Fossil - Gen 4 Venture HR Smartwatch 40mm Stainless Steel - Rose Gold

I received a Fossil - Gen 4 Venture HR Smartwatch for Christmas. It is billed as compatible with my iPhone 8. This is very deceptive. The watch does connect, but it then does not share much information with my phone, which is the whole point of a smartwatch. Connecting the watch to my phone was relatively simple. This was the last simple thing. SETTING it up and USING it was NOT!!! First of all you have to have a gmail account and I DO NOT get notifications or texts at all. All the tools I love on my phone - such as calendar, notifications, shopping lists, and especially messages do not transfer to my watch. I do not want to have two places to keep track of appointments and To-Dos. If there is something I am missing, I would love to know how to really connect my watch to my phone. Otherwise this is basically an expensive bracelet that tells time and counts my steps.

This watch was a beautiful watch although the screen was just a smidge too small but it was nice having the buttons on the side as well. I returned this because I was unable to receive calls or even hear music. I wanted to be able to at least hear a notification not just the vibrations as well as listen to music. The battery life lasted one day or less even if I hadn't touched it and just left it on inside the box and that's even with the setting to turn the screen off so that it wasn't set to always on. Other than that and the fact that it didn't come with many watch faces. I didn't really like any of them except maybe one and the apps I downloaded worried pain to try and get the watch faces over.

This is a beautiful watch and I love everything about it. The only con is the battery life, but the charger is a very small magnetic disc on a cord, and I have a small portable phone charger that I can stick in my purse to charge. I'm retired, so most of the time I'm around the house, and can charge it on my laptop without even having to take it off. One of my favorite features is that it has Google Voice, so I can respond to a text by using Google Voice. That's really handy when driving. The watch works with Google Fit, and you can download that app on the watch. There are a lot of apps that you can download directly on the watch. I don't have to go into the phone app often,

What is or isn't an "intuitive" user interface is very subjective but neither I (a tech professional), nor my wife (the wife of a nerd) found it very easy to use. This was chosen over the new Samsung Galaxy watch for its stunning style and quality band (typical of Fossil). It was returned for the Galaxy. My wife called me at work an hour after the Samsung arrived. She had it set up herself and was already listening to music on it and recording her stats in Samsung Health. Cheap rubber band and more money but so easy to use. Can't say enough how high quality the Fossil is in form and style. They just need better software.

I loved the look and feel of this watch and it worked great for a few days, until it became extremely buggy and was showing multiple screens ghosted on top of one another and would take over 1 minute to do an action when I tapped on the screen. This was following an update from wearOS so I'm unsure if this was related to that, however, I had another wearOS watch that I was using at the same time to compare that did not have any issues. I returned this item for a full refund as I may have just gotten a defective one. If it works well, then I loved it while it functioned for a few days and I got a lot of compliments.

This is such a beautiful watch. Unfortunately I did end up switching to Samsung. With the fossil you can receive and send messages, receive phone calls but you have to still answer it on your phone. I did get connectivity problems which I thought switching to the Samsung would be better... But it was not. The upside of the Samsung vs the fossil is that there's a built in mic on the Samsung so you can answer your phone and talk on your watch... Hello James Overall, it is a really nice watch and for someone that doesn't need a built in mic.. this is definitely for you.

I love this watch. I’ve had several smart watches and I really wanted an Apple Watch but couldn’t beat the price for how classy this watch is. It syncs and I get calls, emails and texts no problems. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is the battery life is really bad. It lasts all day but not into the evening. Also I can walk for hours around a mall or someplace and it will say I only walked for 20 minutes. That might be a google fit issue but it’s disappointing

I love the design of this watch. A few things I dislike are the battery life and it gets pretty hot at times. Also if I do not have the app running on my phone than the watch will not connect to my phone and I’m not sure if other smart watches do the same but it’s not very desirable. Everything else is good, I get my notifications fine as long as I’m connected and the watch face option is also cool. I also like the google fit