You know how I can tell smartwatches have officially hit the mainstream? I showed a coworker the Fossil Q Grant, and she attempted to tap the glass, thinking it was a touchscreen along the lines of the Android Wear powered smartwatches that Fossil has been marketing.
I then had to explain the Q Grant wasn’t a smartwatch, so much as a “smart” watch. It’s easy to dismiss a hybrid like the Q Grant as being trapped between two world-but it admirably shows that smarts mean more than just a touchscreen and apps!
The Q Grant is called a “hybrid” smartwatch because it combines an analog watch with step tracking, alarms, and silent notifications. The clock hands tell the time, and a smaller dial at the bottom shows your progress towards your step goal for the day. However, when a notification arrives, the hands swing to a selected number on the clock face, and the small dial helpfully points to the “ALERT” label.
Likewise, the small dial swings to “alarm” when it’s time to wake up, “date” if you need to know what day you’re in, and “Time 2” if you’ve programmed one of the side buttons to show a different time zone. There’s a significant amount of information that the Q Grant manages to convey with just swinging watch hands, but it is really quite simple to set up and use.
L to R, Fossil Q Grant, Timex Expedition, Original Grain The Barrel
Once you’ve paired the watch with the Fossil Q app, you can begin customizing all sorts of features. You can assign a contact or supported app to any of the 12 spots on the clock face, and all three side buttons can be assigned actions. So for example, I have the Q set so that when a Slack message from Gear Diary pops up, the watch buzzes and points to the 2. If I get a text message from a friend, it points to 7. If I am getting a call or text from specific people, they have their own numbers assigned.
You can set it up however you wish, but it’s a handy way to figure out “was that buzz in my pocket important?” without whipping out your phone. It won’t tell you content, but it lets you know who or what is demanding your attention and allows you to use the watch as a kind of gatekeeper.
First, a notification has to be worthwhile enough to trigger one of the watch actions, and from there you can decide if that’s a “grab phone at once” or “deal with it when you have a second” kind of notification. It helps to give you a pause before reaching for your phone, and it makes me question whether I need to respond at once.
Here’s a good example: yesterday I took my son to the park. Gear Diary’s Slack chat was buzzing away, and my phone was blowing up. But I knew from a quick glance at my watch that it was just Slack, and not a text or an emergency message, and I didn’t need to take my phone out to see it.
The side buttons also do a lot of heavy lifting. Fossil offers some pre-set combinations, plus you can create your own. You can program the buttons to control music, ring your phone, take a photo, show a second time zone, track a goal, your commute time, the date, etc.
I have mine set to my commute time, a stopwatch, and the date. When I hit the commute time button, the hands swing around and tell me how long it will take me to get home from where I am. The stopwatch uses the clock hands to sweep around counting around the face, and while I wouldn’t necessarily use it in place of a full-fledged stopwatch, it’s very handy for quick intervals. The minute hand sweeps around, and the hour hand moves every minute, so you can track more than 60 seconds at a time.
Pressing the date button swings both hands to the day of the month (so you still need to know what month you’re in on your own!) Fossil lets you create your own presets, so if you think you’ll need one combo for gym time and another for your workday, it’s easy to go into the app and swap them around quickly. I found they all worked well except for goal tracking-it seemed to not always pick up me pressing the button to log goal progress.
In addition to notifications, the Q Grant measures how active (or inactive) you are, as well as your sleep. It seems to be reasonably accurate, and the measurements I am getting for sleep and steps are in-line with the results I’ve seen in other activity trackers. It is not waterproof, so you cannot swim or do water sports with it, but I did wear it to the gym and on my weekend run. I was very concerned that the chain-link band would be uncomfortable or interfere, but it didn’t bother me in the least. As an everyday fitness tracker, it’s a lot more stylish than a Fitbit!
In terms of style, the Q Grant is very much a Fossil watch. It feels very solid, but not too heavy, it is extremely well made, and it looks like a nice, middle of the pack watch. It’s equally inoffensive with a business suit as it is with jeans and a t-shirt, and if I hadn’t told people it was a hybrid smartwatch, I doubt anyone would have noticed it. That just adds to the appeal of the notifications if discretion is important to you. The Q Grant came with a stainless steel two-tone link band, and it has quick-release watch pins, so you can swap it for a silicone band while running and the link band while at work, for example.
Basically, the Q Grant is an all-around chameleon in terms of style; it can be dressed up or down, it’s not overly flashy, but it looks good and functions well as a watch. The Q series has a number of styles and prices, starting at $95, so it fits any budget or wardrobe (as reviewed, the Q Grant in smoke/steel is $175). Verizon Wireless is selling the Q Grant for $174.99, so if you’re a Verizon customer be sure to check it out here. [Note: Verizon Wireless kindly provided us with the Q Grant for this review.]
So that’s all the good stuff. I love the watch, and I think Fossil has done a phenomenal job making a smarter watch — it’s not really a smartwatch, but it’s not really a dumb watch, and it straddles both worlds without tipping too far in either direction. All that is great.
The drawback is that Fossil’s app is dreadful. It opens with a landing page that is 1/3 ads for other Fossil products and Fossil social media, and you have to swipe past two sections that show your button presets and clock face notifications to see your daily steps. These should be reversed, so the shifting carousel of screens shows your steps first since this is the main data that’s changing!
The other options along the bottom of the app are fine-they allow you to drill down into the various ways you can customize your notifications and buttons, and the final screen gives you the chance to better analyze your sleep/activity data. Clicking on the graphic of the watch in the upper right gives you a status update on the watch battery, as well as the option to recalibrate it, adjust vibration strength, and set the vibrating alarm. The alarm setting is buried pretty far in here, and in my view, it too should be somewhere on the landing page for easy access.
The part that really perplexes me is that Fossil owns Misfit, and the Misfit app is much nicer, cleaner, and has integration with outside apps like MyFitnessPal, while the Fossil app is cluttered, confusing, and doesn’t play well with any other apps. It seems like a missed opportunity, and the app is a weak link in an otherwise excellent user experience.
Luckily, once you’ve set the watch up the way you like it, you really don’t need to fiddle with the app beyond checking out your sleep and activity stats. Instead, you can spend LESS time on your phone and more time moving, working, socializing and enjoying life, secure in the knowledge that you won’t miss out on anything because your Q Grant will politely buzz you when you’re needed.
Source: Manufacturer provided review sample
What I Liked: Stylish; comfortable to wear during workouts; Can be dressed up or down; Discreet for a smartwatch; Lots of notification and feature customization; Long battery life; Fitness and sleep tracking is effortless; Silent alarm is great for waking up.
What Needs Improvement: App is cluttered and confusing; Constant fossil ads on the landing page of the app
