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Fossil refines its smartwatch line, adds heart rate and GPS tracking, NFC
June 25, 2025
The third-generationFossil smartwatchlooked great and functioned well withGoogle’s Wear OSapps and watch faces. However, owning a Fossil smartwatch meant that you also had toown a fitness tracker, as the third-generation Fossil watches lacked two things that have become integral to fitness: heart rate monitoring and a GPS tracker.
Fossil has answered your prayers with thefourth-generation Fossil smartwatch, which not only includes heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking but also throws in an NFC chip for contactless payments and the ability to load music right onto the watch.
At a retail price of between $255 and $275, this might be the best Wear OS watch on the market.
Fossil unveiled the two new entries into its smartwatch lineup today: theFossil Q Venture HR and the Fossil Q Explorist HR. Both are available to pre-order right nowat Fossil’s website. The versions with metal bands are $275 and the ones with non-metal bands are $255 — the same prices as the third-generation watches.
As previously mentioned, the watch can monitor yourheart rate. However, there is one caveat: you have to manually turn heart rate monitoring on. Unlike a fitness band that monitors your heart rate throughout the day, the Fossil watches are designed to only monitor your heart rate when you tell it to.
TheGPStracking is much more similar to that of a fitness band, in that it will track your runs or walks when you turn the feature on. As with any wearable device, GPS tracking gobbles up battery life, so it’s better to leave it off if you’re not using it.
The NFC chip and the ability to download music directly to the watch are also new to this generation. Previously, there was no way to make contactless payments with the third-generation watches, and while you could use the watch to control music playing on your phone, you couldn’t save music direct to the watch’s ROM. Now you can do both.
Here are the specs for the newest entries in the Fossil line:
According to Fossil, the fourth-generation smartwatches will ship on Aug 02, 2025. Click the button below to pre-order yours now.
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