Fossil Gen 5 Carlyle HR and Wear OS — actual casual user review (Julianna HR, Garrett HR)

Just two months ago I outlined my desires for a smartwatch and concluded that it doesn’t exist. As it often happens, almost as as soon as I published, Fossil released a new generation of its smartwatches that seemed to tick all the boxes. I’ve been a happy owner of Fossil Carlyle HR for about a month now and I’m ready to share the review of my watch.

I’ve had 7 key feature points in the “Smartwatch for a non-fitness person. A unicorn?” post, and I will structure this review around them. This will be a subjective review and I will cover things that I care about in more detail and totally omit stuff I don’t care about.

Here’s the short version of things I wanted in a smartwatch:

1. Looks like a watch and isn’t huge;
2. Battery lasts more than a day;
3. Always-on time;
4. Notifications from phone;
5. Show me what media is playing on my phone;
6. Physical buttons to control media;
7. Bonus: Google Maps (or other) walking navigation.

There are plenty of “professional” reviews on the web already covering everything and the kitchen sink, yet missing things I wanted to know. You may be just like me so I hope this review will give you a glimpse at things you want to know but can’t find in the “reviewer reviews.”

So, without further ado, let’s dig in…

Requirement #1: Looks like a watch and isn’t huge

Here’s the watch on my wrist:

I have fairly tiny wrists for a man of my height. While this Fossil watch is bigger than my previous “dumb” watch, it’s fairly compact and I do like the looks.

Theoretically, there are 3 different versions of bundled straps and the body itself is available in steel color in some regions. The one I got was the only option available on German Amazon. I had some moral objections to leather strap but it was the only available option and, I must admit, the one I liked the best. To my surprise, the “leather” band is rubber on the inside with leather on the outside. This is supposedly done for better sweat resistance or something, but makes use of genuine leather even more questionable for me. But that’s me.

It’s important to note that the watch uses standard 22mm bands and there are plenty of aftermarket options to get the exact strap look and feel you want.

Update: I got two new straps by Archer:

One “seat belt nylon” (Amazon US, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT) and one yellow silicone (Amazon US, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT). Out of the three I have now (the original leather/rubber + these two), the nylon one feels the best on my wrist but quick release pins are quite hard to access in the fabric and, more importantly, the end that goes into the ring when you put it on is quite difficult to push through. So, for now I settled on the yellow silicone as my daily band.

Prepare to spend time and money on looking for that perfect watch face

The watch comes with quite a few watch faces and any “normal” person would find a satisfactory one that suits their needs and aesthetics.

Here’s the one I rocked the first few days:

But if you are reading this, you are probably not that “normal” person ;) I’ve spent quite a few hours and about $20 looking for that perfect watch face. Luckily, the Wear OS ecosystem is fairly strong in this area and while you may end up spending time and money looking for “the one” you are quite likely to find it.

My current daily watch face is Marine Commander by Bosenko:

One thing that is important to take into account when looking for a watch face, and the one that is often hard to research from Google Play listings is how it looks in ambient mode (when the watch face is “off” with always-on display). Some watch faces looked really good in full on mode but weren’t good enough in ambient mode and that’s a bummer.

One such watch face that I really liked is O-Xyde. It was nearly perfect in default view but I didn’t like its ambient mode at all.

In my desire for my smartwatch to “look like I watch” I kind of painted myself into a corner. I must admit that from practical standpoint many “electronic” style watch faces give you more bang for a buck but I instantly dismissed them.

For a few days my default watch face was Portions from the great and free watch face collection “Looks Android Wear Watch Faces”

I ran it in a slightly “analogized” configuration:

This watch face is the most practical in my opinion and still looks good. And, yes, I do have “read a book” on my calendar ;)

In addition to your daily-driver watch face, some apps provide specialized watch faces that are great in some scenarios. For example, App in the Air is an air travel helper app and it has a nice watch face that you can wear while traveling:

It’s time for the first negative point about the Carlyle HR — the bezel on the screen is pretty massive:

Non-black background watch faces just don’t look good with this bezel

This isn’t a huge deal with black(ish) background watch faces but pretty much disqualifies all the other ones.

Additionally, display is quite hard to read in the sun and it comes down to the qualities of your ambient watch face in terms of being able to tell time in the sunny outdoors.

To wrap up this section: I’m really happy with the look of Fossil Gen 5.

Requirement #2: Battery lasts more than a day

On this requirement Fossil Gen 5 literally barely passes. Yes, in my normal use it definitely lasts full day without issues with always-on display, Bluetooth enabled, WiFi disabled, brightness on 4 (out of 5), fairly sophisticated ambient watch face, GPS enabled (not sure how this works in idle state), HR monitor enabled (you can’t turn this off, unfortunately).

Having said that, on days that I tinkered with the watch beyond normal use, it wouldn’t last the whole day and I suspect the same would be true for those doing long(ish) workouts or using it for navigation.

I went for a long walk pretending to do a “walking workout” on Google Fit. It drained 70% of the battery in 4 hours. Not sure if this is a good or bad result. Definitely not my common use case, though.

Luckily it charges really fast —put it on a charger, hop into a shower, and it’s full by the time you are out. It’s important to note though, that they had to get rid of wireless charging a few generations back precisely because it was too slow. Current system — charging rings on the back — is really fast and convenient but you will find quite a few reports of the rings peeling off on the internet. Not sure if that’s a serious generic issue or a combination of bad lemons and use cases (some people on Reddit suggested that putting a “sweaty” watch on the charger causes these issues, etc.)

Verdict on this one: works for me but doesn’t eliminate some battery anxiety.

Requirement #3: Always-on time

It’s funny how when I mentioned this requirement to the Apple Watch users just over a month ago, they wouldn’t admit that this is something they wanted (“what’s wrong with twisting your wrist!?” they said), but since Apple Watch Series 5 was announced, apparently, always-on display become a must ;)

Watch face implementation of ambient mode (what’s shown on the watch when it isn’t active) is what makes or breaks some otherwise very nice watch faces.

Additionally, some apps use this feature in clever ways. Here’s an example of the shopping list app Bring! showing the next item on the list while the watch is in ambient mode:

Verdict: a must-have feature for me that complicates watch face selection a bit.

Requirement #4: Notifications from phone

This one is a bit controversial. Do I want to be disturbed on my wrist in addition to being disturbed on the phone? Well, the answer is quite simple for me — if I can quickly glance on my wrist to triage a notification it makes life easier for me, not harder.

Having said that, I wish there was more granular control to what notifications to display on the watch. For Wear OS apps there’s some categorization, like on Android, but I’m yet to see an app making use of it. As for phone notifications, you can only select what to show on per app (off/on) basis. I would like to have some granularity like show meeting reminders from Outlook but not emails, or DMs from Twitter but not mentions, etc. Unfortunately, this can’t be done (at least natively).

A great 3rd party utility that makes “feeling” notifications much better is called Feel the Wear. You can configure different vibration patterns for different notifications and decide if it could be important without even glancing on your watch.

What I didn’t want and didn’t expect to like is the ability to react to notifications. Some apps make it quite useful though. Quick replies in Slack are pretty good and I’ve already used them a few times to react to messages without picking up my phone or PC.

Overall, I’m now able to carry the phone in my backpack — something my wife [unsuccessfully] tried to make me do for quite a while now.

Verdict: works as expected. Would be perfect with a little more granular control.

Requirement #5: Show me what media is playing on my phone

This one was the hardest to research and the one I wasn’t ready to compromise on. Most reviewers of various smartwatches focus on things like offline support in Spotify which I couldn’t care less about as I don’t plan to use the watch without a phone. Then they focus on supported apps.

What I wanted is a completely app-agnostic thing displaying whatever is displayed in Android’s media controls — something my 5 year old Bluetooth car stereo can do. Yet, figuring which watches can do that and which rely on specific apps was way more painful than anticipated.

To my surprise Wear OS comes with a built-in “Media controls” thingy which launches as you start playing something on your phone (this is configurable). It even has media controls (hence the name), and even hardware button integration, and would be perfect if not a very odd design choice — hardware buttons control prev/next but not play/pause. I can’t think of why someone would design it like this or maybe I missed something (please correct me if I did) but this just moved this thing from nearly perfect to nearly worthless (see my next requirement). Luckily, there’s an app for that! ©

Verdict: it does exactly what I want.

Requirement #6: Physical buttons to control media

The problem with “California people” dictating all the “tech fashion” is that, apparently, they don’t know what gloves are. In my neck of the woods, I have to wear them for almost half a year. It’s cute that you can do a lot of things on your touch screen but those [usually] don’t work with gloves. Additionally, don’t tell me that skipping ads in podcasts is more conveniently done by looking at your watch than just pressing a physical button without raising your hand. So, I had a pretty hard requirement of being able to do at least play/pause with a physical button but preferably next/prev/skip/rewind as well.

Fossil Gen 5 has 3 physical buttons — center one is a rotating crown that can be used for scrolling and — to my surprise — controlling volume. Long press on it activates Google Assistant. And then there are the other two…

Those can be mapped natively to launch any app but, unfortunately, that’s where the native customizability ends. Built-in Media controls use these buttons for next and previous track (or skip/rew depending on the active app). Unfortunately, those built-in Media controls don’t use a hardware button for play/pause for whatever reason. I don’t know, maybe in some configurations/watches there are more than 2 customizable buttons or if there’s no Google Assistant for some reason you can use the center one for play/pause, but that’s not how it works on my Fossil Carlyle HR.

Luckily, there’s a reasonably healthy app ecosystem and a brilliant Music Center for Wear app. The app is completely free but I just had to donate to the developer for saving the day and adding some cherries on top of that.

Now, my top button launches Music center (if it’s not active) or pauses/plays (if it is), double-tap on it does previous track/rewind, and the bottom button does next/skip. In addition to that it has active areas that let me launch Spotify and Pocket Casts on my phone. So realistically not only there’s no need to pull out the phone to control my media but I can also switch from listening to podcasts to music and back straight from the watch. Perfect!

Verdict: perfect, thanks to Music Center for Wear.

Soft requirement #7: Google Maps (or other) walking navigation

I must admit I still didn’t do proper research on this in regards to third party apps but Google Maps experience is a bit underwhelming. You can use it for walking navigation and it works in a way, but for whatever odd reason you can’t pan and zoom the map while navigating. Which makes it nearly useless, unless you believe it’s perfect (and it isn’t). You can use the map to look up where you currently are (in non-navigation mode) and that is useful.

I’ve tried to use it on a commuter train where Google Maps was able to show me the route but for whatever reason it wasn’t able to lead me on it — which would be useful to know where to get off without constantly looking where you are. Maybe that’s coming but for now I got less than I expected.

Another app I tried is Komoot which is a fairly nice hiking app but its walking navigation mode on the watch was even more underwhelming. It only shows you arrows where to turn and a distance to that turn. It was neither accurate nor show distance in my preferred units (metric) in my limited testing.

There’s also Citymapper which doesn’t cover where I am, and some other apps. But I haven’t tried them yet.

Verdict: not impressed so far — remains to be researched.

Other things and final verdict

I didn’t want to publish this up until now because the watch had two fairly annoying issues that Fossil promised to solve with a firmware update and, knock on wood, they are resolved now. If you must know those were:

1. annoying ticking of the speaker. It just “ticked” in some random fashion. It wasn’t very loud so you wouldn’t even hear it in an “active” office but when you are in a quiet room by yourself it was fairly audible. Didn’t bother me much but I can totally understand that it bothered the hell out of some people;
2. odd problems with connectivity. Every morning I found Bluetooth on my watch disabled. So, I had to re-enable it and often more than once.

I’ve had the new firmware update for only a few days now but both problems seem to be resolved.

There are also two “features” that I don’t find useful but they add to price, size, weight and energy waste. These are:

1. Making phone calls from the watch and having a speaker in general. I just find all of this a bit ridiculous but some people want it.
2. HR monitor and not being able to turn it off. Sure, measuring your heart rate could be “fun” once in a while but it definitely adds to the thickness and wastes battery. What I didn’t anticipate was that it can’t be switched off like most other things can. I presume that this is somehow related to Google Pay (which isn’t available in my country) as it locks up if you remove the watch. And the watch uses HR monitor to make sure it’s on the wrist.

I understand that Fossil didn’t make this watch exclusively for me, and to other people these feature are hard requirements. I can live with them even if I can’t appreciate them.

Thoughts on Wear OS

When I was researching smartwatch options over two months ago, Wear OS seemed to be the closest to what I want (on paper). But all the Wear OS watch reviews were complaining about the terrible performance. And overall there’s a sense of abandonment of the OS in the community. Which is not something to sneeze on, knowing Google’s reputation for killing perfectly viable things.

Fossil Gen 5 addressed the performance issues by simply increasing the RAM to 1GB (the Snapdragon Wear 3100 CPU probably didn’t hurt either, but as far as I understand the RAM upgrade is the main performance booster). I don’t have any complaints about the performance.

What I didn’t anticipate is that the Wear OS community is quite active, the store is fairly populated with useful apps, and there are reasonably frequent minor version updates to the OS itself. I’ve got upgraded from 2.8 to 2.9 in a month I had it.

As a new Wear OS user I really don’t feel like the OS is abandoned but we will have to see how I feel in a year or so.

Time to wrap this thing up with a summary of pros and cons of the Fossil Carlyle HR…

The good

• Looks good (subjective, but I think most would agree);
• Customizable (even if with some 3rd party software help) hardware buttons;
• Solid watch face and app ecosystem;
• Standard straps (I’m eyeing a few extras);
• In short: does everything I wanted it to do.

The so-so

• Battery life could be better;
• Screen could be brighter;
• Screen bezel could be smaller (don’t even think about white/light watch faces);
• Very subjective but I don’t get the leather-rubber band (neither vegan nor real leather feel on your skin).

Where to buy

In many countries you can buy the watch directly from Fossil either online or in a physical store.

For us, the rest of the world, or anyone who doesn’t want to deal with Fossil directly, Amazon could be a good option:

• Amazon US
• Amazon UK
• Amazon Germany (that’s where mine came from)
• Amazon Spain
• Amazon France
• Amazon Italy

I’ve also seen a fairly good representation of Fossil smartwatches in general electronics stores. Though the ones in my city only had Gen 4 a month after Gen 5 was released. It may vary where you live.

Questions?

This is, obviously, a very subjective review but it contains information I wasn’t able to find when I was researching smartwatches. In case you have questions about this watch or Wear OS that I can quickly lookup for you, don’t hesitate to ask them here or on Twitter.