Brief review of the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch

On a whim, on April 3 I bought this smartwatch. As you can see in the title of this article, its name is a bit of a mouthful: Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid Smartwatch. You can look at an overview of the entire line-up and their main features on this page at Fossil’s website. The model I chose is called Machine, in all black colourway.

My wife and I had already noticed these Fossil smartwatches some time ago, but were put off by their price, which at the time was €259. I’m still rocking a Pebble as my main smartwatch, and use a Fitbit Versa 2 to track additional things such as heart rate and sleep (the Fitbit seems to do a better job than the Pebble at this). Spending that kind of money for yet another smartwatch made little sense to me, though I did find the all-black ‘stealth’ look very attractive. My wife had her eye on another model (all digital, not hybrid) and was tempted, but when she asked the store clerk for a demo of the watch’s features, the clerk told her she couldn’t show her much because all the watches were turned off and not charged. We thought it was a bit lame, and left.

Then, about a month ago, I was browsing watches in the same store and noticed the huge discounts for the whole Fossil smartwatch line-up. I told my wife, Weren’t you interested in one of these? Look, they’re only €99 now. She jumped at the opportunity and purchased for herself the model she had previously been after. And I looked at this hybrid variant and said Why not?

I don’t usually make impulse purchases, but this — spoiler alert — turned out to be a good one.

This page on TechRadar explains clearly and concisely what a hybrid smartwatch is:

Put simply, a hybrid smartwatch blends a traditional, mechanical watch design with modern smartwatch technology that can track fitness, send notifications, monitor your heart rate and much more.

That’s why it’s called a hybrid, because it sits somewhere between a regular watch and a smartwatch. Although, some are more smart than others.

[…] One of the biggest differences between a hybrid smartwatch and a regular smartwatch is in the design. Generally, a hybrid smartwatch doesn’t have a bright touchscreen and looks much more like a regular watch than all-out smartwatches like the Apple Watch or the Fitbit.

In the case of this smartwatch, it definitely looks like a rugged field watch, with a chunky appearance that almost gives Casio G‑Shock vibes from a distance. But the Fossil’s case is all stainless steel and feels hefty and solid in the hand (it weighs approximately 150 grams). Amazingly, once you put in on your wrist, it feels somewhat lighter and you don’t really notice its presence (it’s still a big, manly watch with a case diameter of 45mm).

The ‘hybridity’ of this smartwatch is very well executed from a visual design standpoint. While the bezel, the hour markers, the outer ring of the dial, and the watch hands are physical and don’t change, the rest of the dial is an e‑ink screen. There are a few watchfaces you can choose from, and also compose your own, like I did here.

The beauty of the e‑ink screen is twofold. On the one hand, it blends very well with the physical elements of the watch, especially when you choose a dark watchface, to the point that the smartwatch just appears like a regular mechanical watch at first glance. On the other hand, from a functional standpoint, the e‑ink screen gives the watch the advantage you’re probably thinking of: long battery life. With thoughtful notifications management, the watch can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge, according to the manufacturer. But I’ve found out that this estimate is very conservative. More on this later.

Feature-wise, while hybrid in design, this Fossil smartwatch has pretty much all you need. Again, you can see an overview of the features here, but in short they include step tracking, automatic workout detection, sleep tracking, calorie tracking, heart rate, and estimated blood oxygen measurements.

The companion app is really well made, well designed, and easy to use. The pairing process was fast and flawless, as is syncing. Through the app you can have an overview of your health and fitness stats, and customise both the watchface and the two pushers located at two o’clock and four o’clock. The main button, located on the crown at three o’clock, is always used to access the main menu. When you enter the main menu or any submenu, the watch hands align and become a sort of analogue indicator you use to point to the desired menu item. You use the other two pushers to navigate ‘up’ and ‘down’ (or rather, clockwise and anticlockwise) through the entries. It’s a very tactile and organic experience overall. The three pushers are well built and have a positive feel and feedback. The only (minor) disappointment is that the crown doesn’t move and isn’t used to scroll through options (it does on the other, regular smartwatch models by Fossil).

Here’s how the main menu looks when you push the button on the watch’s crown. You navigate the options with the other two pushers and use the crown button to enter your selection. The watch hands join together in this view, and act like a single pointing hand as you select the various options.

Due to its hybrid design, and the fact that the e‑ink screen is only black & white, there aren’t many custom watchfaces to choose from. The app offers 19 unique faces, but — and I like this a lot — it also lets you design your watchface by assembling the base elements the way you want. If, for example, you like one particular face among those provided by Fossil, but you want fewer complications, or none at all, you can create a more stripped-down version of that watchface. The process can be a bit fiddly in places, but it’s generally easy and intuitive.

When I posted a couple of photos of this smartwatch on social media, someone asked me if it was solar-powered. That would be really cool, but no, you charge it just like any other smartwatch. It has a round, magnetic attachment on the back, a bit smaller than the one for the Apple Watch. It doesn’t charge very fast, but at least you don’t have to charge it every day or every 2 days. In fact, let’s talk about the most astonishing feature of this smartwatch — battery life.

As I said, I purchased it on April 3. The battery was completely drained. I charged it fully that same evening. At the time of writing — April 30 in the afternoon — the battery is at 18%. I haven’t charged the watch in 27 days, not even for a brief top-up. In normal use, it essentially loses about 3% charge per day. Which means that if it’s now at 18%, it can keep going for approximately another 5–6 days before the battery is completely discharged. An entire month on a single charge is rather exceptional for a modern smartwatch. And note that I haven’t enabled any kind of power-saving measure, and that this watch also tracks heart rate and blood oxygen. It’s not like, say, a Pebble that only tracks your steps. There are more sensors to power here.

There are actually two aspects, intrinsic to the e‑ink screen, that become sort of built-in power-saving measures anyway. The first is that the data displayed on the screen, such as heart rate, steps, distance, calories, isn’t constantly refreshed in real time, but updates with a flick of the wrist. Here the watch acknowledges your gesture by having the watch hands make a complete rotation to then return to the current time. The second aspect is that the screen isn’t backlit. It’s front-lit by four LEDs you turn on by double-tapping on the watch’s crystal.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this purchase. After almost a month of use, I haven’t really found anything bad about this Fossil hybrid smartwatch. It’s well built, and looks and feels premium. Its metal strap, with a tight mesh similar to certain Milanese loops I’ve seen in other watches, is the most pleasant to wear I’ve tried in a long time; I’ve worn the watch non-stop for days, and didn’t experience any kind of skin irritation or wrist hair pulling. Its step tracking and heart rate measurements appear fairly accurate or at least consistent (I simply performed an informal test by wearing both the Fossil and the Fitbit Versa 2, and both gave similar readings). Its interface, while bare-bones, is clear, intuitive, and out of the way. Its companion app is well thought-out, elegant, and again, easy to use. And its battery life just blew me away. At the discounted price of €99, this has truly been a bargain, and a great bang for my buck.

I’ve been told that the reason for all these discounts is that it’s likely Fossil is leaving the smartwatch market. If true, that’s a real pity. Sometimes the best ideas come from companies that are not Apple, Google, Samsung or any other major player in the smartwatch sector.