The Michael Kors Access MKGO Smartwatch is light, thin, stylish, comfortable on the wrist, and at 7mm thick one of the thinnest smartwatches on the market. It has a brilliant, razor sharp AMOLED touchscreen display that is easy to read even in bright sunlight. The display is 'always on', switching from color to a dimmer monochrome display to save power when no movement is detected. The face is round, rather than square, so it looks more like a traditional watch and at 43mm wide it's not obnoxiously large on your wrist.
The Access MKGO is pretty feature rich, with an on board GPS, optical heart rate monitor, n-way accelerometer, and altimeter, wifi, nfc, and bluetooth. There is a built in mic, but no speaker. It's waterproof to 100ft. WearOS looks a lot like Android and there are a lot of apps to do useful and useless things. The battery is quick charge, a full charge seems to take about an hour, which is good because the battery is only good for about a day to day and a half at best.
Unboxing, the watch comes with a charging cable, a user's manual that essentially says "Download the WearOS App, pair, and follow the instructions". If you want any information about what the buttons do, or what swiping in a direction does (it is a touchscreen afterall), you're directed to the Michael Kors support site. You have to supply a usb charger. And there is a deceptively large book that has the safety information in a zillion languages. Charge up the watch and you're ready to go.
The MKGO is Google WearOS based and comes with the WearOS App installed, along with Google Fit and Assistant. There are lots of apps for fitness (including Strava), as well as music, productivity, agendas, games, etc. Although there is no speaker, the watch will pair with bluetooth headphones/earbuds and can be used for tunes while working out if you've forgotten your phone. I don't know what the crystal is made from, but it's pretty tough. I cracked it pretty hard against a weight without so much as scratching it.
I've used this watch over the last two weeks at the gym and on a half dozen or so bike rides ranging from 20 to 50 miles each. Battery life goes down dramatically when tracking activity, figure about 15% battery/hour. The longest bike ride was about five hours, starting at 90% battery. The watch was in battery save mode and at 15% at the end of the ride. As I said earlier, it's a good thing that the battery quick charges. On days that I didn't do any fitness activity tracking, I would see about 50% battery usage over 16 hours.
I really like the MKGO, mostly because I don't feel it, it's just there when I want it. I don't have this big, clunky, heavy thing swinging around my wrist. It does a lot of what I want, allowing me to check notifications and texts in the car or on my bike without stopping to check my phone (yes, I don't text and drive...). The heart rate and fitness monitoring seem pretty accurate and it's very convenient being able to swipe the screen rather than try to remember which button to push.
That being said, the MKGO is not without its negatives. The biggest is battery life, which could be a lot better. The processor used it the latest Qualcomm Wear processor, but it's a bit hamstrung by only 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. After WearOS and pre-installed apps, about 1.6GB of storage is left for additional apps and user stuff. The performance lag is especially notable when switching apps, which can take a few seconds. And there is no speaker.
For me, the negatives are tolerable and the positives, particularly the fit and the display, outweigh them. The broad selection of apps that is growing all the time is another real selling point. The MKGO is not perfect, but that is the state of the art right now, and it's definitely worth considering.