Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition review: At least it can tell time
When I think about the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition, I remember an old Top Gear episode. Jeremy Clarkson was reviewing the first all-electric Mercedes SLS supercar. It was an absolute monster, capable of producing 739HP and a top speed of 155MPH. There was only one catch: battery life. The Mercedes could only sustain that performance for less than 10 miles before needing to charge.
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Similarly, the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition has many excellent features: SpO2 monitoring, Cardiac Wellness, Google Fit integration, and sleep tracking. But if it’s nothing more than a paperweight on your wrist by late afternoon, does any of that even matter?
Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition 6 / 10 $275 $299 Save $24 The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition has some fancy features, but unfortunately, not the battery life or performance to get the most out of them. Brand Fossil Heart Rate Monitor Yes Color Screen Yes Operating System Wear OS 3.2 Customizable Strap Yes Case Material Stainless Steel Connected GPS Yes Colors Silver, Black, Rose Gold Display 1.28" AMOLED CPU Snapdragon Wear 4100+ RAM 1 GB Storage 8 GB Connectivity Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi Health sensors Heart Sensor, Sp02, Sleep Price $299 Strap 20mm Mobile payments Yes $275 at Amazon $299 at Fossil
Price and availability
The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition can be purchased through Fossil and Amazon starting at $299. However, Amazon has run several sales that bring that price down to $229. For that price, you get your choice of rose gold, black, or silver-tinted stainless steel cases. Bundles also feature different silicone bands and bezel ring combinations for an additional cost.
Design, hardware, what’s in the box
The design was definitely the primary focus for Fossil when producing the Gen 6. It sports a sleek 44mm stainless steel case, and the silver colorway adds to the premium look of the watch. There are three buttons on the Gen 6 Wellness configured like a traditional chronograph: two smaller pushers at 2 and 4 o’clock and a main rotating crown positioned at 3.
The button press isn’t the most tactile, but it gets the job done. On the other hand, the crown rotation is quite responsive: clockwise brings up your notifications, while a counter-clockwise turn brings up settings. Around the rest of the bezel, you will find a speaker and microphone with an array of health sensors located on the back casing. The speaker actually gets quite loud, and the microphone is great for speech-to-text responses to messages.
A Fossil-branded 20mm silicone band with quick release is included. I always love when smartwatches can use regular watch bands, and your favorite 20mm strap can be fitted to the Gen 6.
Additional Fossil bands can be purchased for $30 apiece. The silicone felt good against my wrist, and I had no real complaints about any of the materials used in the Gen 6 Wellness Edition.
Upon opening the box, I was greeted with the watch, the usual books and papers, and the proprietary hockey puck-style charger that has been the go-to for numerous smartwatches.
Despite being marketed to those with an active lifestyle, the Gen 6 Wellness Edition only features 30 meters of water resistance. While that’s fine to wash your hands or wear it in the rain, you wouldn’t want to swim or shower with it on. If you’re a swimmer, that’s a major chunk of your physical activity you won’t be able to keep track of.
Display
One of the highlights of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition is the display. It features a beautiful 1.28-inch AMOLED panel. The color saturation is great on it, and notifications look sharp and easy to read. Receiving notifications is one of the few enjoyable experiences on the Gen 6. Fossil also didn’t forget to make the Gen 6 bright enough to actually see.
For particularly intense light environments, Fossil has included a brightness boost. When the ambient light sensor detects direct sunlight, it will give the display some extra lumens. It doesn’t always work smoothly, but when it does, I found myself having zero issues viewing the Gen 6 display outdoors.
Software and performance
The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition runs Google Wear OS 3 out of the box. Having suffered through the pains of Wear OS 2, I can vouch for many of the upgrades Google has brought to version 3. Third-party app integration is much better, and the inclusion of more tile options is particularly helpful in customizing the setup of the watch. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s much improved.
You’ll find a host of preloaded apps like Google Maps and Messages. Spotify makes a welcome appearance, as well as YouTube Music. Google Pay makes good use of the NFC capabilities, and Facer is present for all your watch face needs. While those are all quite useful, don’t confuse this for Wear OS 3.5 — there is no Google Assistant on the Gen 6. Amazon Alexa handles voice assistant duties, and while it does a decent job, I’d prefer to have Google’s version.
Unfortunately, the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition falters in performance. Even if you discount the continued growing pains of Wear OS, the Gen 6 falls well short of the mark. App crashes are frequent, and stutters plague even basic tasks. There were too many times when I felt like I was trying to train a Shih Tzu (add your preferred stubborn dog breed here).
The heart rate app only worked when it wanted to. If I wanted to check my SpO2 level, I did so on the Gen 6’s terms, not mine.
Another rather annoying quirk of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition is its inability to keep track of your settings. If you enjoy auto-brightness off and tilt-to-wake on, you better hope the watch never goes into battery-saving mode. If it does, it will bring all your preferences back to the defaults. Avoiding the battery saver is also harder than you would imagine.
I once had the Gen 6 turn on battery saver with 86% remaining. I got so frustrated with the process that I eventually gave up and left the default settings in place. You win, Fossil. I’ll keep the AOD on. I hope you’re happy.
Bluetooth connectivity also struggled on the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition. I found it would require me to open the Fossil Smartwatch app and re-sync the watch in order to reconnect.
Under the hood, the Gen 6 is powered by a Snapdragon 4100+ chipset. While I understand it’s older, I’ve seen Mobvoi get much more performance out of the 4100 in their TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra than Fossil did with the Gen 6. If you want to dismiss the performance gap as the upgrade from Wear OS 2 to 3, go ahead. Personally, I think it’s a heck of a lot more difficult to make Wear OS 2 look good, so that excuse doesn’t fly with me.
The Fossil Smartwatch app handles phone integration for both Android and iOS. While the app looks rather clean and nicely designed, that’s about it. Much like the watch itself, the design seemed to be the primary concern, with functionality left to toil way down the list of priorities.
Health and fitness
If a company is bold enough to name something “Wellness Edition,” you’d assume the fitness tracking and features would be top-notch. That’s not exactly the case with the Fossil Gen 6.
Automatic workout tracking is non-existent. I was in the middle of a cardiac stress test, and the Gen 6 barely registered me as conscious, let alone having a heart rate pushing 160 BPM. Workout selections are rudimentary, with a choice between indoor and outdoor workouts. When I initiated a workout, the Gen 6 did an adequate job of keeping track of distance, duration, and heart rate, but it’s nowhere near the suite of workout variants we get with Garmin or Fitbit. GPS acquisition and tracking are fast and accurate, but I found myself constantly wanting more.
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Sleep tracking is just okay. It kept track of my heart rate through the night and identified periods of deep and light sleep, but I didn’t find myself gaining any useful information from the data.
If there is a saving grace to the fitness tracking of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition, it is the integration with the Google Fit app. Thankfully, it is able to do a lot more with the information coming from the sensors of the Gen 6. I was able to sift through a lot more actionable data about my fitness from the Google Fit app than I could ever hope to from the basic Fossil app. The Google Fit app not only gave me sleep-tracking information, but it also explained what it meant and offered tips and guidance for improvement.
Battery life
The battery life of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition isn’t very good. It’s the same mistake that Google made with the Pixel Watch: a feature-rich smartwatch is only as useful as the battery powering it. There is absolutely zero way to make it through an entire 24 hours of usage without the watch dying. I made the error of thinking 35% battery was enough left over for an entire night of sleep tracking, and I was greeted with a dead watch in the morning. If you wish to take advantage of everything the Gen 6 has to offer, you will have to top off once or twice per day.
Thankfully, Fossil included fairly quick charging capabilities. They claim that the Gen 6 can charge from 0 to 80% in about 30 minutes. This is one of the few times when I think a company is actually underselling. I found the Gen 6 could charge almost 90% in that amount of time. If you treat the Fossil like an early 2000s cellphone with a charger in your car, office, and home, then you’ll be okay — but for the rest of us, we’re going to suffer with battery life.
Competition
When it comes to competition to the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition, take your pick: at $300, this watch is competing with pretty much every good Android watch out there. The Google Pixel Watch, despite being a bit more expensive, provides better performance, increased water resistance, and a full suite of Fitbit apps. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 is a little less expensive when on sale. It also provides the same performance boost as the Pixel Watch with considerably better battery life. Mobvoi offers outstanding battery life with the TicWatch Pro 3 Ultra and the secondary transflective display, which handles the always-on-display duties.
Garmin and Fitbit alternatives offer better battery life and granular control of your workouts. I’m fairly certain I’d recommend a Pebble Watch over the Gen 6 at this point.
Fossil forgot to include a killer feature in the Gen 6. Something that would give it a competitive advantage over all those other smartwatches in its price range. Nothing about the Gen 6 makes me snap up and point like the Leonardo DiCaprio meme and say, “That’s my smartwatch.”
Should you buy it?
Even when a product is bad, I usually try to find some redeeming quality to grab onto. I try to find something that fans of the brand will enjoy. Whether you love them or hate them, the Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid watches do one very important thing: they illicit a response. They have a design that is uniquely Fossil.
However, there is nothing like that present in the Gen 6 Wellness Edition. Take away the branded strap and the startup splash screen, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you who manufactured it. Generic, laggy, and with poor battery is no way to go through life. I’d take my money elsewhere.
Source: Android Police
