It's the successor of the good-but-flawed Gear Fit, and it comes with a great new map feature that shows your route and helps direct you in the right direction.
At the same time, it's lacking an important feature that we believe would have made the Gear Fit 2 an undisputed winner as a fitness device.
Check it out.
This is the Gear Fit 2, a fitness device designed for fitness enthusiasts.
It has a bigger, wider display than the original Fit. Also unlike the original Fit, it's compatible with all smartphones running Android 4.4 and up.
The original Gear Fit is on the left, the Gear Fit 2 is on the right.
It has a typical battery life of about three to four days.
It's water resistant down to 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes, which isn't quite enough for swimming, but is fine for rain and sweat.
The AMOLED display looks great. The Gear Fit 2 runs on Samsung's own Tizen operating system, the same OS running on the excellent Gear S2 smartwatch. Tizen's bright colorful details on the screen pop out against the inky black background.
One of the best things about the new Gear Fit 2 is the built-in GPS that also shows you a color map of your route and gives you directions. You don't need to bring your smartphone on your workout if you use it for directions.
And it has 4GB of storage for music so you can leave your smartphone at home if you still store local music files on your computer or smartphone.
Onto the fitness stuff: The Gear Fit 2 tells you how many calories you've burned.
You can quickly start a 30-minute run, and it can detect your activity so you can start your workout without having to set anything up.
It has a built-in heart rate monitor that reports your heart rate every second.
It has social features so you can compete with your friends and family with stats.
As you'd expect from any smart device, it connects to your smartphone for alerts and notifications. It doesn't have it's own data connection, so you'd need to bring your smartphone if you want to keep getting alerts and notifications.
And of course, it counts your steps.
As well as how many floors you've gone up and down.
It syncs with the Gear Fit 2 app so you can manage and visualize your stats on your smartphone's bigger screen, and it's compatible with other fitness apps, too, like Strava and RunKeeper.
And it charges wirelessly in a magnetic cradle. It satisfyingly snaps into place, too.
It's almost a perfect fitness device that would allow you to leave your smartphone at home during your workout, except it's missing one crucial feature. Anyone who listens to Spotify music during their workouts will have to bring their smartphones.
Also, it unfortunately doesn't sync with your Spotify playlists like Pebble's new Core fitness device. That's a huge letdown for anyone who exclusively streams music these days.
Besides that one issue, though, the Gear Fit 2 looks like a pretty excellent device. It comes in three color options — pink, blue, and black — and there are two different band size options for different wrist sizes. It'll cost $179 and will go up for pre-order on June 3 for shipping and full release in stores on June 10.
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