We used the Darci Gen 5E to track a 45-minute workout – so the heart rate monitor was being put to work – and it went from 29% battery down to 20%. 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. Just over a day’s worth of battery life is what you’d expect from a Michael Kors smartwatch, as well as Fossil’s Gen 5E watches. Michael Kors is one of the few designer brands that’s managed to bring out fashion-focused smartwatches packed with features that we – sometimes – genuinely want to wear. That means that while the Wear OS platform is fine - it offers good third-party support and various features, as well as an easy-to-navigate interface - you won't get the latest features offered by Wear OS 3, as the Galaxy Watch 4 offers.

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The Darci runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset - which isn't the latest available after the Snapdragon Wear 4100+ launched in June 2020. Michael Kors offers a number of smartwatches in its portfolio, many of which are excellent and a perfect blend of form and function. There's also a Custom option, Daily option and an Extended mode, the last of which makes certain adjustments to prolong battery life, such as putting Bluetooth on a schedule.

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. The graph in the Whoop app showed much more sensitivity, but most people would be more than happy with the way Google Fit presents the data from the MKGO 5E – and you could always get a third-party fitness app if you wanted to try other options. For example, cranking up full-screen brightness, using GPS and taking heart rate readings will significantly drain it. If you want best-in-class tracking and more battery life, you might have to ditch the bling and look elsewhere. This includes contactless payments using NFC via Google Pay, reading iMessages from your wrist and replying to messages from third-party apps, like WhatsApp.It's more of a question as to whether you would actually want to workout while wearing the Darci, or sleep with it on for the sleep tracking element. The screen is a full AMOLED display, but isn't as punchy or crisp as rivals – even on devices such as the Huawei Watch GT2 or Amazfit GTS 2 Mini. At 70g, it’s also lightweight compared to Michael Kors alternatives, which makes it a better option for fitness and more wearable every day than the hefty Darci Gen 5E at 80g. We got to bedtime each day with some juice left, but didn't get through much of the following day - so it's a charge every night situation. This isn’t the smallest case from Michael Kors, but smaller than the Bradshaw 2 and Lexington 2, which were bigger and bolder in every way.