Michael Kors Women Gen 5E Darci Touchscreen Smartwatch with Speaker, Heart Rate, GPS, NFC, and Smartphone Notifications

Product Information

Fossil smartwatches are currently on Gen 5 hardware – and now Michael Kors has updated two of its lines to run on the latest hardware: the sportier Gen 5E MKGO and sparkling statement Darci Gen 5E Smartwatch.

We’ve put the latest version of Michael Kors’ sporty smartwatch to the test to see if it can serve up both style and substance this time around. The battery can last 24 hours, but that depends on how you use the smartwatch. For example, cranking up full-screen brightness, using GPS and taking heart rate readings will significantly drain it. However, answering calls from the wrist was far from seamless. Our phone rang for 8 to 10 seconds before it registered on the watch and the connection was also slow, which isn't a great experience.On the inside of the Gen 5E Darci, you’ll find the same smarts as the Fossil Gen 5E smartwatch, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor and 512MB of RAM. Performance was good and felt improved on previous versions of Michael Kors smartwatches. The casing is made of stainless steel and has a stainless steel 7-link bracelet. The watch comes in rose gold, gold, silver and two-tone rose gold and silver. We had to have five links removed, so that’s worth bearing in mind if you have smaller wrists.

For iOS users, the Wear OS platform is nowhere near as fluid as Apple's watchOS platform and the Apple Watch, but for Android users everything is a little more seamless, as you would expect. The two devices recorded similar heart rate readings during a 40 minute spinning session. The Whoop Band 3.0 recorded an average of 118bpm throughout the session, the Darci 120bpm. The Whoop recorded a high of 145bpm and the Darci 142bpm. If you really start pushing your heart rate up and down the sensor will start to produce less accurate data – but as a general guide of effort on steady workouts, the sensor is good enough.Around a day’s worth of battery life is what you can expect from an MK smartwatch – as well as all Fossil smartwatches using the same tech. This is similar to some of the top smartwatches, including the Apple Watch Series 6, but still might be frustrating if you don’t want to charge it up most days. Google and Samsung announced a unified platform that combines Samsung's Tizen OS with Wear OS - which is called Wear OS 3 - though the Gen 5E Darci smartwatch won't be able to run this software.