The Fossil Gen 5E was doomed from the start. To begin, 2020 was a truly impressive year for smartwatches. Fitbit came out swinging with the Fitbit Sense and refined the Versa 3. Apple also continued to knock it out of the park with watchOS 7, the Series 6, and the more affordable Apple Watch SE. And let’s not forget about Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3, a gorgeous, full-featured Android smartwatch that can go toe-to-toe with the Apple Watch. Advertisement Unlike Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung, Google doesn’t make Wear OS watches—yet. Wear OS is the purview of third-party smartwatch makers, and of them, Fossil is by far the mostprolific. If you’re getting a Wear OS watch, there’s a very good chance it’s from Fossil or one of the many designer brands under its umbrella. That means Fossil’s annual flagship watch is, generally speaking, a good litmus test of where exactly Wear OS is at. So it wasn’t a terribly encouraging sign that this year’s flagship is the Fossil Gen 5E, a smaller, slightly more affordable version of last year’s Gen 5.