In the past 6 months, it has been pretty much quiet for Android Wear. LG dropped their smartwatches w/ Google last year but other than that, it's been quiet for anything new. Interesting now that the audience of smartwatches shifted from techies to the fashion side of things.
Fossil is pretty much the last place to grab decently-priced & good-looking Android-powered smartwatch. Our subject in this discussion is the 3rd-generation Fossil Q Explorist smartwatch. While Fossil has been making smartwatches for some time now, this is the 1st one we've actually reviewed. Let's see how Fossil did w/ this one.
Fossil sent me the one w/ the metal band which is usually too big for my wrists so I had to grab a band on Amazon to actually wear it. I know I could've taken some links out but I prefer a leather band over metal. It performs pretty well. No lags or stutters when trying to access apps/screens or when receiving notifications.
You got a stainless steel casing, high-resolution AMOLED display, 22mm strap, running Android Wear 2.0, IP67 water-resistant body, 4GB of storage, and powered by Snapdragon Wear 2100 CPU. No LTE or heart-rate monitor but you do have an activity/step counter on board to monitor your health somewhat. It does everything you can do w/ AW 2.0 so that means access to Google Assistant, notifications, on-watch apps, and more.
The only downside to this watch is the battery life. Fossil suggests a 24-hour battery life based on usage. Within several use cases, I got nowhere near that number. From medium to heavy, I got only 8-10 hours. Light usage got me a little over 12 hours. Not terrible but a bit misleading.
