Customer Ratings & Reviews

I must say I was skeptical because I am not much of a smartwatch person. I actually used to wear nice watches all the time but in the last few years had just stopped because I always had my phone with me. I was always looking at the other brands and got close a couple times but never went forward. I finally did that with the Fossil Gen 5. First, I was impressed with the size. It is very thin and fits my normal to smaller wrist even better than some of my older non-smartwatches I used to wear. The fact that it is thin, and light made this really easy to get back into the habit of wearing a watch. This watch runs on Google’s Wear-OS. You download the app, sync with the phone with the watch and setup was quick and easy. I was a bit disappointed in the Wear-OS options on the app. You can change the face setting, manage notifications, change tiles (you can have 5 on your rotation), I use Weather Forecast, Headlines, Heart Rate, Heart Points and Agenda. I really like being able to control my Pandora and Spotify from the watch. I can still not get Spotify to download music to the watch. I was however able to open Play Music and see playlists that I had previously setup. I was then able to download them to the watch and since I had paird my headset, I was able to take a walk and enjoy music from the watch without my phone. That was Great! If I could do that with Spotify, it would be amazing! I also setup the watch with my Galaxy S10+ and was able to answer, speak and be heard from watch but I only was able to get an echo from those that called me, and I could not hear them on the watch. I have seen posts that Fossil is preparing a fix for this. One of the cool things I like is my blink camera notifications show up on the watch and even have an image capture from it so I can see if I really need to go to the phone and see the clip or realize it was just a squirrel! I love the Cardiogram function and have it tracking my heartrate every 5 min. It is very accurate and comparable to my higher end home blood pressure tracking machine. It seems to accurately measure my move minutes. I wish it would automatically track my step vs. me having to go into fit and select start workout and select walking. They really should add step tracking to occur automatically. My hope is that Wear-OS will continue to improve because I really like the feel of this watch and getting the notifications, alarm, fitness tracking, news. Fossil has done a great job on the watch but I really want the music on my watch from my Spotify. I hope that I will not be limited to Play Music only. I did not actually use Google pay yet but was able to quickly setup my newer card. Battery Life is average. I like all the features so I am getting 20hrs or so. What I do is after I get settled at work in the AM, I take it off and charge it for less than an hour while I am working. Charges quickly so has not been an issue. I bought extra cables on Amazon for less than $12 bucks so I threw one in the car, perfect! Overall, this thing is really nice. Comfort and features are key for me. Comfort has me at a 5 while features are still lagging at a 4 but I am hopeful. I would still highly recommend this watch, it’s beautiful, comfortable and full of features and opportunity!

I want to say first, that this Smartwatch does not have a large battery, but you can spend a day of 10-12 hours. The best: It has a super fast charge. It charges you 100% in one hour. It has a large screen, everything goes smoothly because it has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of ROM. The silicone band is 22cm, a bit long for some; but you can find one more small in the Fossil store or on Amazon. It is a super delicate band in contact with the skin and the Smartwatch is very light. I love your design. Your updates make the Google assistant work very well. Of course, be prepared because between setting up the Smartwatch and downloading updates, it can take a whole night; which means no less than 10 HOURS !!! Yes, it is not a lie, that took my watch to update and configure. I returned the first one, because when I finished downloading the update (4 hours), it showed me "The update cannot be installed"; then bingo! Another 4 hours of download. The same happened to me with the second one. That's why I decided to return it. I put the missing money and bought a Galaxy Watch 46mm Bluetooth. Not a bad smartwatch; but believe me that after you had the Fossil 5 Generation on your wrist; He will miss him very much. it's OS Wear (Android) and Samsung phones run Android; So your Smartwatches run Tizen OS. I don't know what Samsung's future will be with Tizen on their phones; but I am sure of one thing: Between OS Wear and Tizen, I keep OS Wear; although, it has flaws like Tizen; At least it is developed by Android. Syncing with your Android device is great. Tizen has no licensed Google app (Except for exceptions with Spotify, Strava and Uber, which are not from Google). But honestly, who will request an Uber service with their watch, if the phone allows you to do better? Tizen uses Here We Go instead of google maps. It is not bad; but in my case I had problems with navigation. The app breaks every time or freezes and I had to restart my phone, so I decided to uninstall this app. For now, Tizen is not doing well with me. You have to use all the original Samsung apps: Phone, contacts, Samsung Pay and even Samsung Internet. Yes, you read it right: Samsung internet instead of Google Chrome! Honestly, I put on this Galaxy Watch to set up Samsung Health and my heart rate and I left it in its box. I just want to see what happens with your battery; but I miss my Fossil 5 Generation. In every way!

Let me start mentioning that the watch is beautifully finished, and a great size for most people. Now Google Wear OS works OK, kind of slow sometimes, but I love it specially if paired with a Android cellphone. Where it kills itself is with Battery Life, you will be lucky if it lasts 24 Hours...Even if you going into settings and shut off quite a few Apps from notifications. That being said, that's why I gave it 3 Stars, and by the way returned it too. Hopefully all these manufacturers can either use bigger batteries, and also Google Wear OS should be more efficient.

I really wanted to like this watch. I was drawn in by the promise of a ton of smart features on my wrist, and it didn't deliver. It's a fine watch design-wise, Fossil makes great-looking watches and this lives up to their expectations. But unfortunately for Fossil, this watch is limited by the software of Wear OS, and it's pretty bad (even years later). The biggest issue to me was the battery. At first I was making it through a full day with the watch, and I had to turn off a lot of the convenience features (tilt the screen to wake it, "ok google" detection, etc) in order to stretch battery life to barely 24 hours. Even so, sometimes I'd get random extreme battery drain, so it was more of a "best case: 24 hours" battery life, which just got exhausting to constantly monitor. Now I'll admit, I used this watch every day for 1.5 years, and it held up. Battery life didn't get worse that I noticed (not that it could get much worse), this watch took normal wear and tear without breaking a sweat, and software stayed consistent (glitchy and laggy always, but at least it didn't get worse). Also, Google Assistant has apparently been broken on Wear OS for years. I don't know that I ever had a successful prompt and response with Google Assistant on this watch. I'd either get an error, or it wouldn't hear me, or, most often, it would lag so much that I'd have to wait for it to initialize after I hit the prompt button, then speak, then wait 10 more seconds for it to process, then I'd finally get my answer (usually an error anyway). I stopped using Google Assistant almost immediately, so that's a major draw of this watch gone. I just found out about hybrid watches like a month ago, 1.5 years into wearing this watch, and I switched to the Fossil Hybrid HR immediately. Hybrid smartwatches strip out what I would call the "unnecessary" features of a smartwatch (microphone and speaker, built-in apps, GPS, massive screen) and that allows them to focus on what I'd consider most core features of what I want on a smartwatch (reading notifications, music control, activity tracking, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring), all in a much better looking package, plus a battery life of 2+ weeks, and a much lower price tag. Plus, the software is built by Fossil instead of Google, which I never would have thought would be a good thing but it is. This review isn't about hybrids so I'll stop there but just saying, check out your other options before purchasing a Wear OS watch. Lastly, Google has rolled out Wear OS 3.0, which is a massive overhaul to the OS built in collaboration with Fitbit and Samsung, the two other major players in the Android smartwatch game. That's amazing news for Android smartwatches, but this watch, the Fossil Gen 5, won't get that update. You'll be stuck with the glitchy, laggy OS forever. In 2022 there is zero reason to buy this watch. If you want a basic, stylish smartwatch, get a hybrid. If you want the best full-on smartwatch, get an Apple Watch (hurts me to say as a Google fan but it's true). And if you want a great Android smartwatch instead, get one that has Wear OS 3. This watch doesn't win any category anymore.

Really nice looking watch, wears well. Problem is with wear OS. Definitely lacking there for sure

For the price point, its not a bad smart watch but it did not do what we wanted it to do. Wear OS doesn't hold up to the Samsung or Apple smart wear apps. I loved the feel of the fossil but the battery life was terrible (required charging daily, if you made it through the day). Sound quality was worthless.

I really enjoy using this fossil smartwatch. Unlike the apple watches, this looks less like a toy and more of a classic watch. I haven't bought new bands, but the one it comes with is very nice. The watch isn't perfect, but I don't believe it's the fault of fossil. Wear os needs improvement, it feels a little barebones compared to watchos.

Probably the best smart watch in the market even better than Samsung. Did not give 5 stars due to the OS. Google really needs to step up their games with their Wear OS. Other than that, great watch.

Its not your flashy Samsung but if you can get past that its a alright watch. I don't like that its wear os and thats the main problem, I returned it and got the Samsung active 2.

Great features, comes with speaker, wear os could have been user friendly.