Product Review – Fossil 43 Smart watch is an excellent piece for sports freak

Fossil 43 Smart watch is an excellent piece for sports freak

The Fossil Sport is the latest offering from the company that is targeted at consumers who like to keep track of their fitness. It is an all-in-one watch which comes with GPS sensor, heart rate monitoring and even an altimeter. The watch comes in either 41mm or 43mm size variants. We got to review the 43 mm variant. At a first glance it is quite feather light, quite a comfortable silicon strap which is easy to wear on wrist.

We always keep up to date in terms with technology when it comes to a smart product like this one. The smartness is in terms of performance and it’s value for money. The best technology always comes at a certain price tag. The Fossil Sport 43 is well recommended for those who are sports, gym, athletes or fitness freaks. It is packed with powerful features as it is light weight and crafted in aluminium which is once worn on the wrist gives a comfort feel on the wrist is excellent and it comes with a bundle of features where in one can use it as a smartphone to take phone calls, ready and respond to messages, check heart rate and so on.

Fossil Sport 43 is available on Amazon or Flipkart for Rs 17,995.

Salient features

• Feather light & Comfort feel
• Sleek design
• Sweat free silicon strap
• Water resistant
• Dial is circular in shape with three buttons for customization. The bottom button
• On the bottom of the Fossil Sport, you’ll find a heart rate monitor, and two metal contacts for the charger. As far as we can tell, the heart rate monitor is glass, so it might get a bit cold, depending on the weather.
• Colourful display though not too bright
• On the side of the Fossil Sport, you’ll find a dial in the center, with a customizable button above and below. By default the bottom button is programmed to Google Fit, and the top to Fossil’s own proprietary software.
• Flip the watch around, and you’ll be able to take in the 1.19-inch 390 x 390 OLED display.
• The wristband, however, is a highlight. Not only is it swappable, but the Fossil Sport is compatible with pretty much any 18mm or 22mm wristband (depending on whether you opt for a 41mm or 43mm case). This is excellent, because it means you’re not locked to a proprietary connection, and you can save money on a new strap.
• After wearing the Fossil Sport for about 15-16 hours, the battery went down to 23 percent. And as soon as it hits the 15 percent mark, the battery saver mode activates, switching off all the features and allowing you to only check the time. Speaking of which, if you happen to manually turn on the battery saver mode, the only way to shut it off is to reboot the watch. If you switch on the always-on display feature and the continuous heart rate monitor, expect a battery life of just about 12-13 hours. In other words, one has to charge the watch overnight if one wants to use it regularly.
• If you want to replace the strap, just flip the Fossil Sport around, and you’ll notice two metallic switches on the end of each half of the strap. Pull these, and the strap will come right out.

Pros & Cons

Review Rating Chart

Review Observations & Views

1. Premium design that also feels practical.
2. The watch casing is made out of aluminum with a plastic finish at the bottom which makes it sturdy yet lightweight. Silicone straps come as a standard, but you can swap them out as the watch accepts standard 18 mm or 20 mm straps depending on the size you choose. There are a variety of casing colour options as well to suit your needs.
3. One can easily get a rotating crown on the right side along with two extra keys. The rotating crown can be pressed to open the app menu and can be rotated to scroll through apps, notifications, and menus.
4. The Fossil Sport 43 smart watch is powered by the Snapdragon 3100 chipset which is paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. The two extra buttons are customisable. The bottom one opens Google Fit workout by default while the one opens up the Fossil app.
5. The round 1.29-inch (43mm) OLED display comes with 390 x 390 resolution. There is a noticeable black border around the display, apart from the metal bezel, hence it does not have seamless design. However, the display is really sharp and is bright enough with great colours and contrast. The ambient light sensor particularly works well depending on the light conditions.
6. Coming to fitness tracking part. The Fossil Sport comes with built-in GPS, an altimeter and a heart rate monitor, all of which are quite a great feature. It is to be noted that the Google Fit app doesn’t have a feature to monitor any sort of climbing activity one does. The app can, however, track a number of workouts that you can manually track, which is something that I was quite impressed. From Aerobics to Zumba, there are over 80 physical activities to choose from.
7. Battery life is just above average

Coming to the most important part i.e., the battery life. One of the proclaimed benefits of the Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor was that it could switch smartly between modes to provide the most optimum battery life. For a general fitness tracker, the Fossil Sport is not bad for general exercise tracking, but there are way too many wearables out there that should fare much better if one wants to go for professional fitness tracking.

Verdict

As a general everyday smart watch, this is a great product with a bright and punchy display, and a solid build, though lacking in the battery part. Fossil Sport 43 is available on Amazon or Flipkart for Rs 17,995. It is worth buying for a regular fitness sports fanatic.