“Is the Fossil Q Marshal a traditional watch masquerading as a smart one or the other way round?”

Smartwatches are all but dying. This is not a prophecy but a market trend we’ve been noticing. Pebble – quite arguably the pioneer of smartwatches – has been acquired by Fitbit. Fitbit has acquired Pebble just for the intellectual property and software, and the production of hardware products have already been shuttered. Heck, even warranty and customer support for the existing Pebble smartwatches have been stopped entirely. Furthermore, even Motorola has clearly stated that it won’t be releasing a new smartwatch on the Android 2.0 platform – to be launched next year. Still not enough to prove that smartwatches will see the same fate as 3D display on smartphones? Well, year-on-year IDC reports that smartwatch shipments have gone down: compared to 2015, smartwatch shipments have gone down by 32 percent in 2016.

So, where does that leave a traditional watch maker like Fossil that is just entering the market with its own line of smartwatches? Let’s find out if we can answer that question using the Fossil Q Marshal – an all touchscreen smartwatch running Android Wear.

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Design and display

Right off the bat, the Fossil Q Marshal has one thing going for itself – the watch is a looker primarily because it looks like a regular watch instead of a geeky version of what a watch should look like. Our review unit had a traditional 22mm brown leather band – which can obviously be replaced with any other watch band of your choice. Fossil itself offers watch bands in two metal options and a silicone strap as well; there is no dearth of choice. The 45mm dial is the apt size for most hands but those with diminutive wrists might find it larger than normal. Moreover, the Q Marshal is not as chunky as the Moto 360 2nd Gen (review), and is comfortable to wear on the wrist for days on end without any perceptible discomfort.
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All’s not rosy though. The flat tyre design of the display – similar to the Moto 360 2nd Gen – is still an eyesore. The black band at the bottom of the display is used to conceal sensors like the gyroscope and the compass. The 1.4-inch display itself has a resolution of 320×290, which is fairly crisp for a smartwatch. Having said that, the display quality is poor: it suffers from bad viewing angles, and muted colours. Moving on from the display, the crown on the right side of the watch does not function like an actual crown in that it doesn’t rotate. In fact, the crown houses a button, that feels mushy to press like digging through mashed potatoes with your fingers, mind you. This button can be used to wake up the screen or jump directly into the app page.

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Software and performance

The Q Marshall uses the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100 system-on-chip for power along with 512MB of RAM. The watch also provides 4GB of internal storage for your watch-exclusive apps. The 2100 chip is more power efficient and provides a slightly better battery life than most Android Wear smartwatches we’ve used in the past. You can easily squeeze in a day and a half worth of usage before running to find the charger… like we did during our review period. The watch also uses a similar mechanism like the Apple Watch 2 to charge itself. Essentially, the backplate of the Q Marshal latches on to a circular charging strip. That said, the watch takes a good two hours to charge, which is a lot in our opinion.

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Coming to the actual performance, we noticed that our screen taps failed to register on more than one occasion and there was a perceptive lag while swiping between screens. The Q Marshal runs the Android Wear 1.5 platform, which is seems to be ageing very badly especially after Google has already revealed Android Wear 2.0. You can connect the watch to both Android and iOS devices but to make full use of all the features – for example, using Play Music – pairing it to an Android phone makes most sense. The only unique addition to the Q Marshal is the Fossil Q app that allows you to use Fossil-exclusive watch faces, which look pretty good, and it also lets you customise them.

The watch doesn’t come with a dedicated heart rate monitor, which is a bummer considering its price. However, you do get a step counter that does a fairly decent job of displaying the number of steps you’ve taken for the day but it is not as accurate as a dedicated fitness band… which is what we were expecting anyway. Overall, the Q Marshal is a tad underwhelming.

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Verdict

While Fossil’s Q Marshal makes a strong case for making smartwatches look and feel like a regular, everyday watch, it really doesn’t come to the fore in final execution. The watch is plagued by one too many issues, the major one being its poor display – the most important feature for any watch let alone a smart one. Moreover, at Rs 21,995 the Q marshal feels like an expensive proposition. The only way the Q Marshal can redeem itself is if Fossil decides to adopt the Android Wear 2.0 platform next year but by then it might be a case of too little, too late.

Price: Rs 21,999

Editor’s rating: 2.5 / 5

Pros:

  • Looks like a regular watch
  • 22mm band

Cons:

  • Subpar display
  • Wonky performance
  • Android Wear 1.5 feels dated

Photos by Raj Rout