Emporio Armani Men's Touchscreen Connected Smartwatch

Product Information

Notifications are still a lengthy list without much categorization, but it’s better than it used to be in Android Wear 1.0. The Google Play Store is accessible in version 2.0, and there’s a reasonable amount of apps available for your smartwatch. It’s easy to use on the watch so it you are looking for an app, it’s not a nightmare, but it’s still just a long list of mediocre apps to scroll through. Android Wear (and wearables in general) work best with notifications, calendar access, navigation, and increasingly, music. Load music onto the watch, connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and you’ve got a convenient music player that’s ideal for workouts. The Google Play Music app is well designed, with large, easy-to-tap buttons. I had little issue with this small detail but you might want to swap the pins out for standard spring bars to remove this element if it bugs you. Emporio Armani Connected – Screen

As for longevity, Armani claims that the Connected 2018 can dole out one to two days of battery life on a single charge. Based on my experiences I’d undoubtedly sway towards the former as far as this claim is concerned, with the watch consistently ending most days at around 20 to 30 percent charge. I’ve enjoyed wearing the Armani Connected, not least because it’s one of the most stylish and attractive smartwatches I’ve ever had the pleasure of wearing. Now, in terms of heart rate, we found the Emporio to be more on the money - again, something that can't be said for all the fashion-first smartwatches in Fossil Group's family. After a number of test runs against the Fitbit Versa, it always seemed to indicate that our average bpm was within a few beats of the other watch, though the two did vary sometimes over the max heart rate figure. One run, for example, the Connected sat a considerable distance off the Versa's reading during separate ramps up in intensity.

Emporio Armani Connected: Design

Watch faces are the most obvious inclusions, with some 23 own-brand options to choose from. Many offer an impressive amount of customisation over everything from dial style and colour to which complications are displayed (things like step count, date, weather, etc). There’s also the fact that the surprisingly robust fitness chops seem at odds with the design and intended wear cases for this smartwatch – I’d more readily sport it out to a nice dinner, rather than choose it as my marathon partner. Emporio Armani Connected – Performance & Battery life Measuring in at 43mm x 49mm x 12mm, gone is the heft of the 46mm original, and the Connected feels much better off for it. It no longer feels like a dominating figure on the wrist, meaning even more people will be able to find comfort wearing it, and it can still, crucially, blur the lines between operating as a stylish timepiece and a touchscreen smartwatch. The 2018 edition of the Emporio Armani Connected is an attractive wearable that complements the brand’s existing lineup of timepieces. It’s stylings grant it some of the nicest aesthetics of any smartwatch on the market right now and the Armani brand also holds an appeal all its own. If the design is somewhat ordinary, then the technology inside will give you deja-vu. The aging Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor is inside with 4GB of internal storage space, while the 1.2-inch OLED screen has a 390 x 390 pixel resolution.

This is an attractive design that, while perhaps slightly bulky for some smaller wrists, can easily blend into formal wear, as well as the rest of your wardrobe. This is the most important aspect of the watch and Emporio Armani nails it — simple but still extremely stylish. For those who want to make use of that always-on screen with mid-level use, you may even struggle to make it through a working day, as we found a couple of times.Like the rest of this year's Fossil Group watches, there's no flat tyre here, just a full AMOLED touchscreen offering a display which is up there with the best — and certainly an improvement on the Fossil smartwatches we saw in 2016. Interestingly, though, Armani has chosen not to release the actual specs regarding its screen. As you'll have gathered, the features cupboard of the EA Connected is a little bare. However, while there are a few omissions, what it does bring to the table it manages to pull off convincingly. Emporio Armani and Fossil have shied away from releasing all the tech spec but we found the Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100 processor to provide a zippy experience around the Connected. Delay when opening apps is minimal and menus almost never suffer from lag.

Of course, the Armani Exchange’s classic watch design helps here. Instead of taking the Apple approach of launching a smartwatch which looks like a cross between a timepiece and a gadget, the Connected looks exactly like a normal watch - albeit one with a touchscreen. The company offers a two-year warranty, where it will replace your unit if there are any manufacturing defects. Our Take In our mind, if you want a decent look at your heart metrics throughout the day and during exercise, this should suffice. However, the accuracy you receive is likely very dependent on getting the right fit on that stainless steel band - so take note. However, in the same way you’re unlikely to buy a pair of shoes without trying them on at some point, we’d say that the size of the EA Connected Watch may mean it doesn’t suit everyone. Try it on if you can, and if you love the way it looks, you’re going to be satisfied with the way it works.

Emporio Armani Connected: Battery life

Despite adding a wealth of new hardware to its fourth-generation smartwatches, Fossil wasn’t yet prepared to dress any of them with the recently released Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100. As such, the Connected is just one of a number of wearables still powered by the now ageing Snapdragon Wear 2100, accompanied by 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage.

Both the features and operating system have been given big overhauls from Emporio's first smartwatch, and it makes the experience a lot fuller; this Connected model is much more than a pretty face. Unlike some watches, I had zero issues with the Connected’s automatic brightness adjustment and overall brightness. The display can be a touch on the reflective side in select environments but I never encountered any real issues when trying to see what was on-screen. If you want to force the display to remain at a constant brightness level, you have the option to switch from ‘automatic’ to one of five different brightness increments too. Emporio Armani Connected – FeaturesThe AMOLED screen isn’t too small: It’s bright, clear, and the always-on display — where a simple watch face is displayed to save battery — is legible even in sunlight. However, with general use, we've found the Emporio Armani lasts for at least a day. If you don't charge the watch overnight, though, you're likely to struggle getting it over the line on that second day. This isn't too different from what we've come to expect from newer Wear watches, and though the Fitbit Ionic is offering leading battery life, around two days of life from a full-screen smartwatch is the standard. The diameter of the screen is 46mm (around 1.8 inches) and big enough to get all you want out of a smartwatch. It’s an always-on display (if you choose it to be) but one that gets brighter when you move your wrist to your face to read the time.