Are you one of the millions taking more neighborhood walks during these times of quarantine? Do you find yourself wanting to know how far you walked and how many calories you burned? Our researchers have compared some of the best smartwatches of 2020, identifying tools to help you stay connected while social distancing.
Fossil Unisex 44MM Gen 5 Carlyle HR Heart Rate Stainless Steel and Silicone Touchscreen Smart Watch, Color: Black (Model: FTW4025)
The Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch is the best Wear OS watch you can buy. It delivers in nearly every area — performance, aesthetics, and customizability. Fossil’s 5th generation smartwatches solve many of the issues we had with previous years’ devices: there’s no smoother performance and added functionality like GPS and heart-rate monitoring. Plus, the battery isn’t sluggishly slow to charge anymore. That’s a lot of pain points wiped out. As a result, Fossil is still the brand to go for if you’re after a fashionable smartwatch and aren’t an Apple user. If you want a good-looking smartwatch that doesn’t follow the crowd and ticks enough boxes to be a replacement for a traditional digital or analog timepiece, then the Fossil Gen 5 in its various guises is worth considering. Particularly on a deal.
It relegates problems with performance and sub-day battery life to the past and looks good doing it. If you want your smartwatch to look like a more traditional timepiece the Fossil is great. Will, it beat an Apple Watch Series 5? Not a chance. But one of Gen 5’s biggest strengths is that it isn’t an Apple Watch so you’re not going to see every person in the room wearing the same watch as you. It’s also at least £120 cheaper.
Whether your style is buttoned up and professional or easy-going and free, we’ve got a Fossil Gen5 smartwatch for that. it has a round, watch-like face. Gen5 watches are available in a variety of colors and strap material as well – ensuring that you have plenty to choose from and plenty of options to switch out.
This watch is almost perfect. It has all the features I had been hoping for – smooth operation, a great screen with auto-brightness, impressive waterproofing, and NFC payments. I’ve been waiting for years to upgrade my LG Urbane. I knew that watches with the latest Qualcomm processor were coming, and was patiently holding out for them. Finally, they are here!
This smartwatch has an always-on display with thousands of watch faces to personalize your look and always see the time. The screen size is about 3-4mm less than it appears to be in the pictures. There’s a black ring of nothing between the actual screen and bezel. Hundreds of apps from assistant to fitness, payments, music, social, news, games, stopwatches, and more. With a swim-proof design and charging in less than an hour, it’s perfect for all your activities. Gen 5’s improved heart-rate sensor is battery efficient, so you can check your heart rate anytime you’re on the move. The battery life is pretty good, slightly over a day with an always-on screen enabled.
I’ve tried a lot of smartwatches over the years. This Fossil is great, stylish, etc.
Pros: looks like a watch, not as common as an Apple Watch, works with both Android and iOS, good notification and music controls, Google Pay, speaker, 30-meter water resistance, at least one day’s battery, third-party app support, standard 22mm straps.
Cons: health tracking not as comprehensive as competitors, battery life not as good as competitors, software niggles persist, iMessage support lacking on iOS.
This is an amazing watch for android users. It looks premium and has a very good feeling. Performs all the functions well. It can’t match the look and feel of an Apple Watch but it definitely is an amazing product from Fossil!
Physically, the watch is noticeably lighter, making it more comfortable to wear. Bands are 22mm and easily changeable, especially if you stay with the Fossil brand.
I like the three side buttons a lot! The middle one performs the standard Wear OS functions, but it has a rotating crown that scrolls the screen up and down. I didn’t know this, and was happily surprised when I figured it out! The other two buttons are assignable to whichever apps you want, another great feature. I assigned Google Pay to the top and Settings to the bottom.
Overall, this is the watch I was waiting for, and I bought one a few days after it was released. I highly recommend it if you’re in the market, as there’s nothing better out there in the Android Wear space.
If you’re at all familiar with Fossil smartwatches, you’ll be right at home with the Generation 5 smartwatch. It features a similar overall design to previous Fossil watches, with a big, bright 1.28-inch AMOLED display, a sharp pixel density of 328ppi, and three programmable pushers on the right side — the middle of which is a rotatable crown. The buttons are easy to press, and the spinning crown provides a nice alternative to swiping on that tiny screen with your finger. It’s no rotating bezel like you’ll find on the Samsung Galaxy Watch, but it’ll do.
The Fossil Gen 5 Smartwatch is classy, versatile, and a step in the right direction over the Generation 4 watches. That buttery smoothness is helped along with 1GB of RAM, nearly double what other Wear OS watches offer. What’s more, the Fossil watch comes with NFC for Google Pay contactless payments, as well as built-in GPS, and an optical heart rate sensor. When manufacturers try to cut costs these are usually the first things to go, so it’s nice to see them included here. Clearly, Fossil isn’t trying to cut corners.
If you are a digital addict, I have no doubt that this watch is the best in the current flock for you. While we did have a couple of tiny issues with GPS data loading during running sessions, there was nothing so severe that we’d discourage you from buying one. In all the key elements you’d want your smartwatch to perform, the 5th Gen Fossil does well. It’s smooth, reliable, and a lot quicker than many other previous generation Wear OS watches.
Inside, the 5th Gen Fossil is powered by the Snapdragon 3100, again an upgrade on the previous 2100 which had run on smartwatches for far too long. With the new chip, the software and experience seem considerably smoother. Animations are a tiny bit stuttery, but not massively so. What’s more, various elements tend to load much quicker than before, whether that be the Play Store list of apps or any installed app in general. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re glad it’s finally here as our biggest previous moan about Fossil watches has been rectified.
Fossil provides loads of highly customizable watch faces, most of which look really good, plus there are hundreds more on the Play Store. There’s a speaker hole on one side of the watch with two buttons that launch your choice of apps and one rotating crown on the other. Charging takes just over an hour via the small white magnetic USB puck that attaches to a ring to the back.
You navigate via swipes on the screen. Left to right for Google Assistant. Right to left for various widgets for things such as timers, Google Fit, and others called Tiles. Swipe up from the bottom for notifications and other bits. Swipe down from the top for quick settings, such as airplane mode, volume, battery modes, and Google Pay. Long-press on the watch face to change it.
