Customer Ratings & Reviews

The watch was great and looked awesome but it didnt make phone calls and that was its Achilles heal

Bought as a gift for my friend. He loved it........

Just stopped charging and wont turn on ... returned as i had the warrenty

Awesome smart watch and very stylish. Perfect gift

Only giving it three stars because if you pair with an iPhone you can’t make or receive phone calls

The Fossil Gen 4 Explorist HR is a very attractive watch that performs as expected. The begin with, the watch looks fantastic. I love the stainless steel construction, round body, and dimpled bezel. It looks like a proper watch and goes well with dress clothes (as compared to a rubberized fitness tracker). And the size is perfect. I do not have large arms and was concerned how it would fit and look on my arms. But those fears were unfounded. It not only fits but also feels very comfortable. With regards to the overall construction; The metal band, which is easily shortened, feels very sturdy and the clasp has a very positive closure to it. The buttons and crown feel solid with just the right amount of resistance. The 30 meter water resistance is reassuring. And the screen is crisp and bright and fills the full face of the watch (no flat tire). Once charged (using a proprietary cable that makes a physical connection...no wireless charging), setup was snap. Instructions on both the watch and the phone app are clear and easy to follow. And the ability to reconfigure the buttons is a very nice option. As for performance, the device has been responsive to swipes or tilts-to-wake and animations have been smooth. There has been an occasional hesitation, but they are few and far between. Step and heart rate tracking have proven consistent. And the battery has performed as I expected; I have comfortably gotten a day of mixed use without the device draining and shutting off. Though, admittedly, only just. Regarding Wear OS 2, everything is easy to access and use. Quick swipes show you your notifications, or the settings, or the Google Assistant. The Google Assistant does a great job of pulling together relevant information from your calendar, your frequent locations, and your local weather. Notifications appear instantly and are easily cleared. And Google Pay is super easy to setup and use via NFC. Overall, I'm very happy with the watch. Yes, it would be nice for the battery to last longer. But for the way I use it (telling time, tracking steps, checking notifications, NFC payments), everything works and I get a day of use without issue.

This is very bulky and battery life sucks. I returned it.

This watch gets text messages and I didn’t want the Apple Watch. Happy with this

Looks good, has basic functions, very large, can receive notifications.

After deleting all unnecessary apps and features, the watch could t even hold a charge for an entire day. An unfortunate waste of money

I had one of the first generation smartwatches, infamous for its "flat tire" bezel. It was a watch made by a tech company, and had all the associated issues with a first gen device made by a company that didn't understand watches and what parts to reinforce (and what parts not to make out of brittle plastic). Now that Android Wear has evolved into Wear OS 2.0, I figured now was as good a time as any to recheck in to the wearables market. This time, I got a watch made by a watch company, and the differences are night and day, and that's a good thing for the future of wearables. The watch itself is a very handsome piece, big and chunky without looking clunky. I have small wrists, so I had to take out 4 links to get it to fit properly, but now that I have it's very comfortable without causing any pinching or other discomfort when bending my wrist. It is more weight than I'm used to having on the end of my arm, so there's that to get used to. I've been accidentally bumping my wrist into a lot more things (or at least am conscious of bumping it more), and despite taking a couple hits and scrapes, the finish on everything still looks new, so I'm not worried about babying it. The display is nice and bright, and easy to see in the sun. One of the things I didn't like about smartwatches when they first came out was that due to the battery life you could either opt for an always-on display, or you could have a watch that had a battery that lasted from the time you put it on in the morning til the time you took it off at night, there was no getting both. And so, to be able to tell the time after, say, 5:30 PM, you had to have the display set to off and do the gesture to activate the watch. I don't know if it's the battery tech, the screen tech, the software, or all of the above, but with this new watch, I have an always on display so I can check the time at a glance without giving myself early tendonitis from doing an exaggerated version of the "check the time" gesture, and after wearing the watch all day and into the evening, I went to bed with about 22% of the battery still there. I'm sure it would last even longer if I turned off the always-on display, but I figure that as long as I'm sleeping, I can let the watch charge as I don't really need to know what time it is (and I don't want to lose one of the features that brought me to the watch in the first place). Wear OS 2.0 has also matured a lot since my first brush with it. The different swiping gestures to get to different shortcuts make a lot of sense. It's also good to see some old gestures still work, even though they aren't shown off in the tutorial when you first turn on the device (like covering the screen with your palm quickly to "sleep" the watch). I'm also glad that devs have mostly stopped shoveling out ridiculous unwanted apps built for the sole purpose of having something, anything, on the new platform, regardless of how unnecessary it is (do we really need to play minecraft on our watches?). Lastly, while Wear OS has apps that allow you to have virtually any watch face that you can think of, including copies of actual luxury watch faces, the Fossil brand ones that come with the watch are all very well done, and I find myself swapping back and forth between about 3 different favorites.

This watch had to be returned to Fossil twice to repair the same defect (the back of the watch falls off). To date, I have not received the watch back after sending back the second time. Fossil customer service claims that they have shipped the watch to me and that the USPS has it (this was over two months ago) and they tell me that it is my responsibility to do the work of tracking their shipment in hopes of finding my watch, I give one star (less if I could) based on a product that is inferior in quality and service levels that show no ownership of creating a positive customer experience. Very disappointing to lose that much money.

Basically I thought it was like the Galaxy watch or the apple watch where you can communicate. But nope it's not like that. I would have probably gone with the Galaxy smart watch for my phone ( Pixel 3 XL)

So far, I am really liking this smartwatch, style-wise and functionality-wise! I like the "smoke" color (not too dark) and the bezel has a nice design to it. It is a very nice upgrade from another big-name brand watch I got last year, but didn't have a lot of extra features. This one has lot of features I wanted, including NFC, GPS, and Heart Rate monitor, but still not as thick as other smartwatches (at least compared to a 15 months ago when I was shopping for my previous watch). It is a little bit heavier, being bigger with a metal band, but I have gotten used to it. I also had to get used to the Heart Rate monitor nodule on the back. The metal fold-over clasp band looks nice (if required, you can get the band resized for free at any Fossil store, and there is a half-sized link near the clasp that can be removed if it ends up being between too tight and a little too loose), but you can buy other 22mm regular or quick-release bands. It says it is "swimproof" (is water resistant to 3 ATM), but I probably won't be jumping in the pool with it. At least I won't have to worry about it getting wet. There are two additional quick-access buttons that you can assign any app to. It comes with a lot of watch face designs to choose from, which most are somewhat modifiable, and every once in a while, it will give you a new face, sometimes tied to the time of year. I like being able to use it to pay with Google Pay without having to pull out my phone. The voice-texting and Google Assistant seem to respond very quickly. The battery life is pretty good, but not the greatest. I normally wear it for about 16-18 hours a day, with Always-on screen and Heart Rate monitor turned on and on average, it ends up between 15-20% left. I don't do a whole lot on it, mainly just for time and notifications, but will delete emails from it. I did test out starting a Google Fit workout from it, mainly to test out the GPS, and it tracked it nicely, but that 30-minute walk used an extra 5%. I am hoping the battery doesn't wear down as fast as my previous watch, but my wife has a Gen 3 Venture that she got a year ago that seems to be keeping charge just fine. At least I don't have to charge it every 3-4 hours like my previous, [only] 15-month old watch. It doesn't seem to be quite as scratch-resistant as my previous watch (and I hit the face a lot more than I would like), but only one decent scratch so far. One thing I wish I could adjust is the vibration strength. While having a strong vibration keeps you notified better, this just seems to be very loud. If you will be in a quiet setting, you will definitely want to turn on DND.

I've been a using Fitbits for around 4 years now but been somewhat annoyed doing so. I like the fitbit app, I like the fitness tracking but overall the hardware has always felt cheap, and when I don't wear anything "smart" I wear a really nice watch that does not feel cheap. I've eyed the Samsung and Apple watches for a while but they aren't compatible with Nexus/Pixel devices so Iw as excited to learn that Fossil was making a large series of Wear OS watches for this release year and figured it was time to try out something new. The watch looks beautiful in the box but I was disappointed immediately with two issues (1) the battery was completely dead -- I though apple solved this 10 years ago? (2) the smoke steel band was wayyyyy too big and next to impossible to adjust on your own. Most men don't have gigantic wrists, why not size it appropriately so that most people can use it immediately and leave some spare links in the box? I've now used it for five days and my complaints have continued. It frequently moves to either the Google Assistant or Watch Face create new category screen while I'm walking around, and when I look down for the time or a notification I realize it has recorded random conversation in to one of those inputs which I find pretty annoying. The only the way that the battery makes it a day is if I put battery saver on, and that dims the screen so much I can't read it. This is especially worrying since I really haven't done anything with it except set it up "out of the box" I haven't really started to use apps or do anything besides glance at my watch instead of my phone for notifications.It makes me afraid to use GPS or NFC payments as I'm pretty sure my watch would be dead by mid afternoon if I tried either. I haven't found any settings in the in-watch menu or supporting android app to adjust how long the screen stays active or other finer grain detail -- the settings available are pretty high level. Unless I'm doing it wrong, in which case they didn't make the design intuitive. As I mentioned I'm replacing fitbit with this and with fitbits I average anywhere from 12k to 15k steps a day -- the google fit step counter in this seems way off as it has been telling me like 5k to 6k steps doing the same activities, which is annoying. It is a very pretty design, although you need to be ready for a beefy watch head as it quite large. I was a little disappointed with the thickness. In Sumamry, I found enough flaws that I'm wishing I had just got another fitbit, where I had a reliable battery and excellent functionality, albeit with a built-in 53 week shelf life before it broke and forced me to reevaluate my commitment to wearables.

Over all I would not recommend it because of the fact does not record heart rates

Watch itself is fantastic, and I love the features, however the cheaply made charging bands are a terrible design flaw, and fall apart after a short period of time. The thin glued bands can come loose and will no longer allow for charging, thus making the entire watch useless. I exchanged mine out 5 times with the manufacturer, and finally got a refund.

I've been very impressed with the Fossil Explorist HR. Fist, let me say that it looks amazing. On first glance, most people don't even know it's a smartwatch because the watch face I chose looks like an analog watch. Second, it works well. The screen is bright with vibrant colors and the touchscreen is responsive. There is a bit of a learning curve, like most electronics, but within a day of use I felt I had a pretty good grasp on the basic functions of Wear OS, the operating system of the watch. I won't go over all the functions of Wear OS, but I will say the Explorist HR runs it well, with a minimum amount of lag when running apps. I especially like the flashlight app, with is surprisingly bright. And it's really convenient to see all your notifications without having to look at your smartphone. I've also been impressed with the battery life. For a smartwatch with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS all built in it's pretty impressive how long the battery lasts. I always get a full day out of it. In fact, I usually have close to 40% left at the end of the day. If you're shopping for a great looking, powerful smartwatch that can pass as a "normal" watch, the Explorist HR is a great option. I highly recommend it.

It’s crazy to think that we now have the ability to do so much from such a small device like this Explorist HR Smartwatch by Fossil. A device that comes in a compact yet sleek design and is capable of running applications, in a similar fashion like you would on a smartphone. With the right set of apps, you can pretty much customize just about anything on the Explorist HR Smartwatch by Fossil. I really like the overall presentation of the watch and the fact that it does not look like a toy or sticks out like a sore thumb. The Explorist HR Smartwatch by Fossil comes loaded with a set of default watch faces, several apps like Flashlight, Stopwatch, Timer, and other common apps that work well with a smartwatch. And with Wear OS, the operating system being used for this smartwatch onboard, if you don’t like the default watch faces that are preloaded, you could always download an app to access even more watch faces that you might like or are more your style. And sadly, with many smart devices, there is usually some sort of issues, and the Explorist HR is no exception. One thing in particular that I noticed is whenever I find myself in a high-rise. For whatever reason, the built-in GPS along with the cellular connection from my smartphone isn’t enough to provide pinpoint accuracy of my location. The Explorist HR thinks that I’m moving around the building even though I’m at my desk, which causes the watch to increase my step count every so often. So by the end of the day, I can end up with over 6k steps recorded, but in reality I only walked about 1k. Another thing to keep in mind with most smartwatches including the Explorist HR Smartwatch by Fossil, several features are enabled by default that will most likely cause your battery to run down fairly quickly. Before making my adjustments, I would get about 10 hours of battery life out of the watch. Some of the features that can be battery drains are the “tilt to wake” and the “always on display”. After making some adjustments, I can now get around 22 hours of battery life. Besides the previously mentioned inconvenience, the Explorist HR Smartwatch by Fossil is a great option for people looking to purchase a smartwatch that can be used just about anywhere. One watch for all occasions.

This is my first smart watch and I have to say I like it very much. It has a very nice look to it and how it sits well on my wrist. The display face is very clear and the buttons are easy to access. Features include: -Heart rate tracking -Untethered GPS -Google Pay -"Swim proof" ( I personally haven't tried this but I don't usually go swimming with any of my tech) -Display personalization -Music Player Control -The watch bands are interchangeable -Bluetooth 4.1 -Compatibility: Android OS 4.4+, iOS 9.3+ -Wireless Rapid charging Pros: -Notifications from your phone -Automatic time zone updates -Button personalization -Led flashlight -Voice command -Music control on your phone -Rapid charging (about 75% in one hour of charge) -Google Pay -Music and App Storage Cons: -Battery lasts about a day -I would prefer it to be water proof versus "swim proof" -Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset (3100 is the latest) -No Low-Power battery mode -No 4G/LTE support So over all, I like this watch. The price is pretty reasonable for its functionality. Very stylish and it performs well for my needs. I just hope these watches don't get obsolete every year just like the phones.