Samsung’s fitness-focused Gear Sport smartwatch is here to take on Fitbit and Apple

Barely a few days after Fitbit launched it new long-awaited 'Ionic' and a few weeks before Apple's new smartwatch with built-in LTE, Samsung has launched two new health-focused wearables- the Gear Sport smartwatch and the Gear Fit2 Pro fitness band.

Gear Sport smartwatch

At IFA 2017, the South-Korean company unveiled its new smart devices along with the Gear IconX 2018 wireless earbuds. The new Gear Sport smartwatch is very much like Ionic with its core focus on fitness and workout. The smartwatch that runs on top of Samsung’s Tizen platform, can tag along with you up to 50 meters of water without a problem and will work good-enough in saltwater too. It features built-in heart rate monitoring, does swim tracking (like monitoring your laps and the number of strokes you took) besides the standard fitness and sleep tracking apps.

Samsung has also partnered with Under Armour to give owners a 12-month, premium-tier membership and access to the latter’s suite of self-quantification apps: UA Record, MyFitnessPal, MapMyRun, and Endomondo. Looking at the hardware, the Gear Sport is built around a 1.2-inch circular AMOLED display with a 360 x 360 resolution, Gorilla Glass 3 protection, and an always-on mode.

The new watch weighs 50 grams and comes with a dual-core processor, 4GB of onboard storage, 768MB of RAM, Bluetooth 4.2, and NFC for Samsung Pay support. Compared to the year-old S3, the new smartwatch is smaller, more comfortable, and ergonomic to wear for even people with smaller wrists. The size reduction also means losing some of the S3 capabilities like Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) payments or the  LTE phone-free option.

The Gear Sport will be available in a choice of black or blue silicone strap, with Samsung offering a wide range of aftermarket straps, which will come with color- and design-matched watch faces. Sadly, there's no word on pricing or a specific release date for the Gear Sport yet.

Gear Fit2 Pro fitness band and IconX ear buds

Let's look at the Gear Fit2 Pro fitness band now that features most of the above mentioned tracking features, along with a more comfortable band. The Gear Fit 2 Pro comes in black with red accents as well as a solid black design. It's got the same curved 1.5-inch Super AMOLED screen as the original Gear Fit fitness tracker.

Samsung’s IconX ear buds are getting a new, more comfortable design as well, along with Bixby support and different color options, including pink.