Gear Fit 2 review: Samsung's $179 fitness band/smartwatch improves upon the original with built-in GPS, makes top-tier Fitbits look outdated
Valentina Palladino / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
Two weeks after PC Magazine's [[a:870264|hands-on previewed the Gear Fit2's GPS, heart-rate sensor, and 4GB of storage alongside the $199 Gear IconX earbuds]], Ars Technica's verdict is in: at $179, the band delivers built-in GPS that its reviewer says makes top-tier Fitbits look outdated.
That matters because standalone GPS was, until now, the differentiator of pricier trackers — Ars's own Microsoft Band 2 review a year earlier found GPS slow and unreliable even on a device that had it. Samsung shipping it cheaply on a band resets the spec floor for the whole category.
First-order effects
- Fitbit's high-end bands are immediately undercut on specs-per-dollar: a $179 Samsung band now offers route tracking without a phone, forcing Fitbit's premium tier to justify its price on software and ecosystem rather than hardware.
- Buyers choosing between a band and a smartwatch lose a reason to pay smartwatch prices, since the Gear Fit 2 covers the core fitness-smartwatch use case at band pricing.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's Band line, already dinged for sluggish GPS in Ars's prior review, faces a rival that fixed the exact weakness at a lower price point — leaving little room for another full-price Band iteration without matching the hardware.
- Rival band makers must absorb the cost of GPS silicon into mid-range devices, compressing margins across the sub-$200 tracker market rather than ceding the feature to Samsung.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the band category dissolves upward into the fitness smartwatch — a path Samsung itself follows in the corpus, from the Gear Sport's sharp display and thin third-party app support to the Galaxy Watch Active's refined fitness-first design, each step trading band minimalism for watch capability.
- Hardware differentiation alone stops deciding purchases in wearables; as GPS and sensors commoditize, the contest shifts to software ecosystems and third-party apps, where reviewers consistently find every player in this coverage still weak.
The trend: Fitness bands are absorbing flagship smartwatch features like built-in GPS until the two categories collapse into one, with Samsung iterating fastest along that path.