Ticwatch C2 vs Fossil Sport Smartwatch (Battery Life Leads to a Downfall)

The Fossil Sport Smartwatch and the Ticwatch C2 are the closest competitors among all the smartwatches I’ve reviewed. 

While the Fossil Sport Smartwatch is branded as a “sports” watch, besides having a silicone strap as compared to the leather strap of the TIcwatch C2, there really isn’t anything that makes it so much sports-oriented than the Ticwatch C2.

Both watches are aimed at the entry-level, casual smartwatch user. If you are looking for your first smartwatch or prefer a smaller smartwatch, then you can’t go wrong with these options.

FYI, thanks to AI imagery software, we’re able to create very specific fashion examples to illustrate the points being made. In some cases, imagery is exaggerated to hammer the point home.

Comfort and size

Size-wise, both watches are very similar. The Ticwatch C2 has a slightly bigger screen at 1.3 inches while the Fossil Sport Smartwatch has a 1.19 inch screen. To be honest, I can’t tell the difference from eyeballing it and perhaps that’s because the Ticwatch C2 has a thicker bezel.

The Ticwatch C2 is thicker and heavier but it does have a stainless steel watch case. The Fossil Sport Smartwatch is plastic all the way.

Wearing the Fossil Sport Smartwatch is extremely comfortable. Some watches make it very obvious that you have something on your wrist, but the Fossil Sport Smartwatch is the least likely to feel like it’s there.

I attribute it to the watch being extremely light, with a strap that is comfortable. It comes with a silicone strap with a quick release 22mm strap attachment in case you don’t like the silicone strap.

The Ticwatch C2 is a lot less comfortable, but not uncomfortable nonetheless. Its strap is very stiff and sticks to your wrist. It is also heavier and leaves distinct imprints on your wrist upon wearing it for a while.

The Ticwatch C2 has two buttons, one functioning as a home button while the other works as a shortcut to an app. The Fossil Sport Smartwatch has two buttons and a rotating crown which also functions as a button. Having a crown is really good because it helps you scroll menus more accurately.

Winner: Fossil Sport Smartwatch

Watch Faces

Fossil and Mobvoi (the makers of the Ticwatches) both have preloaded watch faces on all their watches.

While you can download third-party watch faces, I have always found Fossil to have the best options beyond the watch faces offered by Google. They have some really cute, expressive watch faces and also some really customizable and utilitarian watch faces.

I really like being able to customize the widgets on the smartwatch. While step counts are important to a lot of people, to me, they aren’t important and therefore I like to switch that out for something else like date or weather.

Mobvoi’s preloaded watch faces are just OK. They work. The designs on the watches aren’t as varied as what Fossil offers and they tend to be more utilitarian than artsy. Most of their watch faces have limited customization.

Winner: Fossil Sport Smartwatch

Battery Life

The battery life of the Fossil Sport Smartwatch is atrocious.

Wearing the Fossil Sport Smartwatch feels like having a two-year-old smartphone that has been well used. You’ll always be on the edge as to battery life. You need a charger nearby just to be safe.

While the Fossil Sport Smartwatch will last a work day just fine, if you tax it any further by asking it to use its internal GPS, always-on screen or continuous heart rate monitoring, you would be pushing it closer to the edge.

If you’re too liberal with its battery use, then you’ll go into power saving mode which is where the Fossil Sport Smartwatch loses all its “smart” functionality and goes to becoming just a time telling device.

The Ticwatch C2 could potentially fall into power saving mode if you push it too far, but the buffer you have with the C2 is far wider than the Fossil Sport Smartwatch. You can’t expect to use the Ticwatch C2’s internal GPS all day long, but you can expect reliable performance if you are using it as a way to notify you of new emails and for telling the time. 

Regular daily use saw the Fossil Sport Smartwatch dipping into power saving mode quite a few times. However, the Ticwatch C2 would last a full day and still have 40% battery.

So, where the Ticwatch C2 requires daily charging, the Fossil Sport Smartwatch requires at least one charge a day, perhaps more.

Winner: Ticwatch C2

Wear OS

One point of similarity between the two watches is how they use Google’s Wear OS.

It’s a great operating system that offers you a great variety of apps through the Google Play app store. I really liked having Google Maps, Keep and Translate on my watch. Google Maps really makes navigation easier when biking.

In addition, both the Ticwatch C2 and Fossil Sport Smartwatch have Google Assistant which is one of the best voice assistants out there. You can start timers, get information and navigate to a location through Google Assistant.

Google Assistant is really good as it has a superior speech-to-text transcriber. Its only real competitor is Siri on the Apple Watches.

Winner: Tie

Email and Text

Both smartwatches will receive notifications of new emails and texts. However, you can only reply to them if you are paired to an Android phone.

Replying to them is really easy because of Google’s excellent speech-to-text transcriber. It’s honestly the only way I would reply to a message unless I were in a quiet environment where the noise of chatter is unacceptable.

Otherwise, you can always input text by using the 26-alphabet keyboard or hand write letters. Or you can use the pre-composed messages and emojis.

Wear OS smartwatches cannot directly access your messages or emails like you would be able to on an Apple iPhone and Watch pair or a Samsung smartwatch and smartphone pair. Nonetheless, I personally don’t find this feature to be very useful as I would rather use my phone instead.

Winner: Tie

Sports

Both watches have an internal GPS and both can be used for swimming.

Mobvoi advises that if you are going to take the Ticwatch C2 into water that you should change out the strap. The Ticwatch C2 uses a 18mm or 20mm quick release strap which is less common than the more ubiquitous 22mm quick release that the Fossil Sport Smartwatch uses.

Both watches come with Google Fit which has a breathing timer (Fit Breathe), an activity log (Fit Goals), a pulse checker (Fit Heart rate) and a workout logger (Fit Workout).

The Ticwatch C2 comes with an additional suite of health and workout software by the name of TicHealth (goal tracker), TicExercise (workout logger) and TicPulse (heart rate monitor).

The updates to Google Fit have really overshadowed the usefulness of Mobvoi’s suite because Google Fit is better as it has more workouts to choose from and has a better app that is universal to all Wear OS smartwatches. But Mobvoi’s TicExercise does score a major advantage for being able to track swimming with its Pool Swim mode.

Winner: Tie

Verdict

Both watches are great watches but the Ticwatch C2 has a major advantage due to its battery life. The Fossil Sport Smartwatch’s battery life is just so limited, even when new, that it doesn’t bode well for its future when the battery gets worn. Plus, I really don’t like it when a smartwatch goes into “unsmart” mode (i.e. power saving mode).

It’s a pity because Fossil’s advantages of being more comfortable and having better watch faces are really differentiating factors from the Ticwatch C2.