sometimes vibrating when I would get texts and emails, sometimes not at all. Other features are mediocre. S health is okay, but essentially is a fancy stopwatch/heart rate monitor for workouts. I usually row or do other exercises it doesn't know how to categorize. The voice features are not reliable or useful. Answering phone calls is hit or miss. Controlling music and audio playback is decent, but the watch doesn't display artist, album and track names for songs. I'm going to start using my pebble classic which I bought two years ago for $90. It has 5x the battery life, the screen is always on without burning battery and lighting up your wrist like a glow stick, and reliably allows me to see notifications and respond to them. It outperforms the gear S2 in every area except for a resolution. I feel cheated by Samsung. This product is overpriced and underdelivers on every front.

I'm hoping to keep this brief and to the point of the product. There have been some mixed reviews but before you buy get one in your hands and see if you like the feel of it. I love the design although I wish it was just a tad bit bigger. I can see how this watch would be suitable for both male and female buyers. It's not too big but not too small. The body seems to be sturdy, I've given it a few bumps against the wall or a door and never damaged the watch. I also like the spinning face to navigate the software... awesome. I love the ability to customize the watch faces. When I get bored of one I just make a few changes for something fresh. The watch band is great for me, it's a bit sportier. With that said I hope to see some new band styles in the near future. I use this watch while I'm running and not had problems with heavy perspiration. Speaking of which the pedometer works well for me. For now I'm using this in conjunction with S Health and no problems so far. The heart monitor also works well for me. I like the slight vibration on the wrist for notifications, this works very nicely in situations where pulling out my cell phone would be considered rude. I don't care so much about texting on this device or phone call functionality. This connected perfectly on the first attempt with my Samsung S6 Edge and I haven't had a problem with losing Bluetooth connection. Oh, and battery life has been great. I place it on the charger every night but usually by the end of the day I still have 75% charge remaining. I'm curious as to what kind of apps that will come along for this device. They're kind of limited but I suppose that is to be expected. This is my first smartwatch and it's a great fit for me. It's very simple to operate and nothing ridiculous. Just a simple smartwatch and I like that. So far I would definitely buy again. I'm halfway tempted to buy the classic version as well but I may wait a while to see what new features come along.

I would have given the Gear 5 stars for the watch itself but a recent problem has me deducting 2 stars. I purchased the Gear in November 2015 and loved it from the beginning. But last week, one side of the watch band detached from the face for no apparent reason. I started researching the problem and found that, based on pictures from reviews, quite a few others had the very same problem. I contacted Samsung and was told, after much discussion, that someone who specializes in that would contact me within 24 to 48 hours to resolve the problem but I would probably need to send the entire watch back to them (and there may be charges for the repair). So I decided, until then, to try to figure out the problem. It turned out to be pretty simple. The watchband is easily detached by pulling on a tab located on each connection in the back. The clip that holds the band on the watch had stayed in place but the main part of the band had pulled away (probably glued in place initially because the band was not torn). Once I was able to get the clip out of the watch on both sides, I was able to replace it with the small watch band that also came with the watch. Not ideal because I like having a looser band with room to spare but the small really fits fine. I also now know that replacement bands are easy to get for $40 or $50. So problem solved. But I never heard back from Samsung despite the promise to call within 24 to 48 hours. The thing that bothers me the most is that this appears to be a fairly widespread problem and something that the people at Samsung should have been able to resolve on the first phone call. Either send out a new band or at least let people know how to resolve the issue by releasing the clip and buying a new band. Not having people send back the entire watch! Even if the technical people found it difficult to walk someone through the process, they could have provided a link to a page that would have explained it. I am a fan of Samsung (Galaxy phone, Smartthings, etc.) but this makes me doubt their ability to handle simple technical issues. BUT I DO STILL LOVE MY GEAR S2!

The item is good, I recommend it for others too.

for the price, nice watch, easy to set, ready to go, would recommend,,,,,

I bought Samsung S2 gear from Amazon. Firstly Amazon has delivered two days before their committed date, which is sweet surprise for me. I am loyal customer of Samsung and as usual S2 gear also fulfilled my expectations very good product. Thanks Amazon and Samsung.

The refurbished watch was received in like new quality. No scratches or wear and tear marks. Thank you for great price and works perfectly.

really good and smart watch.