Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Quick summary: 4.7 stars, for great features and operation, at the cost of battery life (fixable) ----- I've been waiting for years to upgrade my LG Urbane. I knew that watches with the latest Qualcomm processor were coming, and was patiently holding out for them. Finally, they are here! This watch is almost perfect. It has all the features I had been hoping for - smooth operation, great screen with auto brightness, impressive waterproofing, and NFC payments. I haven't tested the waterproofing, but the rest of those items deliver as promised. I am especially enjoying the NFC payments! The auto-brightness works well, with the sunlight booster making it easy to use in bright, direct sunlight. It has a speaker, but I usually disable sound on the watch because that's part of the reason why I wear it - discreet notifications. But it's there if and when you want it. You can even take phone call audio on the watch, though I haven't tested that yet. I'm not sure if the watch microphone works with phone calls, but if the watch and phone mic are both on then things might get a little weird for the other person. It has the usual Google Fit features, and has the ability to monitor your heartbeat all day in the background. I thought that was a neat feature, until I found out what it did to my battery life. I don't think the watch could survive for 12 hours with this enabled. Fortunately, it's not a must-have feature for me, so I disabled it and just take my heart rate specifically when I want it. That brings me to the only downside of this watch. The battery has a hard time keeping up with all the cool stuff the watch can do. Fortunately, you can do something about that. If you're like me, you can go through all the settings and disable things you don't need or care about, like background heart monitoring, tilt-to-wake and "OK Google" listening. Those things have extended the battery life to a point where it can make it through a full day with about 1/4 life left when I go to bed. If you don't want to turn off features individually, there are a few battery saver modes that should work for you. I feel like they disable a little too much for daily use, but they would be great for short trips without a charger. The watch also has quick charging, so if you're running low and you have your charger handy it won't take long to get it charged up. I heard it takes an hour to go from zero to full, but I haven't tested this. Physically, the watch is noticeably lighter than my Urbane, making it more comfortable to wear. I found the black silicone version to be the most comfortable, but I purchased the stainless steel version for the looks. Bands are 22mm and easily changeable, especially if you stay with Fossil brand. I like the three side buttons a lot! The middle one performs the standard Wear OS functions, but it has a rotating crown that scrolls the screen up and down. I didn't know this, and was happily surprised when I figured it out! The other two buttons are assignable to whichever apps you want, another great feature. I assigned Google Pay to the top and Settings to the bottom. Overall, this is the watch I was waiting for, and I bought one a few days after it was released. I highly recommend it if you're in the market, as there's nothing better out there in the Android Wear space.