 By all accounts, this is the year of the smartwatch. But for Samsung, it's actually year two, and its best smartwatch effort yet is the Gear 2, a refinement of last year's ill-fated Galaxy Gear. Samsung has fine-tuned almost everything in the $299 Gear 2. It's slimmer, lighter, more comfortable to wear, quicker to use, and longer lasting between charges. It's also more attractive to look at, but it doesn't quite shake off the I'm wearing a computer on my wrist and everyone knows it appearance. Last year's model was clunky, uncomfortable, and frankly pretty ugly. The Gear 2 is a great improvement in those respects. I've worn it for a week straight without finding it to be too much of a burden on my wrist. The main attraction here is still the 1.63 inch square super AMOLED display that's bright, colorful, has great viewing angles, and is easy to read outdoors. It's a touchscreen, and it remains your main point of interaction with the Gear 2, but below it Samsung has put a convenient home button so you don't have to rely on swipe gestures quite as much as before. The display is not always on, but the Gear 2 is much better at waking up when you lift your arm up to check the time, making it much less annoying to do so. The other big change that Samsung did to the hardware was move the camera off of the strap and integrate it into the watch housing itself. As a result, the design is much sleeker, the camera is less of an eyesore, and crucially, it lets you swap the strap for a different one. It took me less than five minutes to put on a more comfortable leather strap to replace the included plasticky rubber one on the Gear 2. Samsung did add a couple new hardware features to the Gear 2 this time around. There's an integrated IR blaster which can be programmed to control an entertainment system, and like the fitness-focused Gear Fit, the Gear 2 can measure your heart rate and track your steps or sleep activity. Step counting is significantly more accurate than the Gear Fit, and it's a welcome addition to the Gear 2, but the heart rate monitor remains slow and difficult to use. Fortunately, Samsung's S Health app that pairs with the Gear 2 and Gear Fit has been updated to display sleep tracking information, but I'm still not convinced at how useful that information actually is. The Gear 2 also has the same fitness coaching features as the Gear Fit, but it's bigger size and heavier weight make it less comfortable to wear when you're working out. You can now load music on the Gear 2 itself, so you don't need to carry around your phone when you're doing a workout, but the interface to do so is pretty clunky and it doesn't do anything for you if you use Spotify or another streaming service. Samsung says the Gear 2 is more responsive and faster to use than last year's model, and for the most part that's the truth. The interface hasn't changed at all visually, but under the hood Samsung has swapped the Android software for a platform based on Tizen. You can't tell the difference between the two, but the chances that the Gear 2 will ever work with a non-Samsung smartphone are pretty slim now. Swipes and gestures are more responsive and it makes the whole experience much less frustrating than before. But notifications, especially from third party apps are still not very useful and you have to use Samsung's own messaging and mail apps to take advantage of the quick message replies and other conveniences. It also requires way too many taps to clear a notification. With the new platform Samsung is supporting third party apps, which can be downloaded via the Gear Companion app on a Samsung smartphone. At this point the app choices are pretty limited, with most of them consisting of calculators or custom watch faces. One of the big features of the original Galaxy Gear was the ability to make and receive phone calls from your wrist, Dick Tracy style. The Gear 2 still does this, but it doesn't improve the experience much. I still have to project my voice quite a bit for the other party to hear me, and when they speak the audio quality is pretty low. It's still a parlor trick more than a useful feature. You can do other things with your voice too, such as set timers, call contacts, and so forth, but you still have to touch the screen at some point to confirm your command, which feels unnecessary when you just want to start a timer while cooking in the kitchen. Battery life was a big problem with last year's Galaxy Gear, requiring you to charge it every day just like your smartphone. The Gear 2 does better, but not by much. I still had to charge it every two and a half days, and it requires a clunky clip-on adapter that's easy to lose. A smartwatch that can be charged on the weekend and last through to the next weekend would be ideal, but the Gear 2 is not there yet. Overall the Gear 2 is a marked improvement over last year's model, but to be honest that wasn't a very high bar to meet. Samsung improved a number of things from the design of the hardware to the responsiveness of the software to the battery life between charges, but a number of nagging issues remain and if you're not using a Samsung smartphone, you can't get in on the fun at all. The Gear 2 is definitely the best smartwatch Samsung has created, and it's a better option than the Galaxy Gear or the fitness-focused Gear Fit for pretty much everything. But this is the year of the smartwatch, and there are certainly better things on the horizon. You might just want to wait for one of those.