Fossil Hybrid Smartwatch HR Collider

Fossil Hybrid Smartwatch HR

$195.00

7.9

Value/Pricing

7.0/10

Functionality

9.5/10

Usefulness

10.0/10

Durability/Quality

5.0/10

Pros

• Battery life is top notch due to the e-ink/e-paper display
• Aside from the malfunctioning hour hand, the build quality is excellent, I've been very rough with it
• It looks great, understated like a real watch
• App is surprisingly good with nice integrations
• Compatibility with other Fossil bands is a nice bonus

Cons

• Pretty expensive, especially compared to Fitbit
• I had some technical glitches early on. They seem to be fixed now.
• Can't interact with notifications (not important to me, but may be for others)
• After six months, the hour hand mostly stopped moving. It's been sent for warranty repair. I'll update this post again if anything new happens.

Go Check it Out

This is not a perfect smartwatch, but it fits my needs/wants better than any other on the market right now. Looking at the big picture, it’s got everything I want in a smartwatch – great battery life (about three weeks on a charge), basic notifications, and tracking (sleep, HR, steps, activities). It also looks really good. I’m very happy with it overall. But, I did have some issues early on.

The battery life is pretty much as advertised, depending on how consistently I wear it, I’ll get somewhere around 20ish days on a charge. That to me is what makes it possible for this to be a smartwatch I continue to use, as I’m really not interested in keeping another device charged every day.

The watch looks great. e-ink/e-paper (whatever it’s called) blends in perfectly with the watch’s aesthetic and it just looks like a real watch. I also like HR Collider’s interface. It’s easy to navigate and the notifications look very clear. It doesn’t bother me at that it doesn’t have a touch screen.

The Fossil app is much better than I expected, it’s very clean with tons of easy-to-access data. I came from a Fitbit previously and I prefer this interface for how clean it is. Information is easy to access and it provides a pretty rich array of insight into what the watch tracks. The integration with Google Fit is pretty tight, which I did want from the outset…but interestingly the Fossil app is actually better than Google’s.

Despite reading that it doesn’t have connected GPS, I do see mapped exercises in Google Fit after a run. I guess this is an Android feature for mapping runs, but honestly I’m really not sure how it works. I just know I can track runs on the watch (while my phone is also with me) and I see a map when I’m done. No built in GPS though.

There are a couple of issues I experienced early in owning the HR Collider though. In one instance a few weeks after buying, I lost one entire day of tracking (HR, steps, exercise, sleep). I opened a ticket with Fossil, but they couldn’t figure it out. I also had issues with the watch disconnecting from the app several times a week. I only experienced the data loss issue once and it hasn’t disconnected in at least six months, so maybe these issues are fixed.

June 2020 Update: After about 6 months of daily (or at least nightly) use, the hour hand of the watch appears to have failed. Re-calibrating and resetting the watch doesn’t help; the hour hand is stuck at 2:00 (and occasionally moves to 11:00 for some reason). The minute hand does appear to still keep time. I opened a ticket with Fossil and they’re advising me to send it in for what I hope is a free warranty repair. It appears to be free, but they wouldn’t guarantee that. So, not a great sign compared to how well my past Fitbit devices have held up. The review score has been updated to reflect this durability concern.

Manufacturer Description:

• Hybrid smartwatch hr (heart rate) works with iPhone and Android phones. The product has 16 MB storage
• Enjoy 2+ weeks of Battery life on a single charge
• Heart rate, activity and sleep tracking with in-depth wellness stats
• This is one smart watch – Receive and view smartphone notifications and alerts, see calendar and weather updates, control your music and more
• A classic timepiece designed with integrated mechanical hands and an always-on read-out display showing curated information at a glance; case size: 42mm; Band size: 22mm; interchangeable with all Fossil 22mm bands; water resistant to 165ft (50m); imported