If you love Fossil's traditional timepieces, you'll immediately cling to the Q Founder. Looking underneath the hood, this smartwatch differentiates itself with a few spec boosts to the RAM and chipset, but the changes aren't noticeable during our early testing.
For
Handsome design
Compatible with iOS and Android
Additional RAM
Against
Quite large and heavy
Flat tire display
Fossil is no stranger to wrists, but creating a smartwatch is a venture that this household company is only now getting its start on. The Fossil Q Founder is its first Android Wear device, with many more to come later in the year.
The Q Founder continues the trend occurring within Google's range of smartwatches of looking more like traditional watches and less like a piece of wrist-based technology.
For $295 (£279, about AU$382) Fossil's debut rocks with the best that Android Wear has to offer in regards to its looks. The Huawei Watch, Moto 360 and LG Watch Urbane are among the suit-friendly ranks and the Q Founder fits right in.
But in terms of other important factors, like value, compatibility and battery life, is this the best Android Wear smartwatch that money can buy? I'm currently testing Fossil's smartwatch debut for a full review, but it's a bit of a mixed bag. There's a lot of good, but there seems to be more that's not-so-good.
Design
Fossil's Q Founder makes a grand first impression with its stylish stainless steel casing, effortlessly switching between a brushed and polished texture. It's immediately evident to me that Fossil knocked this out of the park - as long as this is your favored style of wrist wear.
The lugs extending out from the circular build bring a lower profile, much like the latest Moto 360. Compared to the bulkier LG Watch Urbane, Fossil's smart wearable is more trim and juts out less on the wrist.
Its design gives you the sense that the Q Founder is smaller than it really is, which is saying a lot because this watch is quite large. At 13mm, it's thicker than the rest of its Android Wear competitors, only just a touch more than the Tag Heuer Connected, which sits at 12.8mm thick.
This smartwatch weighs about 72 grams, which is the more than any other that I've worn so far. To put things into perspective, the 38mm Apple Watch weighs 40 grams, the Huawei Watch comes in at 60 grams. It seems like a small difference, but you might think otherwise when it's on your wrist.
That said, the 1.5-inch screen on the Fossil Q Founder is vibrant and gets rather bright, though most Android Wear users will quickly get used to keeping the brightness as low as possible due to middling battery performance across the board.
In terms of readability, Fossil's watch fares well with 240ppi density. It's tough to make a fair comparison on such a small screen, but the Huawei Watch, at 286ppi and a resolution of 400 x 400, looks only a smidge clearer than the Q Founder.
This device features the flat tire look made famous (or infamous, depending on your feelings) by the Moto 360. If you're unaware, there's a flat bit of the screen where the ambient light sensor is located. I prefer the seamless, circular display of the Huawei Watch and others and that's a feeling matched by most smartwatch fans.
Around its back, you'll find a smooth, plastic back. It doesn't have the heart rate sensor that you might be expecting from a modern smartwatch. But on the plus side, it doesn't have fidgety wireless charging pins. Instead, it conducts the charge through the plastic back. The included charging dock is an awkward pairing with a watch this nice looking. It's plastic all over and, compared to the more elegant wireless charging solution that you'll find with the Moto 360, this will disappoint.
The Fossil Q Founder works with any and all 22mm bands. If you don't have the tools to swap out the band pins yourself, you could opt for the Android Wear Mode bands, which come with the pin tool, some extra pins, and of course, a slick band that features a simple switch to install it in just a few seconds.
Performance
To have a fruitful Android Wear smartwatch experience, the device needs to offer flawless connectivity, zippy speed and long battery life. And based on specs alone, Fossil's debut looks to surpass some of the competition.
It doubles the RAM standard to 1GB over the 512MB that we've seen in every other model to date. And, perhaps it's because Snapdragon is prepping its efficient, next-gen Snapdragon Wear 2100 chipset, Fossil opted instead for an Intel-made system on chip (SoC) of an unspecified speed and core count.
On paper, the Q Founder should outperform every other Android Wear smartwatch on the market. And while I'm still in progress on more in-depth testing for the full review, the specs don't appear to make much of a difference when jumping from task to task.
I've been wearing Fossil's smartwatch debut for a few days and so far, haven't encountered a moment when that extra 512MB of RAM came in handy.
The Q Founder packs in a 400mAh battery that promises all-day battery life. It's up there in terms of battery capacity when ranked against the competitors and I'm going to reserve in-depth battery testing details for the full review. That said, like the additional RAM, the bigger battery here doesn't seem to do it any favors.
I'm primarily using the Fossil Q Founder with a Nexus 5X, but as it's compatible with iOS as well, I'll be giving it a trial run on my other phone, the iPhone 5S.
Early verdict
If Fossil's Q Founder is to be judged only by its looks, it'd be fair to say that it's a winning debut. But as there are many more factors that go into play with a smartwatch, we need a bit more time with it to determine if it deserves a spot on our list of best smartwatches.
This Android Wear device one-ups the competition with a hearty increase of RAM and a large enough battery to, hopefully, bring about day-long battery life. But whether that actually makes a difference that will impact your experience, it's hard to say just yet. Stay tuned for the final review in the coming weeks.
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire