Fossil - Gen 5 Smartwatch 44mm Stainless Steel - Smoke with Smoke Stainless Steel Band

I choose this particular style because it looked a bit more "dressy" than the others. My previous watch was a Samsung 42mm model, and since I have small wrists, I was hoping to find another 42mm watch, but none of the Fossils I saw were -- they were all 44mm. I am happy to say that the difference is far less dramatic than going from 42mm to 46mm (see photos). Still a hair bigger than I'd like, but I'll adjust. Performance-wise, it works fine. The heart rate monitor and step counter seem accurate. I do miss the rotating bezel of the Samsung, and the dollar-store version on this watch (the middle rotating dial) will probably never get used. I'm still getting used to the differences between Tizen and WearOS -- Tizen seems a bit cleaner, while WearOS seems to want to throw too much at you. Again, I'll adjust, it's not a big deal, just different. Build-wise, it feels more like a real watch and less like a gadget like my old Samsung. Still getting used to the heft, but that will come with time. Battery life seems on par with the Samsung. It was initially draining quicker than I expected, so I turned off wi-fi (no need for it), and the difference was pretty dramatic. Since then it lasts me from morning to night. But if you intend to leave wifi enabled, you may find it doesn't last as long. So yeah, these Fossil watches have grown up since their earlier attempts, and I'd recommend it. If I had a gripe, it's that I think it's a bit overpriced.

I must say I was skeptical because I am not much of a smartwatch person. I actually used to wear nice watches all the time but in the last few years had just stopped because I always had my phone with me. I was always looking at the other brands and got close a couple times but never went forward. I finally did that with the Fossil Gen 5. First, I was impressed with the size. It is very thin and fits my normal to smaller wrist even better than some of my older non-smartwatches I used to wear. The fact that it is thin, and light made this really easy to get back into the habit of wearing a watch. This watch runs on Google’s Wear-OS. You download the app, sync with the phone with the watch and setup was quick and easy. I was a bit disappointed in the Wear-OS options on the app. You can change the face setting, manage notifications, change tiles (you can have 5 on your rotation), I use Weather Forecast, Headlines, Heart Rate, Heart Points and Agenda. I really like being able to control my Pandora and Spotify from the watch. I can still not get Spotify to download music to the watch. I was however able to open Play Music and see playlists that I had previously setup. I was then able to download them to the watch and since I had paird my headset, I was able to take a walk and enjoy music from the watch without my phone. That was Great! If I could do that with Spotify, it would be amazing! I also setup the watch with my Galaxy S10+ and was able to answer, speak and be heard from watch but I only was able to get an echo from those that called me, and I could not hear them on the watch. I have seen posts that Fossil is preparing a fix for this. One of the cool things I like is my blink camera notifications show up on the watch and even have an image capture from it so I can see if I really need to go to the phone and see the clip or realize it was just a squirrel! I love the Cardiogram function and have it tracking my heartrate every 5 min. It is very accurate and comparable to my higher end home blood pressure tracking machine. It seems to accurately measure my move minutes. I wish it would automatically track my step vs. me having to go into fit and select start workout and select walking. They really should add step tracking to occur automatically. My hope is that Wear-OS will continue to improve because I really like the feel of this watch and getting the notifications, alarm, fitness tracking, news. Fossil has done a great job on the watch but I really want the music on my watch from my Spotify. I hope that I will not be limited to Play Music only. I did not actually use Google pay yet but was able to quickly setup my newer card. Battery Life is average. I like all the features so I am getting 20hrs or so. What I do is after I get settled at work in the AM, I take it off and charge it for less than an hour while I am working. Charges quickly so has not been an issue. I bought extra cables on Amazon for less than $12 bucks so I threw one in the car, perfect! Overall, this thing is really nice. Comfort and features are key for me. Comfort has me at a 5 while features are still lagging at a 4 but I am hopeful. I would still highly recommend this watch, it’s beautiful, comfortable and full of features and opportunity!

The Fossil Gen 5 is my first smartwatch. Smartwatches are one of those devices that isn’t actually needed but can be handy if the software and features are integrated correctly in conjunction with your smartphone. The Fossil Gen 5 overall is a great companion to your current smartphone and even without it, if you are that daring to leave the phone at home. Setup of the Fossil Gen 5 is relatively straightforward. I was perplexed at first when trying to get through the setup process when the watch was very laggy and slow. It appears the software updates of the watch was really slowing down the watch itself and eating up battery. I would recommend setting up the watch and leaving it on the charger over the first night just to get all the updates and setup complete. After this was finished after hours of attempting to download the full update and having to restart because connectivity issues it has been working very well. The first couple days’ battery life does suffer to due setting up the watch how you would like to use it normally. Even while doing this I was able to get a full day with a little charge left to spare. The watch has four main battery settings you can set the watch to: Daily (which is the default), Extended, Custom or Time-Only. Daily mode enables most everything so you can pick what to turn on and off. Extended mode will turn the always-on screen off and adjust notifications but most still are turned on within the watch. Custom mode lets you tweak features, thus giving you greater control over battery usage. I found myself in custom mode as I rarely have the speaker on so turning this off put me in custom. Time-only blocks all features except for the time. In Time-Only mode, the battery is supposed to last over a period of days rather than a single day. The Fossil supports several dedicated apps from the Google Play store which can be downloaded from the watch itself. These are nice because many features can be done straight from the watch without having to mess with your phone at all. The Google Assistant, which is built into the Wear OS software, can be used to do tons of operations and is a must for a smartwatch. With a press of one button you can do basically everything Google Assistant can normally do like sending a text or checking the weather. The watch also has two configurable buttons on the side which can operate several preconfigured tasks. The Fossil Gen 5 also has all the Google Fit capabilities including a Heart Rate monitor. I have setup most to be active including the heart rate. I would say the monitor is not the most accurate on my wrist most likely to due to the iffy fit even after adjusting the watch. I have ordered a 22mm silicone band to try with this watch so hopefully I can have a better overall fit on the wrist and more accurate reading for the HR sensor. Overall I have really enjoyed the Fossil Gen 5 with its great performance and broad feature set. Hopefully the new band I have ordered with solve my “in between” links fitment and improve the HR sensor readings. If you are looking for a great first smartwatch I would definitely look at the Fossil Gen 5. Positives: - Modern but classy style - Large display (with bezel) - Google OS - One day plus worth of battery depending on user settings - Google Pay - Built in Wifi, NFC, GPS, Heart Rate monitor (HR not as good as some other devices) - Snapdragon Wear 3100 Processor, Built in 8GB storage - Built-in speaker and vibration option - Waterproof Negatives: - No tool proved to adjust band. I spent better part of an hour getting the pins out to size the watch. Still doesn’t fit perfect. - Heavy for smaller wrists - Swiping gestures can be hard to remember - Proprietary charger

This is a great smartwatch! Stylish! Routinely got at least a day without charging will almost all the features active except constant on screen. If you have the screen on at all times, you'll most likely be charging this for a short time at least twice a day. There are options to extend the battery life, and I was able to go just short of 3 days with the extended option on. The watch arrives with an instruction book and a magnetic charger! The charger works great! It attaches firmly and the connection is solid! The band on the Carlyle is BIG and will require shortening for most people. I actually had all of the "big guys" in the office try it on, and it wouldn't fit any of them without removing pins from the band which requires a tool that IS NOT included with the watch. I wish they included the tool since their retail cost is $5 or less in most cases. The display is great and doesn't lag! The connection to wifi and to my android phones is solid! There is no "built-in" sleep tracking since Google Fit/Wear OS doesn't support it, but you can download 3rd party apps if that's a priority. Please be aware that these apps will significantly decrease your battery life. The fitness tracking works great including the GPS! If the watch is connected to your phone it defaults to that, otherwise, it's built-in. The watch does take a minute or so to acquire satellites on its own, so I assume it doesn't store a database and there doesn't appear to be an option for GLONASS. You also can't pair external sensors to the watch like speed/cadence, but there are a variety of phone apps you can download with Wear OS counterparts so you can start/follow tracking on the watch. The display is fantastic and I I had no issues reading it outside or inside! I'm used to a fitness watch with smart features, so it was an adjustment to move to a smartwatch with fitness features. But my perceived limitations regarding fitness tracking will only improve as Google continues to refine Google Fit/Wear OS integration. For sizing comparison in the attached pictures the watch is shown on the bottom of a standard 12 oz beverage can.

The Fossil 5th generation smartwatch is a replacement for my 2014 Moto 360 model. I was excited to see the 44mm size and disappointed when I received the watch to find that there is a huge bezel around the display making my 40mm Moto face actually larger. The Fossil display is OLED vs the Moto’s LCD and it’s a lot crisper but it is smaller. Pairing the watch to my Pixel 4 was effortless, already having the WearOS app installed, the phone recognized the Fossil as soon as I powered it on, Unlike my Moto, the Fossil band was large enough to fit. I have large wrists and its difficult to find watches that fit without having to order extra links or new bands. The band on the Fossil is easily changeable without fighting with tweezers and the small band pins. There are sliders you simply squeeze together to remove the band. The WearOS interface on the watch is zippy and responsive and apps loaded effortlessly, much faster than my Moto. The Fossil is water and swim proof so you don’t have to worry about taking it off or getting it wet. Wear it continuously until the battery needs charged. There are four battery settings to allow you to extend the battery life from about a day to over 5 depending on the features you have on. Charging the watch is done by connecting the contact-based charger to the back of the watch. I would have preferred a wireless charging stand similar to the Moto. Charging the watch for an hour is said to give you up to an 80% charge with Rapid Charge and this was true for me. The watch has its own GPS sensor so you can track activities like running and bike riding without having to have your phone connected. There is a heart rate sensor to track your heart rate, along with a pedometer to track your steps. Both work well and integrate nicely with Google Fit. One of my favorite features is Google Pay. The fossil has Google Pay so I don’t have to pull my phone out to make purchased where Google Pay is available. Unlike my Moto 360, the Fossil has a speaker so you can hear alarms, alerts and make and receive phone calls. You can also get voice feedback from OK Google. The speaker is weak but will do in a pinch. OK Google seemed to be a bit of a struggle for me, not providing audio feedback as expected and having a difficult time sending texts and making appointments. There is 8GB of storage so you can store and play your favorite tunes directly from your watch when you are away from your phone. Fossil provides quite a few watch face options, several of which are similar to existing Fossil watches. I give the Fossil 5th generation smart watch four stars only because of the large bezel compared to the actual size of the watch and that it doesn’t have wireless charging. If these don’t matter to you, add the extra star for five. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to upgrade an older smart watch.

In my opinion, you'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer looking watch than this. It has a very classic style and is not near as bulky as many other smartwatches. It packs many competitive features as well, with few compromises. I'll get the biggest issue out of the way first. If you're using all the features, the battery is going to need to be charged daily. If you're fine with that, then this watch will likely easily suit you. The bright side of that, is that the watch charges very quickly. They boast 80% in an hour, but I think it may be even faster than that. It also has some great options to extend battery life. For instance, you can have it shut off connections from 11 pm to 6 am to conserve battery life, and that will help it easily last two full days. You can also enter these battery saving modes very quickly from the pull down menu on the watch. It's quick to navigate between screens and applications, call quality is very good, notification management in this latest version of Wear OS is quick and easy to use. Notifications show on the watch instantaneously, which were sometimes slightly delays on other watched I've used. The knob dials on the side of the watch are very smooth, and I haven't accidentally used them unintentionally like I initially feared. The clasp is also great, I have a medium-sized wrist and had a local jeweler remove 3 links to fit me. It's not overly snug or uncomfortable, and it actually feels lighter than any of the other smartwatches I've owned. Even with the metal band, which looks very nice in my opinion. The fitness tracking actually seems to be a bit more accurate than other watched I've had as well. Including a near-continous heart rate monitor. I have mine currently set to take a reading every five minutes. I haven't seen a way to track floors though, and perhaps it's unable to do so. It also doesn't track sleep natively that I could see, but there are some third part apps that fill this need, if that's something you're looking for. The one I used (Sleep as Android) also integrated with Google Fit. Overall, I'm very happy. This is a smartwatch that gives you all the features you'd expect, and looks very classy doing so. Pros: Elegant, lighter than expected, quick, charges very fast Cons: Battery life (though this can be tweaked to last longer), some fitness features may not be available out of the box, or at all

When you open the Fossil box It is instantly obvious that the Fossil Gen 5 is a high-quality watch with a gorgeous wristband and clear detail to attention in the watch casing and face, stunning. This is a watch you will feel quite comfortable wearing into a boardroom or at play. Fossil has years of experience in fashion and it is displayed brilliantly in the Gen 5. First impression wearing the Gen 5 was that it weighs slightly more than any watch I have owned previously, though after wearing a short time it is no longer perceptible. Setup could not have been easier, has a pre-loaded on-screen tutorial to get you going. After a few days was concerned about the battery life lasting 24 hours and was charging nightly. Then my kid walks by and suggests I turn the always on (the default setting) screen off. Duh. Amazing how the battery life of the Gen 5 increased. Has a great NFC charger, just pop under the bottom of the watch case, simple. With the always on display turned off you need only simply turn your wrist over to look at the watch face to display the screen. Big factor for me is fitness, cardio, step count, etc. Still getting familiar with the fitness system which looks to have great potential. Would like to have the option of large on-screen Heartbeat and Steps displayed. The Cardiogram apps for the Gen 5 and phone are well thought out and executed, though feels as it needs improving. Real time syncing of steps and heartbeat on the watch and phone app would be a great addition. Fitness Apps on Watch: - Cardiogram - Fit - Fit Breath - Fit Workout OK Google Search is especially convenient, “OK Google weather” and so on is quite handy on the run. One caveat is that voice command only works once, if you want to use OK Google a second time you must tap the microphone icon. That I do not get if the function it to make searching convenient. If I am driving and want the weather and then then directions, I would have to take my hands from the wheel to do the second search. The Right Stuff: - 8GB storage 1GB memory - Phone calls - Google Assistant - Blue Tooth 4.2 Low Energy - Wi-Fi - Google Fit - Android and iPhone compatible - Wear OS operating system - Calendar, email, contacts and social media connectivity - Play Store – lots of apps - Spotify Music App pre-loaded - Bright vibrant display - Battery saving modes - Built in GPS - Powered by Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor = Fast! A Brilliantly conceived smartwatch that is Engineered, Designed, Built and Equipped to go the distance.

Good: - Stylish and classy - Nice, large display - Google OS - Easy setup (took about 10 minutes) - Better than a day's worth of battery (results may vary--but this was after minimal customization) - Supports Google Pay - Wifi, NFC, GPS, heart rate - Support for many apps - Good, fast processor, responsive, 8GB storage - Built-in speaker and vibration option Bad: - I struggled for over an hour getting the pins out to size the watch--plan on taking it to a watch shop for adjusting - A bit heavy - Text is a bit small (had to go into settings and pick LARGE over normal) - After a week, I am still struggling to remember which way to swipe for various features and find myself "lost" when touching the screen - Special charger so you will have to remember to travel with it How I intend to use it: This is my first smartwatch and, since I am all-in on Google/Android, this watch made the most sense to me. I wanted a watch that was stylish and had multiple "face" options. I really like the look of this watch and the fact that I can select different face types for the watch. Growing up a member of the Swatch generation, I like that I can select from many different looks for this watch. Unfortunately, I have found the metal band to be a bit uncomfortable and will be looking to replace it down the road. First and foremost, however, I wanted alerts--specifically text alerts and emails--to hit my wrist. I use 3 different Google accounts (and two personal phone numbers) all the time and needed a device that would handle multiple accounts without issue. I have had no issues receiving text/email and have been able to reliably use "suggested responses" or voice-to-text responses through the smartwatch. I also get Facebook post alerts (I need to figure out how to disable that) and Facebook Messenger "texting" to the watch. Second, I intend to use the watch to monitor (and incentivize) basic health functions like tracking exercise, heart rate, etc. I like the Google Fit app and have jumped on the "steps per day" bandwagon. Third, I like Google Pay. The watch may replace my phone for NFC payments at gas stations and the grocery store. And finally, I intend to use the watch (rather than my phone) as my primary source for interacting with the Google Assistant. I still have more to explore with this watch but it has delivered all the functionality and features I want. I don't think you can go wrong with this smartwatch.