The Watch v. The Band

Last year I bought a Fitbit … and it was amazing.

It did everything - or at least everything I wanted. It tracked my steps, kept up with my sleep, even synced calories burned with MyFitnessPal, the app I use to keep up with my meals and snacks. It was a pedometer with a brain, and the ability to keep a record of my steps taken and hours slept every day made my S heart sing.  

I loved it. Then I lost it. Just like in that old song.

Physically, the Fitbit is just a tiny black cube that nests in a flexible band. If the band becomes loose, as mine did, the cube can fall out … as mine did. I walked a lot of steps that day. You’d have to be very lucky to find something that size when you’re not sure where it dropped, and I wasn’t lucky.

(For the record, I don't blame FitBit for that. Losing things has never been a problem for me.)

I could have bought another FitBit, but why go with the old when there are so many new options on the market? I settled on the Gear Fit, which at that point wasn’t even out yet. It’s a watch instead of a band, and has a big color screen and multiple functions. And best of all, if you have a Samsung phone it syncs right to it.

I pre-ordered one a few days after losing my FitBit. It was more expensive, but it would be worth it, right?

With apologies to Samsung, it’s not worth it. I’ve given this watch a couple of months to grow on me and it hasn’t. The Gear Fit is a decent piece of technology but doesn’t equal FitBit for several reasons.

First of all, the step tracking is off. FitBit put a lot of time and resources into the algorithms for counting steps and it paid off. I’m not sure how the Gear Fit’s step-counting algorithm works except for ‘meh.’ Samsung should have done more research in this area.

The software issues are even worse. Gear Fit doesn’t sync with other fitness apps. It has its own app – actually it has two or three – and they are clunky and buggy.  It also syncs with these apps through your Samsung account, which for me has caused all sorts of login problems and delays. About half the time the results won’t load, or it will load steps from a month ago. They’ve had a few updates but none have really addressed this problem.

The menu is clunky. You have to swipe and touch several times to do anything. Take sleep mode, for instance. To get to the sleep tracking function, you have to turn on the screen, swipe twice, touch the sleep button, touch start, then touch again to confirm start. (Oh, the horror of multiple swipes!)

You have to do the same thing to get out of sleep mode, which is even worse. With the FitBit, you only have to tap the band a few times to enter sleep mode – and if you’re already in it, FitBit will blink twice every time you tap it to let you know. I can’t count the times I’ve gone through a whole day with my Gear Fit still in sleep mode. It even lets you stay in sleep mode when you enter exercise mode, which is just bizarre.

The Gear Fit does have several cool features, like a timer, a stopwatch, and the ability to sync with apps on your phone. And it’s nice to see incoming calls on my watch when I leave my phone in the other room. That way I can ignore them intentionally instead of accidentally. But these aren’t really fitness features. I bought the Gear Fit to use as a fitness tracker more than a smart watch. If I’d wanted a smart watch I would have bought a Gear 2.

Every technology has its bugs – but some of these issues have simple fixes. You can find similar complaints on just about every review published on this watch since it came out, and as far as I can tell Samsung has done next to nothing to fix them.

Don't worry, it's just a figure of speech. I wasn't going to do it ... and it's waterproof, anyway.

I’ve tried to avoid my usual tendency to judge things too early, but my patience is running out. So as much as it would pain me to flush the money spent on the Gear Fit down the toilet, I’m considering returning to the fold and purchasing another FitBit. There’s no doubt (in my mind, anyway) which one is the best fitness and sleep tracker.

But maybe I’ll give it a few more weeks.  Or just wait until I lose the Gear Fit, too. This band is bound to break sooner or later …