Samsung Gear 2 Neo Review: This Is The Mainstream Smartwatch For The ...
Announced alongside the Samsung Gear 2 ( reviewed perviously here on Forbes), the Gear 2 Neo can be brutally described as the 'cut down' version of Samsung's Gear 2 flagship smartwatch. By stripping the two mega-pixel camera out of the hardware, and using a plastic exterior on the Gear Neo rather than the metal found in the Gear 2, Samsung has been able to drop the price by £80 in the UK (and $100 in the US).
Given that everything else about the Gear platform is shared between the Gear 2 and the Gear 2 Neo, I think it's far better to look at the lower priced Gear 2 Neo as the smartwatch for the mass market and the Gear 2 for those looking for a bit more luxury in their smartwatch. Suggesting that someone pays £220/$199 for Samsung's vision of a smartwatch seems far more acceptable than the £299/$299 asked by the metallic Gear 2.
The other issue around the Gear 2 Neo is personal one, and it's around timing. I'm looking at this watch after my experiences with the LG G Watch and the Android Wear operating system. Samsung has developed the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo to use a variant of their Tizen operating system, and that means all the decisions in terms of UI, operation, and presentation belong to Samsung.
While Android Wear may provide a much richer graphical experience, of the two smartwatch operating systems Tizen's smartwatch variant makes more sense to me and is more mature than the first round effort of Android Wear. While both systems are built around the notifications that your Android smartphone (or in the case of the Gear 2 Neo, your Samsung Galaxy smartphone as Samsung's watch is only compatible with Samsung's hardware), the Gear 2 Neo is much less invasive. Where Android Wear pushes the notification to the front of the watch screen demand action, the Gear 2 Neo's Tizen powered software is more subtle, putting the notification under a 'notifications' shortcut icon that is a swipe away from the main clock screen.
This puts notifications in their place and while you do get a vibration on your wrist for incoming notifications with a full screen display, this will only stay on-screen until you dismiss it or the Gear 2 Neo display switches off. The next time the watch screen switches on (either through pressing the single button on the case, or through you snapping your wrist up to look at it if you have the motion sensing activation toggled on) you'll find yourself at the main time display.
The notifications shown on the Gear 2 Neo screen will show you the same information that you get on your Android notification screen, and an on-screen option will allow you to open the notification on your smartphone. Alternatively a swipe down from the top of the bezel and into the screen will at as the 'back' button.
For me, the important differentiator between the Tizen powered Gear 2 Neo and the Android Wear powered Gear Live is that Samsung's solution preserves a history of your notifications, organised by application. You can see the read and unread notifications on your watch, and be able to come back to any of them at a later date. This gives more options to manage notifications, allowing them to be checked and action at the point of arrival, or leave them for later, knowing they will still be available on the watch. I feel more in control with the Gear 2 Neo (and the Gear 2) compared to the Android Wear styled notifications.
Samsung's smartwatch vision feels more like the app based Android experience than the Google Now powered cards approach of Android Wear. You have a main 'homescreen' which lets you choose from various watch faces; sliding this view to either side with your finger and you have screens which are populated with shortcuts to your choice of apps on the smartwatch; and an apps icon which opens up to reveal all the apps in the smartwatch. This app view, in a slightly confusing move, looks similar to the shortcuts screen. Maybe a slight change in colour for the stylised 'line drawn' icons would help differentiate the app screen from the shortcut screens?
These apps differentiate Samsung's own smartwatch offerings from other choices, especially Android Wear. Although the Gear 2 Neo does not have the two megapixel camera that the higher priced Gear 2 has, it does have the optical heart-rate sensor under the main body of the watch. While this is not a constant heart rate monitor that the hardcore fitness fans will be looking for, it is enough for most users looking to start off with some quantified exercising and fitness routines.
This ties in with Samsung' S Health suite that has a companion application on your Galaxy Smartphone, as well as an online cloud component. Along with the heart rate sensor, the Gear 2 Neo also acts as a pedometer to count your steps, with goals you can set yourself to reach each day.
The smartwatch will also allow you to screen your incoming phones calls and texts, and you can look through your address book or dial numbers direct from the watch. This might seem superfluous if you are going to dial a number on the watch and pick up the phone, but if you are using a bluetooth headset with your Galaxy as well as your smartwatch, this is a workable solution which leaves your smartphone in your pocket.
The Gear 2 Neo can also act as a universal remote control thanks to the inclusion of an IR Blaster, and with 4 GB of storage you can store a decent volume of music on the watch to listen to over bluetooth (although this does have a big impact on the battery life).
Coming in three colors, including a rather striking swatch-like orange, the Gear 2 Neo is even more focused on a modern audience than the Gear 2 (being cheaper by that £80/$100 margin helps as well). The styling is identical outside of the change of materials, and the Gear 2 Neo also carries an IP67 certification for dust and waterproofing. This is a smartwatch that has thought about consumer needs and has done its best, although there are a few issues.
Naturally these are the same issues that affect the Gear 2. The smartwatch's Android client only runs on Samsung's Galaxy hardware, so the range of handsets that the watch will connect to are limited. The notifications are also a touch limiting and the UI needs some better use of fonts, spacing, and weighting. For example an alert telling you that you have three emails waiting is great, that it lists the subjects is better, but when there is no visual mark or font change to split two email texts up, it can get confusing.
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