Fossil was one of the earliest early smart watch brands to bring style to the device platform. The smart apps in Fossil’s earliest lineups focused on activity tracking, not wellness. Fossil announced Gen 6 smart watches with new blood oxygen and heart rate sensors and 1.28-inch OLED touchscreens in 2021. This year at CES 2023, Fossil introduced the Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid smart watches with much longer battery life, faster charging, and lower prices than the updated Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition touchscreen models.
Instead of an OLED touchscreen, the Hybrid version of the Gen 6 Wellness Edition uses a 1.1-inch E-ink display. You give up some resolution with the reflective display but save a lot of power. The Hybrid display has 218 pixels per inch (ppi) for an overall 240 x 240 resolution, That compares to the touchscreen model’s 326 ppi and 416 x 416 resolution. So you don’t have the higher res, brighter OLED watch display, but for that trade-off you gain battery life per charge up to two weeks compared to the claimed 24+ hours with the OLED touchscreen model. The Hybrid battery charges to 80% capacity in 60 minutes, twice the time of the OLED watch’s 30 minutes to 80% charge. however, those charging times are for a single charge, which will be a daily task with the OLED model but weekly or biweekly with the Hybrid. Fossil’s Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid also loses the touchscreen watch’s Google Pay support and the ability to make and take phone calls. Both models work with iOS and Android smartphones and support Amazon Alexa.
If increased battery life isn’t enough of a win to give up the higher resolution, merchant purchase, and call features, the kicker is the Hybrid’s lower price. Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition smart watches cost $299 with a standard width 20 mm silicon strap, The Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition Hybrid watches sell for $229, an $70 savings. The fitness and wellness features on the two watch models are the same, so you’ll have to decide between display visibility with phone call support and much longer battery life, a lesser display, and a lower price.
