Customer Ratings & Reviews

I owned the second generation version of this watch, and this is a great upgrade. Everything is smooer, faster, better. I probably am a poor reviewer in that I don't care about Fossil's extra software. All I want is for Google Wear to work awesomely, and it does. Fossil, though, makes a very good looking watch. Importantly, the three fobs avoid the problem of the single button in the second generation, which could get stuck in place.

Great Smart Watch with heart rate monitor. Long battery life and water proof. I love it.

I like that you can change the faces. It’s got a large display. Easy to interact with.

This is one of the best looking smart watches available. It also functions quite well.

I held off on buying a Fossil watch until NFC support for payments were added. With this new generation Fossil Explorist I finally have that luxury. Sure I could buy a square plastic like Apple watch but why would you do that when you can have a Smartwatch that looks and feels like a real watch. Not too heavy and not so thick its unbearable this watch does everything you need it to plus tells time. Get it!

Really like this watch. Get a lot of notifications right to the watch and helps a lot.

I love this watch. The features are so much fun and it is a great classy looking watch

This watch is awesome. The only thing I would change would be battery life

Good watch not laggy at all looks like a real watch compare to the square apple watch

It’s the nicest elegant smartwatch in the market. Plenty of apps and faces to add.

Purchased this for my cousin who stays in India. He said it is little bigger in dial size, It has many features , he is happy with the price and so far it is good no complaints

I had a positive review from a friend, therefore I bought where I found it as described, nice watch, good battery, responsive, however sometimes it disconnects without clear reason

I like all the features except that the exclusion of the ability to use the watch for phone which many other smartwatches are providing at similar price range

Waterproof, rapid charging, keeps you connected while going about your day!

I Started with a used Moto 360 and loved it but battery was shot. I bought a samsung active. It was ok but too small and missing a lot of features. I returned it and got the Fossil Explorist similar to the one my friend got for christmas and I like it alot. I had not worn a watch in over twenty years until my friend had given me his old Moto 360. Now I'm hooked.

Battery can last 1 day. You have to charge it at night time.

Watch will unpair often from phone. It's best to leave on bluetooth and take off wifi but or will still happen.

This is my first Google Wear OS-based smartwatch. I’ve have a different smartwatch based on the Tizen O.S, so I’m mostly familiar with that brand and not Wear OS. This Fossil is nice looking. It has a 45mm round face making it one of the larger smartwatches on the market. It has three buttons on the right side. The top and bottom are push only buttons, while the center button can be pushed or rotated depending on the need. The top and bottom buttons can also be programmed to perform different functions depending on whether you push once or twice. For example, I have the top button programmed to start the Timer App if pressed once and to start the Google Pay App if pressed twice. One thing I really like about this watch is its ability to install apps directly from the Google Play Store. That’s a big change from my last smartwatch. The Play Store also contains a good number of watch faces, with many of them being available for free. It was a breeze setting the watch up and getting it to link to my Pixel 2 XL phone. I had pre-installed the Google Wear OS app on my phone prior to receiving the Fossil, yet that only took minutes to complete so it wasn’t a big time-saver doing it ahead of time. Once linked to my phone, I spent a good bit of time configuring the watch. That’s likely why on the first day I only got about 7 hours of use before having to recharge it. Mind you, the day I initially received it I immediately plugged it in and gave it a full charge. That evening, I plugged it in and let it charge throughout the night. The next day was spent making more tweaks, which I started at 8 a.m. with 100% battery. By 7pm, it had less than 13% battery and the watch had automatically gone into power save mode. That’s just 11 hours of use, far under the 24 hours that Fossil indicates I should get from a full battery. Not being familiar with other Wear OS watches, I don’t know what the standard out-of-the-box settings are for other Wear OS watches. Certain settings, like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Location were automatically turned on at startup, each causing a hit to battery life. Watch faces that regularly perform background functions can also affect battery life. And don’t forget about the brightness setting. And then there’s the ‘Always-On’ setting which dims the watch face but allows you to still see the time after the screen times out. The next full day I turned off Wi-Fi and Location. I started the day at 8am and 100% battery, and by 4:30pm I still had 60% battery remaining. Using the Wear OS app on my phone, I selected the Watch Battery (under Advanced Settings) and it showed the biggest battery hit being caused by Bluetooth at 39%. Okay, that’s to be expected since Bluetooth is how Wear OS communicates back to the phone. The Watch Battery option showed the Screen as being 1%. I would have thought Screen battery usage would have been higher. The next day I turned Wi-Fi back on again to gauge the impact to the battery. In case it’s not clear, Wi-Fi can be especially handy if you and the Fossil are separated from your phone where Bluetooth is no longer possible (typically 30~ feet) for communication. If the Fossil - with Wi-Fi set to automatic - can jump on a Wi-Fi network somewhere, your phone will be able to pass data between the Fossil and phone over Wi-Fi via the Cloud – a capability that appears fundamental to Wear OS. If the watch cannot access any Wi-Fi, you will not get any updates until the watch is in closer proximity to communicate with your phone by Bluetooth. In short, since the Fossil doesn’t have cellular capability, Wi-Fi is your best bet for remote access to your phone. One nice feature is Google Assistant – which is built into the Wear OS environment. I’m a long-time Android user and I’m accustomed to using it extensively on my phone and in my car. It works transparently on the watch, too. Just press in the center button for a couple of seconds to kick it off, or say “Ok, Google”, then tell it what to do. Like, “Send a text to ‘insert name’”. The watch is attractive and very readable, and it is water resistant up to 30 meters. So, wear it in the shower if you feel adventurous. It has NFC, which when combined with Google Pay you can use to pay for goods at the store if the store’s credit card kiosk permits such payments. I’ve already installed a number of apps on the watch. Included are apps for Calendaring, Messaging, Weather, Contacts, Google Fit/Workouts, Flashlight, Google Pay, Notes, Shopping List, Messenger, Play Store, Stopwatch, Timer, Alarm, and others. Each of these will sync with their associated app on my phone when communication between phone and watch is established. Some apps might not work if communication between phone and watch is currently unavailable. This smartwatch is running an older chipset (Qualcomm 2100) – which is not the newer 3100 chipset. The 3100 is claimed to improve battery longevity and GPS (Location) use. It’s possible that my expectations on how long a full charge should last is faulty. But at this writing, I can’t even come close to the 24 hours claimed on the Fossil website. Like having a child that is misbehaving, you say “I love you but hate how you act”. That’s akin to how I feel about the Fossil’s battery life: I really like the look and feel and capabilities of this watch but hate that I must constantly monitor the battery level for fear of having a watch with no power by mid-day. If the watch could make it 24 hours as claimed, that would make it a whole bunch better in my eyes.

I love the way it looks and the sync up to Google is spot on.

The watch and it’s features are really nice, but the band is incredibly difficult to adjust. Additionally, it stopped charging after just over a year.