Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Purchased this and the LG Urbane to compare. The LG Urbane is BIG. It looked comical on my regular sized wrist. The Gear S2 Classic looks like a watch, not a smart watch. This is the first smart watch I saw that didn't look comical on a wrist due to size. I was worried because this watch does not use Android Wear, (Tizen is the system in use) but honestly when comparing this interface to the generic Android Wear interface, I preferred the Gear S2's rotary bezel and touch screen. It feels more natural than swiping. Here's my impressions after 2 days. Moto 360 was out due to the flat tire. Couldn't get past that. Replaced the band immediately because I wanted a metal band. Good - Looks Nice. Screen is awesome. Next to the Urbane, this screen is just more vibrant and rich. The Urbane due to it's size looks cartoony. - Notification customization works really quickly. You can customize the apps on your phone that trigger notifications on your watch. These notification come through fast and allow you to respond (if a watch app exists, say for an email or text) or if a native watch app doesn't exist yet for something you are notified about, it will allow you to tap a button to call up the activity on your phone. (I have facebook setup to send notifications. Once I open the notification, I can tap a button on the watch and have the FB app open to the post on my phone so I can respond from there.) It's pretty nice. I've had pictures attached to texts appear in notifications and they look pretty darn good. - Battery life. After a full day of use from 8 am to 11:30 pm, I had 3% left and it was still working - Now that may sound bad since you are supposed to get 2-3 days out of the watch, but this was during my first day 'VERY heavy' use phase - I won't be hammering the watch that hard again. I did everything with it, Navigation, emails, heart rate monitor, etc, etc. I expect to get much better performance once I'm not looking at it every 2 minutes. - Responsiveness - EVERY time I lift my wrist, this thing lights up. EVERY time. With the LG Urbane, there were times I had to manually hit the button because the wrist triggering didn't work. Not a lick of sluggishness in any activity I've done so far. -Voice activation works as well as voice activation can. - People say they may miss 'hello google' but with the URBANE, when I said "Hello Google" to activate voice activities, it work very well, BUT - my nearby phone was also activated. Using S-voice, I was able to record an alternate wakeup message. So now I say 'Hello Watch' to get S-voice going on my watch, or "Hello Google" to get voice activities started on my phone. It's also very responsive. I've sent full texts, Initiated navigation, and sent emails without using my hands, and the watch picked the info up pretty well without errors. -step tracking when compared to my fitbit, I think this watch is a bit more accurate. (less generous in the steps it says I did.) Unsure about heart rate monitoring. It seems to work fine. - Answering or placing calls is pretty easy from the watch, however you have to use BT headphones (haven't tried this yet) or your phone itself to actually talk. - You can store and play mp3's from the watch without your phone if you have Bluetooth headphones, OR you can use the watch to control your MP3 player on your phone. - It also has NFC for future electronic payment options. - You can initiate a Map search and start navigation from the watch without having to take out your phone. I was unable to figure out how to do this with Android wear on the LG Urbane. I'd have to start the navigation on the phone and beam it to the Urbane. Doing everything from the watch was pretty nice. - Plenty of watch face choices currently exist in the store. Many free. Good default faces come native to the watch already. - Wireless charging works flawlessly - a magnet holds the watch in place. -Replaceable bands. Picture shows this band: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016ZY3WEU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00 Bad - Navigation uses an app call 'here maps' that's a bit of a different experience from Google maps which I am used to. It still worked well, so no complaints there. - # of apps in the store for Gear S2 is currently limited. That should change in the future. - Need something to track sleep - Currently no app exists to do this using this watch. Not a deal breaker for me. - Be great to have a watch face customizer. - No speaker - Meh - I don't think I'd want to listen to music OR a call with a watch speaker anyway. - Currently does not support being able to add a reminder from the watch. You can add alarms, but not reminders. I hope that will change with a software update. - Would love to have a dashboard widget for my phone that shows battery life of the watch. Currently this info is embedded in the GEAR app. - Tighter Integration with S-HEALTH (Samsung's "Google FIT" equivalent) would be nice- This might be the place to put sleep tracking integration - And I'd love to be able to trigger heart rate monitoring directly from the app without touching the watch. Currently when you try, it defaults to the in-phone heart rate monitor. It would be nice to have an option to choose which monitor to use. S-HEALTH already allows you to filter steps by watch/phone so they've already make 'steps' in that direction. - Charging LED on the base is bright - you will need to point it away from you or it may actually keep you up. That's basically all I know now. I'll update if I see fit. Bottom line - It's a smartwatch that looks like a regular watch and actually delivers performance that doesn't make me regret the $100+ dollar more I spent for it over the LG Urbane. Get one.