Samsung Galaxy Watch Vs Fitbit Ionic

Android users who are looking for the best smartwatch to support their fitness goals and complement their lifestyle don’t accept it easy.  That’s because at that place are then many choices out at that place and comparing their features is bound to be disruptive.  The good thing, however, is that we are narrowing down your list of options to ii: Samsung Gear Sport and Fitbit Ionic.

Samsung Gear Sport and Fitbit Ionic were released at the aforementioned fourth dimension in tardily 2017 and became two of the best smartwatches on the marketplace. Now, which one should you option? Let’southward run across how one wearable is better than the other.

Samsung Gear Sport

Samsung got early into the wearables game. The Samsung Gear Sport is considered to be an improved version of the Samsung Gear S3, which came out in 2016.

Design

The Samsung Gear Sport boasts a circular screen that sits atop a steel squircle torso that measures 1.7 inches by 0.5 inches.  Its Super AMOLED full-colour display is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and measures ane.20 inches in bore, with a resolution of 360 by 360 pixels.  This smartwatch comes with a standard 22-mm silicon band and weighs 2.4 ounces.

Y’all can find two physical buttons on the correct side of the Samsung Gear Sport’south body: the Home and Back keys.  You can also change the settings past but swiping on the screen. However, the star of the show is the rotating bezel surrounding the brandish.  You can rotate the bezel to go through the watch’due south menus, making it very easy to observe just what you are looking for without having to cover upward the screen with your fingers.

Yous can become the Samsung Gear Sport in either blue or black. Even so, y’all tin can customize its wait by changing its straps and lookout man faces.  You can swap out its silicon band with leather, prophylactic, or nylon, depending on what fashion y’all are going for.  Samsung’south timeless Classic Leather, sporty Hybrid Sport, and casual cool Premium Nato straps are bachelor in different colors and sold separately.

Features

What are the features that you tin look from Samsung Gear Sport?

• Heath and fitness tracking

The Gear Sport can count your steps, keep runway of the number of calories you accept burned, and monitor your on-wrist center rate.  It can also record various activities and exercises. Because of this tracking capability, you tin can set targets that y’all would like to meet during a workout.  Y’all can view your weekly functioning and stats for calories, steps, heart rate, and other metrics.

What’s more, the Gear Sport allows you to connect with the preparation guide app on your phone that lets you get the almost out of your workouts.  You can select from over sixty exercises.

You can even use the Gear Sport to log your nutrient and h2o intake throughout the mean solar day.  It also offers tips and insights to help you lot stay on rails with your health and nutrition goals.

And when you are sleeping, it automatically detects it. The device gives you a sleep report in the morning time, showing yous a simple graph that indicates your sleep design and efficiency.

• Water resistance

Moreover, the Gear Sport is Samsung’south first smartwatch that is water-resistant, cheers to its partnership with Speedo. The smartwatch is waterproof for up to 50 meters deep, so that means yous can add together swimming to the listing of activities that this smartwatch can runway.

• Notifications and Connectivity

You can synchronize your Gear Sport with your smartphone via Bluetooth and with your social media accounts via Wi-Fi. You lot can get tertiary-party notifications, incoming calls, calendar events, Facebook message, e-mail or text message, and others.

But what’s adept is that you can collaborate with these notifications by simply turning the bezel.  Y’all tin delete or archive eastward-mails, like messages on Facebook, and besides ship quick answer texts or messages by typing on a T9 keyboard, using your voice, sending emojis, or handwriting.

• Music streaming

The Samsung Gear Sport can store music for offline listening.  This characteristic is useful when you are doing your workouts and have to leave your phone in the locker.  The best office: Samsung is the only smartwatch manufacturer that offers offline Spotify playback.

So, one time yous are all logged in and synced up, you lot accept 4GB of built-in storage, which accommodates around 500 songs.  And considering the device supports voice search with its built-in microphone, you tin can just order commands to easily explore the Spotify Gear app’south catalog of over thirty million songs to download or stream.

• NFC and Apps

The Samsung Gear Sport has an NFC scrap that allows yous to make mobile payments. As such, you lot can use your Gear Sport to brand purchases by just belongings it most an NFC reader.  You can also use it every bit a controller to open files on a big screen.

Y’all tin can also utilise your Gear Sport to connect to a variety of apps that you observe useful.  That ways yous tin use certain apps that support your hobbies, too as apps you use for your home.  For example, if your house is equipped with the Nest Learning Thermostat, yous tin check and command your home’s temperature with a little twist of the Gear Sport’s bezel.

• GPS and Altimeter

The Samsung Gear Sport is equipped with a GPS sensor that enables it to measure your altitude and speed when doing certain activities.

It likewise has an integrated altimeter that tin can measure altitude. Considering of this, the Gear Sport adjusts appropriately when y’all’re on an airplane and can suggest stretches you can do from your seat.

• Battery life

The Gear Sport’s battery runs three to four days on a single accuse with full general use.  But with the GPS tracking activated, you tin hit around 14 to 15 hours.

Reviews and ratings

Samsung Gear Sport gets a rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon from more than 600 users.  Those who left positive reviews said that they like how the Gear Sport is a pregnant comeback over the Samsung Gear S3 and how it is the perfect combination of smart and sporty.

Virtually of them love the concept of the rotating bezel, the apps supported by the smartwatch, the many free picket faces to choose from, the ability to change the bands and customize its looks, the long battery life, the water resistance, and the GPS tracking.

Meanwhile, some users complained about the inaccurate and inconsistent activity tracking, unreliable GPS, and issues with center rate monitoring.  In that location are also a handful who warn would-be buyers about Samsung’s client service not being very helpful when it comes to specific issues with the device. A few users too said that Samsung won’t honor the product’s warranty.

Meanwhile, the Gear Sport gets a 4-star rating from experts at Tech Advisor.  According to them, while the smartwatch is quite expensive, it is a great-looking device packed with technology in one compact and low-cal design.  Additionally, Gear Sport has decent bombardment life.

What yous would like about Samsung Gear Sports

Considering of its sleek and archetype fashion, the watch won’t await out of identify, regardless of where you are and what you are doing.  Yous would also love how you can mix and match straps and clock faces depending on your outfit or your mood.  The bezel is likewise a unique and user-friendly touch.

You would also beloved the Gear Sport’s all-encompassing fitness tracking package.  Yous can see your stats and your progress reports for your activities on the device’south screen. What’southward more, the Gear Sport is the start smartwatch from Samsung to include water resistance to its suite of features.

Additionally, Gear Sport offers a way for you to interact with your notifications.  You get text messages, and y’all can send a short reply without having to pick your phone upwardly.

What can be meliorate

Connecting the Samsung Gear Sport to a non-Samsung phone is time-consuming every bit it requires you to download four apps.  Moreover, the Gear Sport’s GPS is hit-and-miss, and its optical heart charge per unit monitor typically struggles with fluctuating readings in real time and in interval training.

Those who love Samsung Pay’s MST support volition also be disappointed because Gear Sport doesn’t take it.  And while this smartwatch includes a microphone that allows you to give commands at your wrist, you can only access S Vocalisation and not Bixby.

Likewise needing improvement is the Gear Sport’south lack of compelling apps because information technology requires some proprietary Samsung applications.

Fitbit Ionic

Fitbit has been a leader in the fitness tracker space, and with the release of the Fitbit Ionic, the company is too taking on the smartwatch market place.  Like Fitbit’s activity trackers, the Ionic focuses on health and fitness, but it has added on a few more features to earn the smartwatch status.

Design

The Ionic has a one.4 inches by 0.5 inches foursquare aerospace-class aluminum case that houses a one.42-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 348 pixels by 250 pixels.   The touchscreen display is made of Corning Gorilla Glass three and is sturdy and damage-resistant. It comes with a soft ring that’s easy to accommodate and alter.  The Ionic is designed to exist lightweight, weighing only 1.8 ounces.

The device’s intelligent nano-molded frame packs eight different sensors and a GPS antenna for a stronger connectedness. Further, the Ionic is bachelor in three colour choices: Smoke-Grey body with a Classic Charcoal ring; Silvery-Grey body with Classic Blue-Gray ring; Burnt Orange body with Classic Slate-Bluish band. If you want to sport a different style, you tin can purchase accessory bands in unlike colors and merely swap them.

Features

What are the features that you tin expect from the Fitbit Ionic?

• Smart Rails

The Ionic features the Smart Track technology, which allows the device to automatically track your every conditioning.  So whether y’all are going for a jog, on the elliptical, or playing tennis, the Ionic recognizes the do and records information technology in the Fitbit app.

• PurePulse

You can check your real-fourth dimension heart rate zone during workouts to see whether you are in the Cardio, Peak, or Fat Burn zone.  This, in turn, allows you to optimize your intensity.

The PurePulse technology also allows the Ionic to rail your sleep, from light to deep, to REM slumber stages. Because of this, you have a clearer picture of your dark habits and the quality of your slumber.

Further, you can monitor your resting center rate, as well as follow your center rate trends over time.  Through this, you will larn more about your cardiovascular fitness.

• Water resistance

This Fitbit smartwatch is water-resistant for up to 50 meters.  This, combined with its enhanced swim-tracking chapters, enables the Ionic to record your stroke style, your laps, and the calories you burned while pond, among others.

• Coaching and guided breathing

The Fitbit Ionic is designed to provide you lot with more guidance via dynamic personal coaching. This feature offers personalized workouts that play on the screen and guide you through every motion.

This smartwatch as well promotes relaxation with guided breathing sessions that are based on your current centre charge per unit.

• GPS

The Ionic has congenital-in GPS and multi-sport modes that allow you lot to runway specific workouts similar runs, weights, and rides.  When yous are in Run, Hike, or Bike mode, it uses its built-in GPS to decide your pace, the distance you accept gone, and other vital stats.  It can fifty-fifty show a map of your route, the elevation you take climbed, and the split times.

• Female wellness tracking

Female person users can log their period dates and record their symptoms using the Fitbit app on their phones.  Through this feature, female users can rail their ovulation and see patterns in their cycle.

• Music streaming

You can store and play more than 300 songs in your Ionic.  You can download Pandora or Deezer playlists and go the perfect soundtrack for your activities.  You can heed to music using Bluetooth headphones.

• Access to apps

Using the Fitbit Ionic, you tin access popular and get updates for sports, conditions, and many more than.  You can also download apps for finances, social, fettle, and your other favorites from the Fitbit App Gallery.

• Notifications

You can become alerts for texts, calendar events, and calls.  Y’all can also meet notifications from apps like Gmail and Facebook.  Moreover, you tin send quick replies to messages.

• NFC

The Fitbit Ionic is equipped with NFC capability to allow for cashless payments.

• Battery

The Ionic’s battery life tin can last up to five days with general use. With the GPS activated, information technology can last for around 10 hours.

Reviews and ratings

The Fitbit Ionic gets a rating of iii.3 out of 5 stars on Amazon. People love the activity and fettle tracking it offers, the long battery life, and the vivid touchscreen.

There are, however, complaints about their Ionic not working as it should and encountering endless issues.  They feel shortchanged considering that it’southward quite a pricey smartwatch.

Tech Counselor, meanwhile, gives the Ionic 4 stars.  According to them, while the Ionic is quite expensive, it does pack plenty of loftier-end features that appeal to various people.  They besides love how lightweight and comfy it is to wear.

What you will like about the Fitbit Ionic

The Fitbit Ionic is a fitness-focused smartwatch, so it has fantabulous tracking offerings. Information technology is packed with so many nifty features, and Fitbit always comes upward with software updates and more features over time. A couple of examples are the Quick Replies and the female health tracking, which were not at that place when the Ionic was first launched.

What can exist amend

Many don’t find the Ionic’s indigestible look appealing.  Access to Spotify would be nifty, too.

Samsung Gear Sport vs. Fitbit Ionic: Who Wins?

The 2 smartwatches naturally have a lot of similarities, but they besides have several differences that are worth noting.

The Samsung Gear Sport is round and classier-looking than the Fitbit Ionic.  However, what the Ionic lacks in the looks section, it makes up for in condolement.  Users say that with the Ionic’southward soft bands paired with its lighter weight, it is easy to forget you lot are wearing information technology.

While both smartwatches do a not bad chore at counting calories burned, counting steps, and recording different activities, the Ionic is more consistent and accurate, monitoring center rates, and pinning routes.

Additionally, the Ionic has a meliorate mode of motivating you to be more than active with its frequent reminders to keep moving or to become 250 steps in every hr. Moreover, Ionic has more impressive sleep tracking.  The Ionic has also captured the female person market with its female wellness tracking.

Equally for whose battery life is stronger, the Ionic seems to use its bombardment more efficiently than the Gear Sport does.

The Gear Sport, all the same, won’t be left behind when it comes to features.  It offers the ability to log your nutrient, water, and caffeine intake.  It allows you to set targets and information technology gives y’all a report of your weekly performance.

Both Ionic and Gear Sport offer notifications and quick reply capabilities, but the latter actually works much better in practise.  Users say the Ionic has some glaring inconsistencies with third-party notifications. While both devices were similarly priced when they came out, the Ionic appears to sell for a lower cost than the Gear Sport now.

All in all, the Gear Sport has a better design and is more bonny, simply the Ionic has college scores in terms of tracking and software. And then you tin get either the Samsung Gear Sport or the Fitbit Ionic, depending on your focus, the kind of workouts yous do, your lifestyle, and your budget.

Further read:

• Fitbit Blaze vs Fitbit Charge: Which One Should You Buy?
• Fitbit Alta Hr vs Fitbit Accuse