Customer Ratings & Reviews

I bought this to replace an activity tracker. This is a nice watch, it has some cool features. Do not buy this watch for an activity or fitness function. The watch is not meant to be worn during a workout, and the fitness function is not great. Only buy this if your looking for a smart watch.

My son was looking for a smartwatch to replace his first generation Motorola smartwatch. He loves this and wears it everywhere. I totally recommend this watch. Watch band is easily interchangeable. Perfect

The Fossil Gen 4 Explorist HR is a smartwatch that runs Google's wearable operating system, Wear OS. Any user's experience with it is going to be partly due to Wear OS features, benefits (and quirks), etc. and partly due to the device itself. I'm going to focus primarily on the watch itself, since other than choosing to use Wear OS, Fossil doesn't have a lot of control over the experience. I will, however, say that as someone who has an Android phone, and is a regular user of Google's services, I find the Wear OS environment to be an intuitive "second screen" for most of my mobile apps and services. I can't speak to the experience pairing this to an iOS phone, however, as I don't have one. I definitely like the style of this watch. Some smart watches look like wearable computers. This one looks like a stylish watch that happens to have smart features. The case is larger than a traditional watch, it still feels relatively sleek and flat against my (medium sized) wrist -- not bulky or clunky at all. The stainless steel band clasps securely. It fits comfortably after I had a local watch shop take a few links out (for less than $10). The display is bright, clear, and easy to read, and goes the full round width of the watch face (no "flat tire" area at the bottom where earlier model smart watches had just a small black bar). You can download many Wear OS watch faces, but Fossil provides some exclusives that are really sharp looking. Different Wear OS watches have different button configurations. The Gen 4 Explorist HR has a primary button that turns, making it easy to scroll up and down lists, and two additional buttons that can be custom configured. This is great for quick access to my most used apps. The battery charges fairly quickly with the included adapter, and after a typical day of wear and moderate use, I still have around 20% at night. Before getting this watch, I was using a "Gen 2" Fossil smartwatch. Upgrading to the Gen 4 line added some useful features, like built in GPS (allows me to track location even without my phone connected) and Near Field Communication, or NFC, which allows me to tap and pay from the watch. I've found both to be very helpful. I also really like the Heart Rate monitor, which can either read on demand or at regular intervals throughout the day. Overall, the Fossil Gen 4 Explorist combines great style with helpful features and improvements over earlier versions. I'm happy with it, and would recommend it to others, especially users who have an Android phone and use lots of Google services.

My biggest grip with this watch is the side button. I wear it on my left hand, so the button is ALWAYS getting pushed as I move throughout my day. The button eventually got "stuck" and is hard to twist now. The OS is okay. Besides this, the watch looks great.

I bought this as a work watch to monitor my heart rate an step tracker. It still works the same as the day I bought it. I recommend a few packs of screen protectors it will save the watch

The watch works great, the only thing I didn’t like was the size of the band was so large with little adjustment. I took it to a jewelry store and they took a few links out and all is good now.

I got this for my father for his birthday, he loves this watch. Originally got him an apple watch and he wasn't too happy with him, switched it with this one, and he is very happy with it.

This is a great watch for the price and looks like a normal watch.

A nice smart watch for a good price. It fits my wrist just right.

Was unsure which smart watch to purchase and found the Fossil series to stand above the rest. Easy to use with long lasting battery this watch was the best purchase so far.

Works and runs great I'll highly recommend it. Worth the buy

This is an amazing watch. I am very happy with it.

The watch is not big and bulkly. I have a pretty small wrist and most smart watches are to thick and doesn't look good on me. Except the Fossil watch. It fits me perfectly.

Very user friendly and syncronizes beautifully with a Google Pixel. Some apps, like the Camera app need to be downloaded directly to the watch to optimize it's capability.

Have problems connecting to my iPhone but love it.

Love being able to keep the same watch and change the bands and the face for whatever I'm doing. Work, church, play, or just relaxing. This watch does it all.

Works great and for the price it's very worth it. Had to get some help using it tho as my fingers are a bit swollen at this time

Once setup and ready, it's very speedy going through menus/settings and in any installed apps. My third Wear OS watch and the best yet.

Since we have children who loves our phones the fact you can see text messages, calls, etc. Is just a few things i love about it!

PROS - Great looking hardware - Large sharp screen - Large band selection CONS - Single Day Battery - Google Wear OS sometimes slow - Too heavy for workouts SUMMARY This is a stylish everyday smartwatch for somebody looking to replace their standard watch, but this probably isn’t the activity tracker people want. HARDWARE This is clearly a Fossil watch – a bold face with large buttons and a great feeling design. They did everything right in terms of the build of the watch. It has a great weight to it and feels durable and ready to take on your everyday life. The smoke color in brushed stainless steel looks great and is holding up well with no scratches. The face of the watch is large at 45mm and houses a bright AMOLED screen. The screen has good responsiveness and is sharp making it easy to read. There are 2 programmable buttons that you can set to any app. Finally, the dial allows you to scroll and is used to access the app drawer when pressed. The band is metal and is in the same color as the body – Fossil sells a number of different bands in this same color so you can change the look – pinch pins on the reverse side make it easy to swap. The design is water resistant so you don’t have to worry about it in your day-to-day when washing your hand or doing dishes. SETUP The packaging is slick and the watch setup was straight forward for my android device. The watch band was very large out of the box for my wrist and sadly didn’t include an tool for sizing, though a quick trip to my local Fossil store got me perfectly fitted for it and ready to go. Out of the box the watch was noticeably slow and did stutter quite a bit. However, after installing the latest update performance improved dramatically. For certain apps like Google Pay you’ll have to setup your cards again – it is a little redundant since the watch seems to operate more independently from your phone rather than an extension of it. DAILY USE/SOFTWARE In daily use this is a great smartwatch, especially if you are already a traditional watch wearer. The HR and health tracking features mean you get a great idea of your Calorie burn throughout the day. The smoke color goes great with almost any outfit and the band options mean you have an opportunity to mix your style up. Google Pay integrates well with this watch – I programmed one of the buttons to launch Pay which made it fast to pay (at merchants that support it). The number of apps you can get from the Play Store make it easy to add functionality like Maps, checking the weather, or even calling an Uber. There is also the ability to change the watch faces to something matching a classic Fossil design or other more contemporary faces. There is a microphone on the device but Google Assistant was always too slow returning a response to be useful. Overall, the software and versatility is a great sell. EXERCISING This watch is a great everyday replacement, but in my testing the weight and size don’t make it great for exercising. When running with the watch my wrist started to hurt and two miles into my run it was becoming too uncomfortable. There are a lot of exercises that you can track – either directly within Google Fit or through other apps that you download through the Play Store. This is good and bad: the flexibility of being able to download apps means you can track almost anything – the bad news is that you may end up with a large number of tracking apps and navigating some of them on small screen can be frustrating. It seemed to do a good job tracking my runs and showed results similar to my Fitbit on my opposite wrist. It does have storage and the ability pair Bluetooth headphones which means you can leave your phone behind and use the Explorist for wireless audio – which is a nice feature add. Overall, if you are looking for a stylish watch to replace your standard watch this one will fit the bill with exercising features in tow – but I don’t feel that exercising is the highlight of this watch, but albeit a great capability to have for those who want it.