Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWear OS has some quirks... But still good for any Android phone
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2019
First off, this watch looks amazing on my wrist. The brown/blue color scheme reminds me of my old analog Swatch, and that's a big plus in my book. The physical build quality is also great. Most of the case is stainless steel, which adds some heft to the watch, making it feel more premium than the all-plastic Ticwatch E this watch replaced. The screen is also HUGE for a smartwatch. Navigating it with my thick fingers is easy. The band it came with was very innovative. On the outside is brown leather, but the inside is sporty silicone, which means it would be harder to tarnish the leather with sweaty wrists when you're out moving a lot like I am. Onto the software, Google's WearOS pairs perfectly with virtually any Android-powered phone. My LG Stylo 4 connected quickly and easily using the WearOS app. Like many reviewers felt, though I noticed that the system in general was bogged down by lackluster hardware. I know this Gen 4 runs on a Quallcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100, which has been succeeded by the Wear 3100. The watch in some cases runs smoothly, but it also is prone to moments of pure lag that I am familiar with from my old Wear OS watch, which actually ran on a less powerful Mediatek CPU. In the Fossil's case, the watch will freeze, the screen will sometimes go black, and it would either take a soft-reset (force-reboot) or repeatedly tapping the screen or pressing buttons for it to become responsive again. This problem becomes especially prevalent when the watch is either charging or in battery-saver mode. If I plug the watch into its charger while it is in powersave mode, it will often be too frozen to even recognize that it is charging on-screen. Next topic. The main reason I upgraded was to be able to make use of Google Pay. My first time doing it didn't work, mostly because I didn't realize that I had not been holding the watch to the reader long enough. (Note to anyone who buys this-- Wait for the card reader to beep or chime before removing the device, NOT when the watch starts to vibrate. Removing the watch too early caused the watch to go into another freezing fit.) After figuring out my mistake, I went to several stores and a restaurant to further test Google Pay. It worked in an outlet shop, a vending machine, and a Burger King. Shockingly, the one place the watch consistently did NOT work at for paying was the Target I work for. Every time I tried paying with my watch at any self-checkout at my job, my virtual debit card would be declined! Anyway, my favorite part of the watch is probably the customization capabilities for the watch faces provided by Fossil. I currently use the default digital face, loaded fully with 6 "widgets," (little information gadgets that can tell you the date, weather, your heart rate, etc.) and the most amazing part, you can set a custom background with any photo you have posted to your Facebook or Instagram profile! At the time of writing this review, I currently have a landscape photo taken in my parent's backyard as my background. Unfortunately, you can't currently use backgrounds from photos saved to your phone's image gallery; only Facebook and Instagram photos will work. Finally, the main thing I will address is battery life. My Ticwatch E had about 10-14 hours battery life, so I was prepared to see more of the same when I read the other reviews for this model. I have had this watch for two days so far. The first day, it did not last long at all, about 5 hours. However, today, the second day, it lasted about as long as my old one did. I took the watch off its charger at 9 AM and when I got home, it was holding itself in powersave mode (The watch is set to automatically enter the mode when the battery hits 10&) at 7%. So 13 hours of light to moderate use, with automatic heart-rate reading and "always-on display" features turned on. The last thing I'd like to mention is that one of the "Feature review" scores I was asked to give on this product was sleep-tracking capabilities. I obviously gave 1 star for two reasons: First, the battery life on this watch is too low for the watch to work for overnight wear. I charge the watch overnight. Second, as far as I know, this watch does not include sleep-tracking capabilities stock. There may be an app on the Play Store (Another thing this watch has going for it: an app store built into the OS) that offers sleep-tracking, but once again, unless you only wear this watch when sleeping and charge it during the day, you're not going to be able to keep this watch powered all night. My final verdict is this: This is easily one of the best WearOS watches currently available, and yes, I know there is a new generation 5 that was just released when I purchased this watch, which improves on a couple of the issues I outlined here, namely, it now runs the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip. This watch is not as good as I've seen the Samsung or Apple lines of smartwatches to be, but unless you have a Samsung or Apple phone, those watches will not have their full potential unlocked. If you want to use this watch, you must have a small degree of patience for glitches and low to average battery life. That is all.
