Fossil Gen 5 LTE smartwatch review: Good equipment, but not used optimally ^↺

The Gen 5 LTE can optionally signal the arrival of notifications by two short or a longer vibration, in order to differentiate them from other alarms. Wear OS displays news from social networks including the emojis, and depending on the app, you can respond to them via voice dictation, the onscreen keyboard, or a preset response.

In order to use the eSIM (embedded SIM) with a German provider, you need a Vodafone contract that allows you to activate the Vodafone OneNumber tariff. Via a MultiSIM, OneNumber uses the same phone number and the data allowance of the base contract. At the time of our test, the tariff costs 5 Euros (~$6) a month, and for a tariff with unlimited data volume, 10 Euros (~$12) in addition to the connection fees (40 Euros, ~$47). 

While the Wear OS app recognized an O2 SIM card that was inserted in the smartphone and asked us to setup the eSIM profile, the installation of which succeeded without any error messages, it was unable to create a connection afterwards. 

As with most Wear OS watches, you can alternatively make phone calls using the connected smartphone, either using a headset or the speaker and microphone. In the Gen5, this also works with an iPhone.

We compared the accuracy of the optical PPG sensor under load while jogging and during a short HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) session with the measurements by a chest belt heart rate sensor from Polar.

In between the warm up and cool down during the HIIT, there were three cycles of 1 minute rope jumping separated by 2 minutes of rest, where the heart rate was able to quiet down again. The recording was relatively inaccurate in terms of the heart rate. We can see that the sensor was unable to follow the dynamic developments in the first two cycles and only approaches the level recorded by the Polar heart rate sensor in the third cycle.

For the running training, we installed Strava on the Fossil watch, because the Strava web portal displays a detailed chart of the heart rate. In the Strava protocol, the recording of the heart rate only started after 25 seconds, but this might be due to the communication between Strava and Fossil. From the second minute up to about minute 20, the PPG sensor (PPG stands for Photoplethysmography) recorded almost the same development as the chest belt, which recorded the electric activity of the heart. In the last third, there were some isolated deviations, but even their top values remained smaller than 10 bpm.

Thanks to the integrated GPS and barometric sensor, the sports tracker not only records the route, but also the elevation profile. The recorded route, often also going slightly back and forth, is not always identical with the actual path, regardless of whether the run is recorded using Strava, Google Fit Training, or the Wellness app. However, we did not see any zig zagging in the Fossil watch like we saw in our test of the Huawei Watch 3 Pro. At between 30 and slightly more than 100 meters (~98 - 328 ft), the difference between the determined and actual distance is small and within a tolerable range.

The runtime of the 310-mAh battery can be influenced by four different battery modes. In "Daily" mode, almost all the capabilities of the smartwatch are activated - so Bluetooth, WLAN, GPS, mobile communication, the always-on display, and gesture activation, as well as tracking of steps and the heart rate are turned on. Using this mode, the smartwatch runs for barely 24 hours and should be recharged at night.  

If you forget to or don't recharge it, the smartwatch will continue to display the time for one or more days, depending on the remaining capacity, in the "Time Only" mode. From this mode, you will only be able to switch back to other modes by restarting the watch, while you can switch between all the other modes while the watch is running. 

The "Expanded" mode represents a compromise between the "Daily" mode and the pure time display. This mode deactivates the always-on display, the recording of steps and the heart rate, and also the network connections. To use Google Assistant, for example, you first have either establish a network connection or temporarily switch to "Daily" mode.  

In a fourth, "Individual" mode, you can decide yourself about the always-on display, its activation via gesture or touching the screen, and which connections you want to keep active constantly (mobile communication, WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS). For Bluetooth, you can create a time schedule in the Individual as well as in the Expanded mode. 

Corresponding to which features you activated, there is a multitude of scenarios for the Individual mode. In our test, the smartwatch ran for almost 3 days with the always-on display, WLAN, the GPS (during the workout), and Bluetooth (during the day, following a schedule) remaining turned on, but mobile communications, NFC, and gesture control being turned off. The Gen 5 LTE continues to records steps and the heart rate in the Individual mode, as long as you don't deactivate them in the settings for the health functions.

In our test, the Gen 5 LTE took 1 hour and 5 minutes for a full recharge. Fossil implemented the contact area on the bottom of the watch in the form of two rings, so that you don't have to position the watch in a specific way when you place it into the charging adapter.