Fossil Group recently launched the Fossil Hybrid HR smartwatch in India. While the company already sells its regular smartwatches in the country, the Hybrid HR not only allowed them to hit a lower price tag but also attract a different type of a consumer base. But the question that remains here is that did the company manage to hit the right spot? Let’s find out in our full review.
Fossil Hybrid HR Review
Fossil Hybrid HR does not like to shout that it is a smartwatch or a hybrid watch. It looks very subtle and on a first look, most people would not be able to guess that it has some smart features going under the hood. The watch uses regular dials to show the time and for the smart features, it takes advantage of the e-paper screen similar to what you must have seen on Amazon’s Kindle e-Book readers.
The major advantage of having such a display is the amount of battery life the watch is able to stretch on a single charge. While Fossil promises a battery life of up to 2 weeks, with the excessive amount of notifications I receive on a daily basis, I was not able to go as far. During my usage, the watch usually lasted between 8 to 10 days on a single charge, which is still impressive.
While the battery life must have impressed you, the major drawback of such display is the visibility in low light situations. Since an e-paper display does not have a backlight, it depends on an external lighting source. There is a light that one can trigger by double-tapping on the glass. However, the illumination reminds one of the Timex Indiglo as it does not light up the display uniformly.
Fossil Hybrid HR
As far as the functions are concerned, the Fossil Hybrid HR does all the basic things right including step counting, heart rate monitoring and delivering notifications. However, as this is not a proper smartwatch, one would not be able to interact with the notifications.
Should you buy the Fossil Hybrid HR?
The app brings more functionalities to the hybrid watch.
As mentioned above, the watch focuses on a very different type of consumers. And if you are a part of that audience, then yes you can go ahead and buy the Hybrid HR. This would make you a part of an audience that typically prefers traditional watches but also like the functionalities of a smartwatch.
However, if you are not a part of the above mentioned pool, and instead, like smartwatches that provide you with a higher level of features then you should lean on towards buying a proper smartwatch. In this segment, you can get a Samsung Galaxy Watch Active or the Huawei Watch GT 2
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