Samsung Gear S2 review

It’s all about the bezel. Forget the sleek design, the Tizen operating system and the comfortable fit; it’s the rotating bezel that really makes the Samsung Gear S2 immediately impressive.

"What rotating bezel?" you may say, expecting the kind of bling-worthy milled metal wheel marked with numbers you'd find on a TAG Heuer or Rolex. Instead, the Gear S2’s bezel is so subtle as to be almost invisible, an act of design maturity that I didn’t expect to see with such an otherwise noteworthy feature.

It may not be obvious then, but the outer edge of this smartwatch does rotate. Not with heavy and grand clunks, but deftly with a subtle click, it doesn’t quite spin, but the action is light enough to be near effortless. It’s brilliantly implemented too, letting you switch from the time, to notifications, calendar appointments, media playback, fitness tracking, weather, alarms and more - all at a simple twist.

It provides instant access to a lots of useful information, without all that awkward swiping and tapping on a tiny screen. It’s also easy to use even if you’re wearing gloves, which is handy in the winter. You can still swipe if you prefer, though, or tap to get more details.

There are Back and Home buttons on the side of the watch too. Tapping either wakes up the screen, Back lets you step back in apps, while Home returns to the time, brings up all you apps, and also acts as a power button if held - it's far better than Android Wear’s tortuous trip through settings to turn the watch off.

Design

I reviewed the more modern-looking Gear S2, but there’s also a S2 Classic, which has a more traditional look and a chunkier bezel. The standard S2 doesn’t exactly look distinctive, but then again it doesn’t look much like anything else either. Its smooth lines, side buttons and neatly-integrated rubber strap are reminiscent of a slick digital watch, but then it has that round face, which instantly makes you think analogue. It’s not small at 42x50x11.4mm, but it doesn’t feel that big on your wrist either.

It’s certainly not trying to be a fancy watch and I really like that. The sleek design means it doesn’t catch on your clothes and the shape and strap make it incredibly comfortable to wear. In short, this is a watch I’d happily wear all the time. It’ll take the abuse too, with an IP68 rating meaning that it’s dust-proof and waterproof for at least 30min, at up to 1m in depth. That case is made out of stainless steel, not plastic as you might first think, and so it's tougher and feels more expensive than it looks.

Samsung has done an impressive job in creating a variety of circular watch faces to match the design. You can select these on the watch, but for the full customisations you’re better off pushing them to it from the Samsung Gear app. Here you can not only choose from a huge number of faces, in different colours, but also decide if you want to show the date, and select from a list of additional information, or complications as they’re called on real watches.

Complications range from battery level, weather, world clocks, alarm time, steps taken and many more. Some watch faces allow for more than one complication and I opted for battery and a fluids counter (Samsung say this is for water and caffeinated drinks, but it I think it’s far more useful to count alcohol units, especially with Christmas approaching). It’s a great piece of design and way ahead of anything that Google or Motorola supplies with the Moto 360 - though there are a huge number of watchfaces on offer via Google Play.

Display

Those watch faces are displayed on a detailed AMOLED screen. It’s 1.2in and 360 pixels across, for 302 pixels-per-inch. The screen provides excellent contrast and vivid colours, making stuff easy to read. It’s bright too, when necessary, so you shouldn’t have any problems in direct sunlight (even though sunlight was lacking during my testing in murky November). With its slightly chunkier design, Samsung has managed to hide the screen connector under the bezel, so it doesn’t have the chopped-off look that the Moto 360 screens suffer from.

Inside it’s powered by Samsung's own Exynos 3250 chipset, which on paper isn’t much different from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 in the 2nd Gen Moto 360. Both are based on a 28nm process, backed up by 512MB of RAM and 4GB of local storage. The Exynos runs at 1GHz (compared to 1.2GHz from the Snapdragon in the Moto) but I had no complaints about performance, with everything running very smoothly indeed.

Speaking of running, it has the usual array of sensors - accelerometer, barometer, gyroscope - and an optical heart rate sensor too, so that it can track your personal fitness and improvement if that sort of thing motivates you. Personally I do the same amount of exercise whether I’m being harassed by watch or not, but that might be just me.

Battery

I don’t know if it’s the AMOLED display, Samsung’s Exynos chipset, efficiencies on the part of Tizen, or all three, but the Gear S2's battery life is excellent. With light use, I got two full days of use out of it, with plenty of battery to spare. This is in spite of it only having a relatively small 250mAh battery - even the smaller version of the Moto 360 2nd Gen uses a 300mAh battery. It's a great achievement and means you can go away for the night without a having to take the charger.

It comes with a little wireless charger, which uses the Qi standard, so you can also charge it on most wireless chargers (such as those built into some Ikea furniture). The charger is magnetic, so the Gear S2 sticks to it and won’t get knocked off accidentally.

Tizen

Android Wear has come a long way of late, but Google continues to lockout manufacturers from making any significant alterations to it. Samsung’s own Tizen operating system provides that leeway, but at the cost of the support of Google itself. This can be seen in both its support for Google’s own services and its inability to make the most of Android’s notification system.

The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s no Google Maps here. If, like me, you rely on Google maps for almost everything now, having to use HERE Maps is a bit of chore - not that it’s bad per se, just different. Google knows where my home, my office, my friend’s houses and favourite bars all are, plus it has a fantastic grasp of London public transport. HERE Maps doesn't even come close. 

Notifications generally work well, but they lack little niceties, such as bringing up a picture of the contact emailing you in the background. More annoyingly, you can’t get back a notification once you’ve swiped it away, with no undo function provided. It’s something I complained about vociferously with Android Wear and which has thankfully been added to more recent versions. I also failed to receive notifications for some emails, despite them appearing on my S6 and the app being enabled in the settings.

I didn’t find the voice recognition to be as good as Google’s version; it wasn’t that it got things wrong, as much as it didn’t realise I’d stopped talking and would continue to listen to background noise to find more speech. It also badgered me to use Samsung's Messages app rather than Chomp SMS, though disobeying it didn't seem to cause any problems I could see. These are only minor points, but they’re enough to mar the overall experience.

Conclusion

The bezel is the best input device I’ve seen for a smartwatch, but having said that, smartwatches are still primarily passive devices. They show information as you need it, saving you digging out your phone, but any task that takes more than a quick tap is probably better done on your phone. A smartwatch is merely an accessory of your smartphone, and so getting the two working together in harmony is paramount.

If you have a Samsung smartphone and are looking for a smartwatch this looks to be the obvious answer. However, as a Samsung user, you probably still use a lot of Google apps and services, and you may not always get the best support for these from Tizen. On the plus side, you’ll get access to Samsung Pay when that launches in the UK, so you can pay for stuff using your watch.

If you’re using another Android smartphone then it’s a bit trickier to set up, but it’s still a great device, with an excellent design, screen and hardware. I just personally wish it was running Android Wear, I currently prefer Google’s (admittedly more-limited) operating system and have greater faith in its gradual improvement in the future - much in the way that ‘vanilla’ Android has gone from being a bit half-cooked to excellent over the last few years.

I really wished I liked Tizen more, but for me it holds back the Gear S2 and so I can’t give it full marks.