Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm been wearing an Apple Watch since they first launched in the summer of 2015, and have been a big fan. Since then, I've seen the evolution of smart watches from Motorola, Samsung, and other companies evolve into nicer and better products and this Samsung Gear really caught my attention when I saw it. The best part for me is it works with iOS, so I could connect it to my iPhone and compare it against my Apple watch, which is the new Series 3 Ceramic with LTE. I was shocked to discover both a lot of similarities as well as a lot of differences between the 2 watches. While the Samsung took a little longer to connect to my iPhone than the Apple watch, it wasn't difficult and the watch helps guide you in the process. I am going to try not to make this an Apple watch vs Samsung Gear Sport review, because that isn't the point of this review. I just wanted to point out that I have experience with both watches so I kind of knew what features to look for that are things I actually use. For example, the barometer app is a fun novelty, but it's not something I will be using daily like the calorie counter feature. First, build quality. It is excellent on the Gear Sport. The metal casing is a shiny gunmetal color and feels very solid. The outer ring feels satisfying to turn, with small clicks as you rotate it. This is one of my favorite features of this watch. The overall look of this watch is very nice and classy, and aside from the relatively cheap looking rubber strap, it looks like a nice analog watch, and not this weird rectangle thing. The side buttons have rubber on them and are easy to press. I give the build quality of this watch 5 stars. It feels good to wear and doesn't seem big or heavy at all. I wore 2 watches for almost a week to test this watch and hardly noticed it unless I got a vibrating notification. The screen on this watch is also beautiful and has vibrant colors. I was immediately captivated by the round screen and how nice all the watch faces look. Of course, if you look very closely you can see pixels, but when you look down at your watch, it looks crisp and bright and colorful. I also give the screen 5 stars. So far, this watch has really impressed me. It comes with a cool plastic stand that charges it sideways and is similar to Apple's "nightstand" mode except it retains your same watch face instead of the plain green look. The only gripe I have with the charging stand is I keep it by my bed and the red or green charging light is always on and was distracting to me when I was sleeping. A piece of tape solves that problem if it bothers you, but I did think that was an interesting design decision since it's so easy to see that the watch is charged by looking at the screen. The touchscreen itself works fine and the watch uses haptic feedback well to let you know that a tap of the screen was successful. I found myself swiping around a lot until I realized the outer ring could cycle through various apps quickly and easily. One issue I had with the touchscreen is that I wasn't able to wake it up just by tapping it. So I tap a side button or turn the ring instead. This is annoying when you raise your wrist and the sensor doesn't turn the screen on, which did happen to me quite a lot. I think I'm just used to the way my other watch works, and this one requires just a little more wrist movement to trigger the screen. In Samsung's defense, you can set the screen to always be on, but that does wear the battery down considerably faster. Overall, it wasn't a big issue for me, just something I noticed. The included software is pretty good. The step tracking, activity tracker, and heart rate monitor all function similar to the Apple Watch and work pretty well once you enter your weight, height and age. If you don't do that, the numbers will be way wrong. The heartrate monitor was consistently within 1-2 BPM of my other watch, but I did notice the sensor is more sensitive and I had to have it positioned just right or it wasn't able to take a measurement. Again, the Apple watch is not that picky (with Series 3) and seems to work if the watch is tight or loose and in different positions on the wrist. I did have more issues with my Series 1 watch, so I'm sure this is something Samsung can improve on with future iterations. One thing I didn't love but is a great feature idea was the automatic activity tracking. Maybe this is an edge case, but I found it would automatically start a workout whenever I would be in a hurry to do something. It sees my heart rate is up and detects movement and starts an auto workout. It was kind of funny and it sort of served as a reminder to chill out and not be in such a rush to do stuff. But I did end up turning that off. It's so easy to start a workout manually. Just twist the outer ring and choose your activity and start it. Very simple and it works great. Other features I use often are alerts for email and texts. Those worked great, although there is no easy way to reply on the Gear Sport. I'm sure there is a way but it wasn't obvious to me. On my other watch, I can reply with voice to text or a list of pre written responses, as well as a scribble mode to type short messages. This is a minor thing since I usually pull out my phone when I get a text, and I never reply to email via my watch but I thought it was worth mentioning. A thing I love about this watch was the option to download new watch faces from the Samsung App or directly on the phone. You can also download games and utility apps. There is even an app to watch YouTube videos, which seems really cool but I couldn't get it to work, even after trying several times. The videos just wouldn't load for me. But that's fine. Novelty apps are fun and it's cool to play a game of Snake or Tetris on your watch, but after you've had it for a while, it's nice to just have a nice looking watch that works well, has a nice looking screen, records your workout activity and gives you alerts. This watch is water resistant and I had no trouble with it being in a few feet of water for a while. The Samsung Gear app was easy to install and connect to my iPhone. It's a bit weird going from the way Apple does things to the Samsung way, so Android users will no doubt have an easier and better experience than I did, but I still had a very nice experience overall with this watch. I find myself wearing it more than I thought I would because the screen is so nice to look at, but at the end of the day, it's a very tough decision if I had to pick one watch. For Android users, it's a no brainer. Get this watch if you want a sporty but nice looking smart watch with a lot of features. I like that this watch doesn't go nuts with the features you don't need, like a camera. The Samsung Gear Sport is just a clean looking watch that works great with Android OS or iOS, and with so many choices of watch face and optional watch bands, you can give it a personality to match whatever mood you are in. Overall, I give this watch 4 stars. Maybe 4.5. It's not perfect, but it's much, much nicer than I expected and has given me a lot of respect for Samsung's design choices and manufacturing ability. The fit and finish of this watch is excellent, and very comparable to Apple. I forgot to mention that battery life is pretty good, and with the settings I had, the watch could last just about 3 days with normal use, although I prefer to charge it nightly out of habit since it's so easy with the inductive charger they include. Battery life was very similar to the Series 3 42mm Apple watch, maybe a touch more. In either case, both watches were around 65-70% at the end of the day with my use. I want to note that the Gear Sport gives a lot of options for how long the screen stays on, vibration intensity, wifi or bluetooth mode, etc that can really affect battery life. I've included some photos of the 2 watches next to each other for comparison. These were just shot with my phone and I'm not a professional photographer so I apologize for the quality but it might be useful to someone to compare them side by side. I'm sure there are tech websites that do a better job at this, but I wanted to at least post some photos. (I'm sorry if some are sideways, it has to do with the way Amazon formats the photos) I am a huge fan of smart watches in general and just like some people own several different analog watches, I don't think there is anything wrong with owning different smart watches. If you are really concerned with fitness tracking over time, you may want to stick with one smart watch, but for casual working out, both watches do a good job of counting calories and keeping track of your workout activity, if multiple watches is something you are considering. I know most people are going to get one or the other, and both watches are a great choice in my opinion.