Fossil Q Marshal in the Review: great smartwatch with a small flaw

Fossil is currently showing impressively that the watch business of the future will not be handed over to Samsung, FitBit & Co. without a fight. The watch manufacturer first presented four new smartwatches with Android Wear at the IFA in Berlin – and plans to have more than 100 wearables in its range across eight different brands by the end of the year. This Review report reveals how the Fossil Q Marshal performs in practice.

At the end of this Review report you will find a ehealth about the fossil Marshal Q.

design

The Q Marshal by Fossil looks and feels like a real watch. The 45-millimeter stainless steel case makes a high-quality impression and hugs the wrist. In comparison to some of the competitors, you simply notice that the Q Marshal comes from a company that has been building watches for over 30 years. For comparison: The Garmin Vivoactive HR (Review report), which is significantly more geared towards fitness functions, simply looks … well, very "technical". But not necessarily in a positive sense.

High-quality, this also applies to the leather bracelet supplied with our model, which still looks like new even after two weeks – and which will definitely have a significantly longer lifespan than the leather bracelet from the Fitbit Alta (Review report), which was noticeably stained after the same Review period. Incidentally, the leather bracelet can be replaced by any other 22 millimeter bracelet – even if this results in a somewhat idiosyncratic color combination with this link bracelet.

By the way, the Q Marshal is available in a whole range of different designs. In addition to metallic blue with a brown leather strap, Fossil also offers the watch in black with a silicone strap – these two versions each cost 299 euros. Finally, for a surcharge of 20 euros, there is a link bracelet in the two color variants smoke gray and stainless steel. Interestingly, the silver version with link bracelet is currently the cheapest. Thanks to IP67 certification, the Smartwatch is dustproof in all versions and offers protection against temporary immersion to a depth of one meter for a maximum of 30 minutes.

The Q Marshal also has a sister named Q Wander, which is the same size, but has a slightly more feminine design. There are also four different versions with prices between 299 and 319 euros. Incidentally, the two Michael Kors models also come from the Fossil Group Bradshaw and Dylanwhich, like the Q Wander, are technically identical to the Q Marshal and only differ in terms of design.

Update: In the meantime, the watches are available from around 230 euros. Current prices can be found at the end of this Review report.

Furnishing

Unlike its analogue counterparts, the Q Marshal has a display on the front. The 1.4-inch display has a resolution of 320 × 290 pixels. The different resolution in the x- and y-axis already suggests: Like the Q Founder, the Marshal also has a “flat tire”. This is hardly noticeable on this watch face, but classic dials are always cut off in the lower area. This is particularly noticeable with bright watch faces, and I think that's a shame. Incidentally, the display is always on – and that, in turn, is very suitable for everyday use.

With a charge of the 360 ​​mAh battery, I always got through the day and through the night. In everyday life, however, it boils down to having to hang the watch on the charger every day. As with the first Fossil smartwatch, charging works inductively. However, the manufacturer has now replaced the Founder's thick charging cushion with this small cable, which is magnetically attached to the back of the Marshal.

Incidentally, the drive takes care of Qualcomm's wearables SoC called Snapdragon 2100 Wear, which is also in the Zenwatch 3 from Asus (Review report). The processor has four ARM Cortex-A7 cores and an Adreno-304 GPU. I did not observe any stutters or similar performance problems during the Review period.

Communication with the outside world takes place via Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy and via WLAN. The smartwatch establishes the connection to the mobile phone via the former, and it can also connect to the Internet via WLAN when the smartphone is just out of range. It is also possible to connect Bluetooth headsets to the Q Marshal and then listen to music transferred to the watch using Google Play Music. For this purpose, 4 GB of memory are on board.

By the way, the Q Marshal also has a speaker and a microphone on board. While the microphone is used to accept voice commands, the loudspeaker can also be used to set a separate ring tone for incoming calls, for example for the clock.

Android Wear

The Fossil Q Marshal is shipped with Android Wear version 1.5. This gives you the usual functionality of Google's wearable operating system. An update to 2.0 is announced.

If you swipe down from the homescreen, the cards known from Google Now are displayed. These can include, for example, weather information, share prices or sports results, but also reminders, details about packages that have been sent, hotel and restaurant reservations or upcoming flights, including the flight tickets.

A swipe from right to left brings the app drawer to the display, which in addition to the apps installed on the smartwatch also includes a link in the settings. To the right of this is the call history from the smartphone, and again to the right is Google's voice assistant. The latter can also be called up by tapping the health home button and then saying "Ok, Google".

For example, the voice assistant allows you to start calls directly via the clock or send SMS and WhatsApp messages, create reminders, timers and alarm clocks, write notes or start navigation. Various apps expand this list of commands – for example, I can start a workout on my watch in my Under Armor app. Incidentally, there is no way to track sleep. Admittedly, that would probably make little sense – after all, the watch is more likely to spend its nights with the charger.

Last but not least, there is also the Android Wear app on the smartphone to configure the watch. So there are a few rudimentary settings and the possibility to adjust the watch faces and install apps on the watch. Unfortunately, we currently have no details about an update to Android Wear 2.0. As soon as something changes here, we will update the article on TechStage.com accordingly.

Conclusion

With its Android Wear watches, Fossil shows impressively that even classic watch manufacturers can make the leap into the smartwatch business. If you are not deterred by the flat tire of the display, you will get a successful watch with all the amenities that Google's Android Wear operating system brings.

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