Fossil Gen 6 42mm Touchscreen Smart Watch for Women with Alexa Built-In, Fitness Tracker, Activity Tracker, Sleep Tracker, GPS, Speaker, Music Control, Smartphone Notifications

Beautiful with Many Face Options – Instructions & Onboard Apps Need Improvement, But Love It!
I read most of the Amazon reviews for the Samsung, Garmin and Fossil smartwatches before buying this one.Style: I needed a watch that I could wear from workout, through work, to evening if needed and though the rhinestone bezel is a bit blingy for the gym – who cares? It’s the gym. I find that the watch is understated enough to go to the dog park or gym – with the leather band, but with a change of face can be transformed for a dinner out. For those who never explored the Facer App, or thought you had to subscribe to download all these faces, this is incorrect. You just need to patiently clear the Ad that comes up after you choose each watch face to add to your Watchbox (at the bottom of the Facer App main screen) All watch faces that you “I heart” will load to your Watchbox you can then easily select to load to your watch. There are thousands of choices that are free, only the Premium faces need a subscription. I found a favorite Facer watch face designer, Warren Silberstein, who has hundreds of faces he designed, many of those I shared here are his – everything from antique, to classic, to florals, elegant, fun, even custom watch faces. If you “follow” any watch designer you like you can get notification when they release a new one. You can store up to 4 faces from the Facer app directly on your watch. If you ever want to switch any of them out, just go into your Watchbox, select the “Free” button and it will download it from Facer to your watch. This will push out the oldest used watch face, so you will always have 4 faces available.Band: I can’t wear silicone on my wrist, and prefer leather so it didn’t matter that the watch came with a rose gold metal band as I was going to remove it – I wouldn’t work out with a metal band. Right now the Rose Gold metal band version of the Gen 6 is $100 less than the silicone band version, so if you don’t mind supplying your own band, it is a great buy. You will see in my photos that the band comes with 2 quick release pins on each side you simple squeeze and it releases from the watch. I purchased a black croc textured 18mm leather band from Amazon for $14, that came with a band replacement tool and extra pins. It took me a minute to pop them both in after watching a YouTube video on how to use the tool.Setup: Right out of the box, they recommend you charge it which I did. It walked me through the setup which went smoothly. Initially, to test out all the installed apps, I recommend that you give permissions to all the apps initially. Test the Apps that are factory installed, and if you don’t like them or the corresponding phone interface like the Cardiogram App, you can just uninstall it on your phone and the watch. For example, the Cardiogram App requires a monthly or annual subscription so I deleted it and opted to use the Heart Rate in Google Fit.Apps: This current 2023 Gen 6 version comes with Wear OS3 installed but for the time being Google Assistant is not functioning, so you have to use Amazon Alexa for voice interface, but Fossil has indicated they are working on it. It was formerly fully functioning in Wear OS2. Personally, I don’t often use a voice interface, but have found it helpful to tell Alexa to text someone for me while I am driving and it has worked flawlessly. When a future Fossil watch update releases a functioning Google Assistant, I will probably uninstall Alexa and use the Google Assistant for simplicity sake. The Fossil App is factory installed and comes with a basic Wellness App. The Sleep App worked perfectly in the Wellness App, but my Heart Rate monitor was not functioning despite all the online help, troubleshooting efforts and YouTube tutorials. The Heart Rate would show up on the menu page, eg. Heart Rate 72, but when you touch “Heart Rate”, it would scroll right to the live heart rate tile and it would be flatlined at 000 and would not move. When I would scroll up to see the Heart Rate activity log to see if it was tracking at intervals (I had given the watch permission to track a continuous heart rate), the screen would flicker. I reached out to Fossil, got a human being on the first attempt, explained all I had done to troubleshoot the watch and the rep escalated it to their Tech Team. The agent said they would email me within 48 hours. In fact, they did email me the very next day and asked me to Factory Reset the watch. I did so and now the Heart Rate monitor is working perfectly. I will say that this was specifically a Wellness app issue as the Google Fit app I downloaded reported the Heart Rate regularly and accurately. I used my PulseOximeter to compare my O2 sats and heart rate and they were almost always spot on – I mean within one point or so and this could simply be a result of the timing of each measurement. I prefer to use the Google Fit app for step tracking and workouts as they have an extensive list of exercise types you can track. In contrast, the Wellness app only tracks one activity, so it is very basic but if you prefer simplicity, you might prefer the Wellness App and not download Google Fit to save space on your watch. I do like that I can see the live heart rate in the Wellness app. Google Fit does not have that feature. If I need more storage space in the future on the watch I would uninstall the Wellness app if possible and keep Google Fit. As Wellness is factory installed, I do not know at this time if it is possible. Another app I don’t have any need for is the Fossil app. It offers a dozen or so watch faces which were not what I was looking for. I much prefer the Facer App and in fact the diversity that Facer offers without my having to pay for a subscription is a real plus. (I know the game ads are annoying, but once you’ve got your preferred watch faces in your Watchbox, your’e all done, unless you want to go shopping for more in the future.) The Fossil App is more marketing than functional, and offers little technical help, so I don’t see the need for it on the watch. I don’t use the Fossil watch faces and would like to be able to delete them but as they are Factory installed, as of this writing, I do not know if it is possible.Pressing the crown of the watch allows you to access the watch face and another push brings up your apps. In Wear OS2, they scrolled in a circular fashion following the curve of the watch face as you turned the crown or scrolled through them on the touchscreen, but on this Gen 6 version with Wear OS3, the App Menu scrolls vertically, like the settings menu. I prefer the circular scrolling look as you will see on some older Gen 6 watches running WearOS2 (check out YouTube tutorials for a pictorial example). I am hoping when they get Google Assistant working in Wear OS3 for Fossil that they will also re-instate the circular scrolling app menu style.Texts, Calls and Speaker: I get my messages and calls on the watch and can easily answer them via voice so I don’t have to type on the very tiny keypad provided. You can opt to answer calls on your watch or phone in the settings. I also like that you can download music from my YouTube library, then bluetooth my earbuds to the phone and walk in the park without my phone. I have had no trouble bluetooth connecting my ear buds to the watch.Battery Life: It does charge in 30 minutes, but initially when you are downloading new apps and deleting others, or playing with the Facer App and downloading dozens of faces to try, it will use up battery life, so don’t be concerned about this initial drain and need to recharge. Once I filled up my Watchbox using the free Facer app, I turned off settings that drain battery like continuous watch face on, continuous O2 sats or heart rate. I periodically check heart rate and O2 throughout the day for health reasons, but when I workout, I change the setting to continuous as I am preparing to workout. While I shower at night, I put the watch on the charger so I go to sleep with 100%. I monitor sleep, O2 and heart rate at night and wake up with 95% battery. While I am getting ready for the day in the morning, I top off the charge if I remember. After a several mile walk, grocery shopping, admin work, by mid-afternoon, I am around 85%. I have gone to sleep without charging it while it monitored my night stats and I woke up the next morning with 70%. I had a 5 year old Huawei sports watch that finally died and I was accustomed to charging it at night as I didn’t wear it for sleep, but the Fossil as I use it now with tracking a daily workout, steps, texting, calls and my night stats has gone for 2 days without a charge. The need to charge every 2 days is not an issue for me as I don’t wear my watch in the shower, so I can just put it on the charger and its good to go for the night to track my sleep, O2 and heart. I understand if you have been an Apple watch user and are used to going a week without charging, that you may have an expectation to do the same here, and be utterly disappointed, but do you really shower with your watch on? I have rapid charger boxes and this watch charges so fast, I have never had an issue with it losing power when I needed it.To conclude – it’s a beautiful as well as functional watch. I am really loving exploring the Facer App and the different artists. But I appreciate that all of its health functions are helping me monitor my dog walks, workouts and health. I don’t think that the delay in providing the Voice Assistant is enough to merit delaying saving $100 on this watch. They will provide an OS3 update when it is ready. In the meantime I have been using Alexa and she is doing all the things I was able to do with Voice Assistant. I appreciate that Fossil got back to me so quickly to help me do the reset and reinstall the Heart Monitor app. All is working perfectly now and I am getting into my daily rhythm with it. I understand everyone’s needs are different, but hope this review has helped anyone thinking about this watch.

Watch
It’s battery need to last longer it doesn’t even get through a dayTheir could be better tiles or be able to download pics from phoneOther than that I like it the style look and lite weighOh one more thing I would like to know if their is somewhere else to buy bands I don’t like the ones u have

Tengo tiempo usándolo y super bien, las actualizaciones son rápidas y no se batalla en entenderlo esta genial.

Tout qui est sur la montre