If you are looking for a stylish smartwatch with a round face, Michael Kors Access Runway Stainless Steel Smartwatch is an elegant watch with a number of notable features in such a classy design. Notable features include heart rate tracking, smartphone notifications, NFC payments (eg Google Pay), GPS, 1.19-inch touchscreen display, mic for the voice-activated Google Assistant, music storage, customizable watch faces, alarms, and multiple time zones. This watch is also water resistant to 30m–ie recreational swimming. The metal on this model is a rose gold-tone stainless steel, though there are other finish options available.
In the box you get the smartwatch, an extra buckle closure (if you want to change straps, Michael Kors offers interchangeable straps), a magnetic charger, and instruction guides. The battery charger is similar to the round magnetic charger for an Apple Watch. The other end of the charging cable has a USB-A connector, though a charging brick is not included. In use the watch battery life lasts a full day of use–she does pull email with her watch, but does not do social media with it. If the watch is “in-range” and “on-my-wrist” then the watch alerts, not the phone–with the phone connected to cellular, the phone receives notifications and then tells the watch. If you don’t want the phone in the notification loop, you can turn off bluetooth and turn on the watch’s WIFI so that the watch pulls directly from the Internet. This works great when at home. However, it can only attach itself to WIFI access points that the phone already knows about and it is unable to attach to free WIFIs that have captive portals, such as at my wife’s workplace.
The watch has a round oversized watch face, with a 41mm case. The watch has a bright active-matrix LED display, with a 390 x 390 pixel resolution. The operating system is Google’s Wear OS, and apps are compatible with Android OS 4.4+ (excluding the Go edition) and iOS 9.3+ smartphones. The crown (middle button) wakes the watch and allows you to scroll through the apps and make an app selection, and via the app you can set the functionality of the smaller buttons on either side. For example, you could set one button to show you the weather and the other notifications or alarms. The watch came with a linked bracelet strap–my wife had to have the bracelet strap resized by removing some links, which can be done by going to any jewelry or watch store that has the proper tool. The watch has a watch strap 18mm lug width.
All in all, my wife loves the Michael Kors Access Runway Stainless Steel Smartwatch. She has tried other brand smartwatches, but this is the one she decided to keep. In particular, she found the round watch face to be more comfortable than square watch faces. To her the display is very clear–it is easy to tell the time and set new alarms. She said the watch kept waking up when she talked (she moves her hands a lot when talking), but the OS has a way to disable the auto-wake feature. She also liked that the watch remembered being paired to her phone (Android Samsung Galaxy J7) even after a complete discharge. Though the watch lost the current time and thought it was January 1st, enabling Bluetooth allowed the watch to regain its time settings after chattering with the phone. Finally, she commented that she enjoys the customizable watch faces. I’m just happy she finally found a smartwatch she loves!
- Pricing and Availability on Amazon: Michael Kors Access Runway Stainless Steel Smartwatch
NOTE: I am an independent product reviewer–if I don’t like the product I say so, and if I do like the product I say so. If you end up purchasing something from a link on my site, I may receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. Thank you for your support!