Samsung's Gear Fit 2 starts strong, but fades fast

Samsung's new Gear Fit2 has just about everything I look for in a fitness tracker. There's all day tracking, heart rate, GPS for tracking pace and distance, smartphone notifications, and automatic exercise detection. There's even four gigs of space to store your favorite songs right on the device. I'm also a huge fan of the design. The curved AMOLED screen is beautiful to look at. And it's actually pretty comfortable to wear. But what really excites me is the price. At $179, it's cheaper than both the Microsoft Band 2, Garmin's new Vivo Smart HR+ and the Fit Bit Surge, all of which also have GPS. So, based on all of this, you would think I really like to fit two, but that's not the case. Battery life is extremely short. I got about two and a half days, and that was with only 30 minutes of GPS. With no GPS, it lasted a little bit longer, at about three [UNKNOWN] so sure it's better than the Apple watch, but a lot worse than products from FitBit and Garmin. One of the feature stamps that I highlighted was Spotify integration. It actually sounded really cool, but in reality it requires a phone connected and is pretty much just a glorified remote control. It would've been a real game changer if you were able to actually load your Spotify playlist right on the device for offline listening. And then when it came time to workout, the Fit 2 continued to frustrate me. The heart rate sensor wasn't very accurate on runs, and the GPS signal took a long time to lock on. It's also annoying that each screen has a different data point, so I wasn't able to view pace and distance at the same time. Instead, I had to swipe over to a new screen which got really difficult as my fingers got sweatier. This may be fine for an extremely casual runner But you could just be better off saving your money and using your smart phone. As a fitness and sleep tracker, it's actually not bad, but I just can't get over that poor battery life. And it's really a shame since I really like the look and feel. For more information on the Gear Fit 2, be sure to check out my full review over at CNet.com