smart watch is An accessory you really didn’t know need, But it can be handy. Without pulling out your smartphone, you can check and respond to notifications, change music tracks, and glance at your next turn as you rush to the nearest coffee shop to warm up against the winter chill. If it’s annoying to use, you might as well throw your money in the trash.
Unfortunately, that’s my experience with Fossil’s new Gen 6 Wellness smartwatch. It lags, plain and simple. Considering this is Fossil’s first Wear OS 3 smartwatch, it’s not the leap I was hoping for. Sure, it looks nice, but that only gets you so far.
hardly zen
Photo: Fossil
First things first. The smartwatch runs Google’s Wear OS operating system. Over the years, as Apple dominated the smartwatch market, the company largely set it aside, but several companies like Fossil are committed to continuing to build smartwatches for the platform. Last year, Google rolled out Wear OS 3, a new version that promised a new look, better performance, broader health tracking and better battery life. The company is also working on improving the extremely lackluster app selection.
The results aren’t as impactful as Google would like, but Wear OS is certainly better than watches like Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5 and Google’s new Pixel Watch right now. They run smoothly, have more apps than ever before — including a new Google Home app to control your smart devices — and are solid at tracking basic health metrics like heart rate, SpO2 and even an EKG. It’s a shame you can’t give the same praise to Fossil’s Gen 6 Wellness.
It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 4100+ chipset (with 1 GB of memory), which isn’t the latest processor, but at a conference a company spokesperson enthusiastically emphasized that it is newer The chip is bigger than the one used in Google’s Pixel Watch. Alas, like Draco and the Slytherins on the newer Nimbus 2001 broomsticks harry potter and chamberwhich doesn’t actually make any sense.
Google’s Pixel Watch is smoother. Unlike Gen 6 Wellness, it’s not choppy at all. Sometimes it works well; it’s one of those near-perfect things when someone’s watching, and horrible when it’s just you. Every time I try to reproduce its sluggishness at home, it seems to cooperate and work fine. Getting out and about when I need it most? Suddenly, it slows down. Thank goodness I have witnesses! While I was having lunch with a friend, I got a notification on my watch and tried to check it. My friend saw me interacting with Gen 6 Wellness and commented, “It’s slow, isn’t it?” Yeah, yeah.
That’s weird – I’ve used other Gen 6 smartwatches like the Fossil Gen 6 and the Skagen Falster Gen 6 with the same specs and haven’t seen this poor performance, so there might be some optimization issues with Wear OS 3. It has the potential to get better over time with software updates.
Perhaps my most annoying issue with this watch is that it’s apparently accompanied by a ghost. not quite. Every few hours, it magically decides to turn features on or off against my will. For example, I don’t want the Gen 6 to chime loudly when I get a notification, so I set the ringer to just vibrate. However, every now and then… flat! The same goes for Battery Saver mode, which seems to randomly turn on and impair some of the watch’s functionality. Even the always-on display that I tried to turn off seemed to turn back on every night, and I had to keep turning the tilt on to wake up again. It’s frustrating.
good or bad
Photo: Fossil
I don’t want to be too negative. There are a few good things about this smartwatch. There is NFC, which I use to pay for my subway fare in NYC. The 1.28-inch AMOLED screen is also bright and colorful, and the entire watch is waterproof to 3ATM, even in rainy days.
