Which smartwatch to choose?

[Flamey]

I am thinking of buying a Smartwatch and was holding off till the release of Galaxy Watch 3 but its almost same as the Active 2.

 

I was almost certain to buy Galaxy Active 2, but I target on using the "Smart" features of the watch more than the Health features and I don't really like Bixby and prefer Google Assistant and Wear OS instead, so was confused by the Fossil Gen 5.

 

If you have any experience or reviews with either of these, please help me out.

Also, if there is any other sub $300 watch that i can use with my Android Phone and might be a better option please do mention that as well.

[mr cheese]

I use the Fossil Sport as my daily driver, which contains the same Qualcomm 3100 chip in it as the Gen 5. It's slow, you're really not getting much from it, and the battery dies quickly if you use it too much. That said, as a phone supplement where i can see my notifications, reply to texts by speaking into the watch, music control, and even a full-featured telegram app, with your occasional use on the fly I find it works really well especially for that $99 price tag. Gen 5? Bigger screen, better screen, bigger battery, built-in GPS, speaker and mic to pick up calls, quite an experience that will make it more worth your while. It may not be the snappiest thing in existence and it will take a second for apps to launch and things to get up and running, but IMO it';s worth it for a pretty good watch.

 

Of course I can't speak on the Galaxy Active except that their R&D on their exynos watch chips is far more invested than Qualcomm in most regards, so you might see better speeds and performance overall, and there are workarounds to get things like the Google Assistant on the Galaxy Active 2 and other such tweaks. That said, I personally have grown a liking to my Fossil Sport. It's plastic, it's cheap, it's smaller, but it works, and it does what it does fairly well if you excuse the battery life falling a little short, but over time you'll be able to gauge how much you use the battery and even change your battery settings as the fossil watches actually have configurable battery profiles to extend your watch life. Fossil Sport is $100 so it's definitely a way to dip your toe in the water then return it if it doesn't work out, and fossil is really nice about returns.

 

So Gen 5 has everything you'll need just might be a little bit laggy and lack some battery efficiency, Galaxy Wear might run better but needs workarounds and you'll be locked to the SAMUNG Experience, Fossil Sport is cheap and feature inclusive to have pretty much all you'll need if you can balance use to battery

[XGoodGuyFitz]

The versa 2 is nice. idk if it can answer calls and stuff tho

[XGoodGuyFitz]

I do have one. i lost charger tho ;-;

[Xaiux]

I have a Fossil Gen 5 and I love it. I had a Gen 3 before. The Gen 5 has a full 1GB of RAM unlike the Sport which had 768MB I think. It's snappy to me, seems to be bug-free. 

[dizmo]

Wait until more come out with the SDW4100. It's supposed to be a significant upgrade.

I wouldn't bother with an Android smartwatch until then.

[Lord Vile]

With the state of android watches just what’s the point?