Review on 📱 Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle Stainless Steel Smartwatch - Touchscreen, Speaker, Heart Rate, GPS, Contactless Payments, Smartphone Notifications by Richard Cuneo

Summary: 4.7 stars for great features and performance, battery life (remediable) ----- I've been waiting years to upgrade my LG Urban. I knew a watch with the latest Qualcomm processor was coming and I was patiently waiting for it. Finally they are here! This watch is near perfect. It has all the features I was looking for: smooth operation, great screen with auto-brightness, impressive water resistance, and NFC payments. I haven't tested the waterproofness but the rest of the items work as promised. I especially love NFC payments! Auto-brightness works well and the Sunlight Booster makes it easy to use the watch in bright, direct sunlight. They have a speaker, but I usually mute my watch because that's one of the reasons I wear them - discreet notifications. But it's there if and when you want it. You can even record the audio of a phone conversation on the watch, although I haven't tested that yet. I'm not sure if the watch's mic works on phone calls, but when both the watch's mic and the phone's mic are on, things can get a little weird for the other person. It has the usual Google Fit features and can monitor your heart rate in the background throughout the day. I thought it was a great feature until I found out how it affects battery life. I don't think the watch could last 12 hours with this feature. Thankfully, this isn't a required feature for me, so I turned it off and will measure my heart rate right when I need it. That brings me to the only downside of this watch. The battery is struggling to keep up with all the cool things the watch can do. Fortunately, there is something you can do about it. If you're like me, you can go through all the settings and turn off the things you don't need or don't care about, like: These things have extended the battery life to a point where it can last all day with about 1/4 charge left when I go to bed. If you don't want to disable features individually, there are several battery-saving features. Modes that should work for you. I feel like they turn off too much for everyday use, but for short trips without a charger they would be good. The watch can also be charged quickly, so when you run out of charge it won't take long if you have your charger to hand. long loading time. I've heard it takes an hour from zero to a full charge, but haven't tested that. Physically, the watch is noticeably lighter than my Urbane, making it more comfortable to wear. I found the black silicone version to be the most comfortable, but I bought the stainless steel version for the looks. The 22mm wide straps are easy to change, especially if you stick with the Fossil brand. I really like the three buttons on the side! The middle one runs the standard Wear OS functions but has a rotating crown that scrolls the screen up and down. I didn't know this and was pleasantly surprised when I realized it! The other two buttons can be reassigned to any application, another great feature. I assigned Google Pay at the top and Settings at the bottom. All in all, this is the watch I was waiting for and bought a few days after it came out. I highly recommend it if you're in the market as there's nothing better in the Android Wear space.