Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Prior to this I have owned a Fitbit Flex and a Fitbit Charge HR. I was looking for a way out of the Fitbit ecosystem for a change of pace. One of my friends has the original Gear and LOVED it. I was looking for a smart watch that did a better job with notifications than the Charge HR (my wife has the Charge 2 and that seems to do a much better job than my Charge HR ever did). This does well with notifications - I can limit what apps push notifications and I can even setup more specific replies to be available from the watch. This also does a great job of tracking sleep and steps. So why did I rate this 2 stars? The first minor hiccup is that I cannot turn the HR monitor off. I think it's a waste of time and battery since the majority of watches that advertise HR tracking do a lack-luster job of doing so. The battery already isn't great on this watch (I have bluetooth on with only calendar/text notifications) and it lasts no more than 2.5 days. This knocks at least 1 star off of it. The other headache is much worse. I can't mow my lawn without killing my Gear Fit2 Pro. Because of how Samsung programmed their "Workout Detection," my watch will get stuck in a "Dynamic Workout" which is basically code for "we don't have a clue what you're doing, but you're moving a lot." This is great and all, but then I finish mowing the lawn and my watch stays in this dynamic workout indefinitely or until it dies. I have to reboot my whole watch every time I mow the lawn or my watch immediately dies. I have tried charging it while it's in this loop to see if it would ever turn off, but it will continue forever. I had charged it long enough that the Gear informed me it was overheating and it was going to turn itself off until heat resumed more appropriate operating conditions. Ok, so you've read that story. I contacted Samsung (this in itself is a nightmare... just try to figure out how to submit a ticket!) about this hoping there was some way to turn off workout detection, or at least toggle it off so I could escape this Dynamic Lawn Mowing Workout Hell I've found. In short they told me "no, there's no way to turn it off. We wish we could be more helpful." I expect better from a tech giant. At least when I reached out to Fitbit they were reasonable rather than completely disconnected and uninterested.