I've been patiently waiting for years, for the perfect smart watch that would "check all the boxes," and the Fossil Gen 5 comes pretty close. Here's my honest review.
THE FACE
When I opened the box, the watch face was smaller than I expected, and I was disappointed to see that a black circle of non-active margin surrounds that actual display, making the real display even smaller than the smaller-than-expected watch face. But I've survived a week with it. Also, I don't know that other watches out there have a larger display. This was just my reaction to it.
FONT SIZE
Next, I noticed just how small the type/font is on the screen for most notifications. Given my age and eye sight, the tiny print was near impossible to read. Fortunately, there is an accessibility setting to slightly increase the font size, though not much.
BUILD QUALITY
The watch itself is built well, and it seems solid. The stainless steel band seems light weight, but does a good job. As a whole, it does not feel like a toy. It feels like a mid-range watch.
CHARGING CORD
The charging cord, however, feels like a cheap piece of plastic and wire. It does not feel like a brand-name item, but rather, it feels like a replacement cord you would find on a rack for $1.
The charging wire does not come with a charging block. Instead, you have to plug the USB-A end of it into a computer or other USB outlet.
Also, the charging wire is incredibly short. Way too short. I don't think it's even 3 feet. It would be fine if it were plugged into my computer, but it's not at all long enough to have on your nightstand, even if an outlet us nearby on the wall.
Lastly, the charging cord is magnetic and snaps onto the back. Two small pins then make contact with the case to charge. (It is not wireless.) HOWEVER, it's a relatively loose fit and does not have that satisfying snap connection that you expect. So you connect it, and set your watch down and just HOPE that it stays connected. I would prefer a connection that snaps, has a strong magnet, and you can feel confident in the connection.
APPS
I am incredibly disappointed in the lack of apps for this smart watch, and for Wear OS in general. You would think that the company that makes Wear OS (Google) would make apps for it's most popular products like Gmail... but no, there is no Gmail app. There's no Google Voice app. etc.
NOTIFICATIONS
While there aren't many apps to use, the notifications do work well. When your phone would normally beep or vibrate, so too does your watch. It shows me notifications for incoming Email, Google Voice messages, and even notifications from other apps. That's nice. For the messages, you can often reply back to the person, by using either the microphone or smart reply. That's nice.
A big downside of the notifications system, however, is that there's no way to go back and look at previous or old notifications. So if grandma sent an email to me 20 minutes ago, and I already swiped away the notification, I cannot go back to it.
NFC
I waited for a watch that has NFC for mobile payments / Google Pay. This watch does it, but so far I have not used it. I have my credit card all set up, but the first time I was at a store, I could not get the watch to do it, and I had to resort to my phone. This may be user error on my part. Hopefully I can learn to just quickly use my watch.
GOOGLE FIT
For tracking fitness, I like that the watch is counting my steps, and that I can see my overall accomplishments for the day. I can use the watch to start a new activity (like running) but in that process, the crown does not function to scroll the list of activities. So you have to use your finger on the small screen.
PHONE CALLS
I also waited for a watch that has a speaker and mic. So far I have only accepted one call on my watch. I guess it was okay. Unfortunately people just don't make calls these days so it's not something I've used much.
SPEAKER / MUSIC / MEDIA
I have not been able to play music directly on the watch and out of the watch's speaker. I've also not played music from the watch and to headphones. So I cannot say those things work or don't. When you are using Spotify or Google Play, you can use the watch to skip forward and back on tracks, and play/pause, and adjust volume. I've used the watch to control music playing across the room on my Google Home; the stream was coming from the network and not from the watch.
FINAL RULING
This watch normally sells for $295 and I bought it on sale for $205. When I first opened the package and played with it for about 30 minutes, my gut told me to send it back. But I decided to give it some time and extra chances. During the past week I have learned to appreciate the heart rate monitor and step counting aspect of the watch. I suppose I could say I like the notifications, too, though I am not too sure how much that helps my life versus the identical notifications on my phone! I admit to being a Google Fanboy with the latest Google products, and at the same time I am incredibly jealous that it SEEMS those with Apple Watches can do far more with their watch/phone combo. I could be wrong, but I bet they have better access to their email, messages, etc, via their watches. Is the Fossil Gen 5 worth $205, probably. Would I recommend it for $295? No way. Do I hope a future Wear OS has better features that can compete with Apple, and would I pay extra for that? Absolutely.
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From the manufacturer
Gen 5 - 44mm Touchscreen
COMPARE SMARTWATCHES
| | Notifications | |
SpO2 (Blood Oxygen) | | |
| | Heart Rate Tracking | |
| | Fitness Tracking | |
Approx 24+ hours | Battery Life | Approx 24+ hours |
Alexa Enabled | | |
| | Music Control | |
| | Notifications | |
SpO2 (Blood Oxygen) | | |
| | Heart Rate Tracking | |
| | Fitness Tracking | |
Approx 24+ hours | Battery Life | Approx 24+ hours |
Alexa Enabled | | |
| | Music Control | |
| | Notifications | |
SpO2 (Blood Oxygen) | | |
| | Heart Rate Tracking | |
| | Fitness Tracking | |
Approx 24+ hours | Battery Life | Approx 24+ hours |
Alexa Enabled | | |
| | Music Control | |
| | Notifications | |
SpO2 (Blood Oxygen) | | |
| | Heart Rate Tracking | |
| | Fitness Tracking | |
Approx 24+ hours | Battery Life | Up to 2 Weeks |
Alexa Enabled | | |
| | Music Control | |
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Abesh
Review after using it for 1 week
Reviewed in India on February 17, 2020
Abesh
Reviewed in India on February 17, 2020
Pros:
1. Display and Touch Response : The display looks
and feels great. Only in direct sunlight the
visibility gets bit of compromised even with
sunlight booster enabled. Touch response is
also very nice but you have to be precise about
your touch as you are not dealing with a
smartphone screen :P
2. Features: Google's Wear OS brings in alot of
nice features to this product like google fit,
meditation exercises etc. Plus it is easy to
configure this device by using your phone with
the help of Wear OS app.
3. Battery Life: the previous Fossil smartwatches
had lots of issue with the battery life and I
guess Fossil has finally been able to solve it.
The watch runs for almost 2 days straight after
getting fully charged( Daily normal usage).
4. Build Quality: ok you are spending more than
20k for a watch so it is absolutely a necessity for
the watch to look and feel premium. And it
does. The build quality is supernice with metalic
circular dial, sharp clear screen and also the
rubber strap is feels great( I was sceptical about
the rubber strap as I am a fan of leather ones
but trust me it is of super quality, when you touch
it you can literally feel how good the rubber
quality is.
Now coming to the CONs
1. Connectivity: The bluetooth connectivity is good
but faced some issue with the Wi-Fi. Takes a bit
of time to connect to the wifi and flactuates
very often( Gets disconnected).
2. Google Assistant not responding: Faced this
issue quite a lot. Out of 10 times only twice or
thrice get the response from GA but maximum
of times it showed some error like Assistant is
not responding, there were some issues
connecting you etc.
3. Battery Life: You might think I have put the
battery life in pros then why I am putting it on
Cons again. The reason is with comparison to
previous edition Fossil smartwatches this watch
has much better battery life but in this price
range most of it's competitors are having
greater battery life. So this is down point for this
product.
4.Bad Speaker: The most irritating thing of this
watch is the speaker quality. It almost sounds
terrible. No clarity whatsover and the volume is
low too. An area to improve for later generation
Fossil smartwatches.
All in all a decent product to have but what I would suggest is to go through different products as well like apple, samsung etc because it is better to search and find a product ehich best suits you when you are paying a hefty amount.
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Prateek Wangnoo
Looks good,feels good,doesn't last as long at it should (Cue Jake's dialogue to Amy)
Reviewed in India on February 4, 2020
Prateek Wangnoo
Reviewed in India on February 4, 2020
First, the OS is very well built, clean, and light, takes a bit of a learning curve but is actually pretty decent once you get used to it, and it does lag a bit when you are downloading firmware and software updates but that's almost about it.
Secondly, the design is minimalistic but very very charming, there is a "new toy" charm when you first buy it, but considering how quick I lose interest in things, it was very surprising that I kept finding reasons to just look at it, not fiddle, not play, just look, the display is crisp and vibrant and it took me a while to actually register that the call that I've connected to is on my watch speaker and not the phone speaker, so kudos to that on the hardware front, that along with swim resistance makes you feel a lot like your hand is in a good watch.
Third, the watch faces are not limited by any means, I've yet to find fully customizeable watch face with my very own choice of wallpapers, but that's about the limit of what isn't there, or quite possibly what I haven't found yet, even so, the watch faces available are customizable to some extent which keeps things from getting monotonous.
Fourth, and this one is important, at first it'll feel like there is a bit of a connectivity issue with the wifi and the bluetooth, there isn't, once on your home wifi, turn the bluetooth off on the watch and the primary connection goes to wifi and you can keep using the watch as you were, helps save battery, god knows you'll need to do quite a bit for that. If you turn bluetooth and wifi on at the same time, primary connection remains at bluetooth and as soon as you leave the wifi setting, it'll disconnect from it, don't worry if that happens, there is nothing wrong with your smartwatch.
Lastly, and the only sort of a bummer here. It burns through battery at any mode which isn't aimed specifically at power saving, even on the "extended" mode, I lost about 15% charge in under an hour, with little to no usage, it helps that it charges at a decent pace, not too slow, not too quick, but it does make you feel sometimes like it should have been quicker.
Considering how wide a brand Fossil is, it's one of the safest bet to buy in the budget of around 20K as you can take it to any fossil brand store, and there are plenty around the country, should you face any factory problems, which is very unlikely to begin with, around 5-6 people in my peer group have been using fossil smartwatches from the gen 3 to now gen 5, and no complaints that you wouldn't have gotten with regular wear of a smartwatch of any other brand to begin with.
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