Fossil - Gen 5 Smartwatch 46mm Stainless Steel - Silver With Black Silicone Band
Model: FTW4041
SKU: 6396403
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Customers are pleased with the design of the Gen 5 Smartwatch 46mm Stainless Steel, praising its look and feel. However, some customers have expressed concerns about the battery life, finding it to be just average.
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In general, this is a very decent watch as an entry into the smartwatch world. The price was not nearly as much as other brands, but it has a lot of good features and a very intuitive operating system that is easy to learn and navigate. The looks are great and the durability is pretty good, only a few scratches after daily wear for months and through some intense activities and workouts such as rock climbing. I really like the sleep tracking feature, although I was initially unsure about wearing a watch overnight. My main complaint(s) with this watch are the battery life is not what I would like, but I get by with charging it while I am in the shower, and usually at one other time in the evening while I'm not doing much, like sitting on the couch watching TV or doing dishes/making dinner. I generally use my custom power setting over the pre-programmed power plans to get the best balance of features I want and the battery life I can accept. I still need to play around with the options to get this to survive an entire 18-hole round of golf without dying, but other than that the battery life is acceptable. Another complaint I have is with the GPS tracking accuracy during activities. I've found through some experimentation and message boards that the phone GPS seems to be conflicting with the watch's internal GPS and causing huge discrepancies. When tracking an activity such as a bike ride, run, or golf using GPS, if the watch is connected to my phone, I get a much noisier signal that bounces around a lot, sometimes adding several miles to my actual distance traveled (and making my top speed, ON FOOT, 57MPH on one occasion). At other times, entire sections of my bike ride have been completely missing and only about 1/3 of my total ride are captured. This can be improved greatly by turning bluetooth off after starting the activity and the watch has obtained my start location, however this kind of defeats the purpose of a smartwatch that can give me notifications at a glance without reaching into my pocket every time my phone goes off. Overall, I am satisfied that it meets my immediate needs at a reasonable price, but in the future I plan to upgrade to a more expensive brand/model with more features and better battery life, now that I know I like having a smart watch. As an entry level smart watch, I would recommend this if you are not 100% convinced that you will like the smart watch life and don't want to spend $700+ on the more expensive and feature-packed watches. I know several people who have had Fossil smart watches multiple times in a row, so there's something to be said about customer loyalty and repeat business there. This is a watch that will meet many people's needs, but in my personal use case it leaves a little bit to be desired. I definitely don't regret my decision to purchase this watch over others, and I will be using this one for at least a year or maybe longer before upgrading to a different brand, because this watch does not work particularly well for the golf course to get yardages and keep score, which is a primary reason why I got into the smart watch market to begin with.
Posted by Swampfox0077
If you want google assistant strapped to your wrist Fossil does the best job hands down and this is the best smart watch for wear os on the market. This actually looks like a real watch and be prepared to get compliments on it. Fossil does great job on faces and watch just feels and looks like a great quality time piece. The charger also is a fast charger so great to not have to wait forever to charge the watch. Only downside is like all Wear OS and apple watch its plagued by battery life or lack of. Other than that this is the best that wear os has to offer so go pick it up you will be very happy with this one
Posted by Adamelitemember
So I love the look of this watch as far as style go, but there are a couple things I don't care for. 1) If you want to use Google Pay, you have to setup a passcode. That's understandable, but if you aren't using the always on display (so that you can save battery life) you have to enter that code each moment you want to look at the time. 2) Battery life is abysmal. If you use the always on display, you'll barely get 9 hours out of this watch. And I guess there's a 3....if you don't use a watch face that has a black background, you'll be forced to look at a black bezel around the entire screen. If you can deal with these things, then you're probably looking at the best Wear OS watch on the market. Google has a long way to go to catch Samsung and Apple.
Posted by MrMobile4Life