Is it worth buying Fossil Gen 5?

 One-day battery life, solid performance and first-class design make Wear OS a more attractive option. Fossil Gen 5 is simply the best Wear OS smart watch you can buy. for now, and if you don't expect it to be an Apple Watch beater, he'll do his job and watch the episode.

Smart watches with Wear OS software from Google come in many different designs from different manufacturers and work with both Android and iPhone. But for a long time, they are plagued by slowness, poor battery life and a software experience that supports the competition.

The Fossil group, which includes the Fossil signature brand and many others such as Michael Kors, Diesel, Misfit and Skagen, is doing best with Wear OS, but often not well enough.

Fossil's fifth generation smart watch, Gen 5, is important for the entire Wear OS, as its internal functionality will also be the basis of all the various Fossil Group smart watches this year. Gen 5 is a nice looking watch in itself. right, with a variety of colors, finishes and straps. They don't say right away that it's a piece of technology, which is good.

At 12 mm thick and 44 mm wide, the watch is not small, but it looks quite slim, fits easily under the shirt cuff and is invisible on relatively small wrists.

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The 1.28-inch AMOLED screen is sharp, clear and bright enough to be seen in direct sunlight with automatic adjustment. By default, it's available all the time, so you can see the time and alerts at a glance.

Fossil offers many custom dials, most of which look very good, and there are hundreds more in the Play Store. On one side of the watch is a speaker hole with two buttons that launch your chosen applications, and a rotating crown on the other side.

He then marks most of the boxes as watches. Details

Screen: 1.28 "AMOLED (328 ppi)

Case size: 44 mm

Cabinet thickness: 12mm

Tape size: standard 22 mm

Process: Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100

RAM: 1 GB

Storage: 8 GB

Operating system: Wear OS

Weather resistance: 30 meters (3ATM)

Sensors: altimeter, ambient light, gyroscope, heart rate, microphone, NFC speakers, GPS

Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2, wifiThe Gen 5 has in the past been able to troubleshoot poor performance and battery life with Wear OS. Performance is good, if not the same as the Apple Watch Series 5, with no noticeable delay or slowdown in normal use, aided by 1 GB of RAM and a newer Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor. The battery has also been upgraded to last at least one day by activating the mode. "Daily", which activates all functions. Set my heart rate to 7:00 with heart rate monitoring in the background, Gen 5 ends the day at 23:00 with at least 25% remaining battery - a sign that most Wear OS watches try to keep them on throughout the day.

The "extended" battery mode, which turns off some features, including the screen always on, lasts more than two days between charges, while a single time mode lasts even longer. Charging takes a little over an hour via a small white magnetic USB puck attached to the back ring.

It is worth noting that although the watch has a two-year warranty, Fossil says the battery is not replaceable, which means that the watch will eventually work. elegant like watchOS from Apple or Tizen from Samsung on their respective watches.

You move around the screen. From left to right for Google Assistant. Right to left for various widgets for things like timers, Google Fit and others called tiles. Wipe notifications and other items from below. Swipe from top to bottom for quick settings like airplane mode, volume, battery mode and Google Pay. To change it, press and hold the watch face.

Tap the crown to open the application list or return to the dial. Swipe from left to right normally works as a back button on Android. It’s fairly simple and easy to get the hang of.Notification handling is where Wear OS shines. Notifications pop up from the bottom and can be dismissed, expanded to read the text of emails or WhatsApps, or actioned with the same options as available via the notification shade on your phone such as archiving with Gmail or similar. 

You can reply to messages using smart canned responses, your voice to transcribe, or with the surprisingly good keyboard which, while fiddly, gets the job done for quick things even if you’re a bit fat-fingered. 

Media controls are also great. Start playing something on your phone and they pop up on the watch to skip track or change the volume using the crown. There's also a special Spotify app, but it doesn't allow you to store music offline - you need to use the Google Play Music app.

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Popular third-party applications, such as Diet and Citymapper, are available through the store, while Google services are well-equipped with Maps, Translate, Fit, and more. or lack thereof. Here is the main Google Fit app. He can count your steps, minutes of movement and "heart points" well, he will check your heart rate in the background at any moment and he will lead you to grief by breathing.

But Fit doesn't go beyond the basics, not even sleep monitoring. He can watch many workouts, but the screens he displays for things like running are not customizable. Using it to track workouts will also affect battery life, especially if you play music on a Bluetooth headset while running.

Third-party fitness applications, such as Diet, that are simple but effective can fill a gap in specific features. Nike Run Club and Cardiogram are also pre-installed.

Overall, Google is miles behind Apple and Samsung, especially Fitbit or Garmin in terms of features and policies in health monitoring and analysis, and Wear OS suffers from it. The straps are standard straps with a 22 mm quick-release pin, so you can easily replace them, even if the black silicone is of high quality. The pink leather strap is great to the touch, but almost instantly removes dirt and grime that can change color.

Google Pay works well on your watch and supports most UK and US banks.

You will receive calls on the watch.

Gen 5 works on iOS with most of the same features, except for the lack of support for Siri and iMessage.