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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2024
I was considering the Pixel Watch 2 as my first smartwatch, but the end of year deals on this Fossil Gen6 Wellness made trying out WearOS much more reasonable from a price perspective. One of my associates has the Pixel Watch 2 and one has the Skagen Falster Gen6 (same hardware as my Fossil Gen6 Wellness), so I have been able to make some comparisons.
I love this watch. It looks great, has very cool looking watch faces (without having to install 3rd party ones), and gets me through a full day of use and charges quickly at the end of the day. I put it on the charger while I'm winding down for the evening and it gets back up to 100% quickly. I don't wear it to sleep but I don't leave it on the charger while I am sleeping because I don't like to leave fully charged devices plugged in to their chargers for hours. In the morning I let it charge back to 100% while I am showering, and then I am good to go for the day. This is also exactly how I charge my Pixel 6a phone, so it works out well.
Although I don't use the watch for sleep tracking I do use the step counter every day, and I occasionally look at my heart rate (usually after running to catch the subway) and blood oxygen level (just for fun). It closely matches the readings I get with my pulse oximeter, so I must be more compatible with this watch's sensors than the people who don't have the same good experience as I do. Other frequently used features are Google Pay (it's great not having to take out my wallet or phone to use my credit card), the Weather app, and yes, I prefer Alexa over Google Assistant and I ask Alexa questions throughout the day. I like pressing to activate Alexa instead of using her wake word, so I don't trigger anyone else's Echo or other Alexa-enabled devices. Google Assistant is also installed on this watch if I decide to switch at any time. I very much like seeing my day's schedule in the Agenda app that pulls from my Google Calendar, and seeing all of the alerts that I would usually have to pull my phone out to read is really useful, and I have to pull my phone out of my pocket much less frequently thanks to this feature. When I do see an alert that I have a text or email that needs a response I do use my phone to reply because the tiny keyboard on the watch strains my old eyes too much.
Setup was as time consuming as it would be with a new phone. It came out of the box with WearOS 3, and after pairing it with the Fossil app on my phone it upgraded twice. Once to WearOS 3.5, and then once more for a December update that I understand fixed some problems with WearOS 3.5. I consider myself very fortunate to have purchased this watch after the above updates were made available, as it let me avoid all of the bugs that preceded them. My associate's Pixel Watch 2 also needed time-consuming updates (for WearOS 4), and the only difference in setup between this Gen6 Wellness and the Skagen Gen6 is that the Skagen came out of the box with WearOS 2.x and required a much lengthier update path to WearOS 3.0, then WearOS 3.5, and then the December update. And that Skagen Falster Gen6 is even more stylish than my Fossil so I think it was worth the extra setup effort for the person wearing that one,
Comparing to the Pixel Watch 2, I don't see any apparent benefit of its WearOS 4 over my Fossil's WearOS 3.5 yet. The battery life is supposed to be better on the Pixel Watch 2, but in practice it is very close to my Fossil's. That may be because the Pixel Watch 2 user has WhatsApp on their watch and that might be sucking battery.
I am very happy that I chose the Fossil Gen 6 over the Pixel Watch 2. There are rumors that Fossil is exiting the WearOS smartwatch business. If that is true then I will get good use from this Fossil watch for a couple of years and then upgrade to a Pixel Watch 3 or 4, or whatever the latest Google offering is at that time. If Fossil stays in the game and makes some next gen WearOS devices, then I will stick with Fossil when it comes time to upgrade.
I love this watch. It looks great, has very cool looking watch faces (without having to install 3rd party ones), and gets me through a full day of use and charges quickly at the end of the day. I put it on the charger while I'm winding down for the evening and it gets back up to 100% quickly. I don't wear it to sleep but I don't leave it on the charger while I am sleeping because I don't like to leave fully charged devices plugged in to their chargers for hours. In the morning I let it charge back to 100% while I am showering, and then I am good to go for the day. This is also exactly how I charge my Pixel 6a phone, so it works out well.
Although I don't use the watch for sleep tracking I do use the step counter every day, and I occasionally look at my heart rate (usually after running to catch the subway) and blood oxygen level (just for fun). It closely matches the readings I get with my pulse oximeter, so I must be more compatible with this watch's sensors than the people who don't have the same good experience as I do. Other frequently used features are Google Pay (it's great not having to take out my wallet or phone to use my credit card), the Weather app, and yes, I prefer Alexa over Google Assistant and I ask Alexa questions throughout the day. I like pressing to activate Alexa instead of using her wake word, so I don't trigger anyone else's Echo or other Alexa-enabled devices. Google Assistant is also installed on this watch if I decide to switch at any time. I very much like seeing my day's schedule in the Agenda app that pulls from my Google Calendar, and seeing all of the alerts that I would usually have to pull my phone out to read is really useful, and I have to pull my phone out of my pocket much less frequently thanks to this feature. When I do see an alert that I have a text or email that needs a response I do use my phone to reply because the tiny keyboard on the watch strains my old eyes too much.
Setup was as time consuming as it would be with a new phone. It came out of the box with WearOS 3, and after pairing it with the Fossil app on my phone it upgraded twice. Once to WearOS 3.5, and then once more for a December update that I understand fixed some problems with WearOS 3.5. I consider myself very fortunate to have purchased this watch after the above updates were made available, as it let me avoid all of the bugs that preceded them. My associate's Pixel Watch 2 also needed time-consuming updates (for WearOS 4), and the only difference in setup between this Gen6 Wellness and the Skagen Gen6 is that the Skagen came out of the box with WearOS 2.x and required a much lengthier update path to WearOS 3.0, then WearOS 3.5, and then the December update. And that Skagen Falster Gen6 is even more stylish than my Fossil so I think it was worth the extra setup effort for the person wearing that one,
Comparing to the Pixel Watch 2, I don't see any apparent benefit of its WearOS 4 over my Fossil's WearOS 3.5 yet. The battery life is supposed to be better on the Pixel Watch 2, but in practice it is very close to my Fossil's. That may be because the Pixel Watch 2 user has WhatsApp on their watch and that might be sucking battery.
I am very happy that I chose the Fossil Gen 6 over the Pixel Watch 2. There are rumors that Fossil is exiting the WearOS smartwatch business. If that is true then I will get good use from this Fossil watch for a couple of years and then upgrade to a Pixel Watch 3 or 4, or whatever the latest Google offering is at that time. If Fossil stays in the game and makes some next gen WearOS devices, then I will stick with Fossil when it comes time to upgrade.
