Michael Kors Access Sofie Review - Review 2022

A female-friendly smartwatch is similar a unicorn: beautiful, elegant, and fictional. Most frequently, smartwatches are big, clunky, and tend to err on the side of sporty if they exhibit whatever sense of style whatever. The Michael Kors Access Sofie ($350) is an try to clap back at this male-centric design approach. To that end, it'south relatively lightweight and features a delicate pavé bezel for a more sophisticated expect than much of the competition. It runs on Android Article of clothing 2.0 and has some chichi lookout faces, but bated from style, it but isn't terribly functional for the cost.

Non Your Father'due south Watch

The bones Sofie ( at Amazon) comes in gold, rose gilded, sable, or silverish. There are besides versions in the aforementioned colors with additional bling on the straps for $395. No affair the model, it has a 1.2-inch touch on AMOLED brandish with 390-by-390-pixel resolution in a 42mm case. Around the bezel you'll find a ring of pavé set stones, and on the right side, a single button. Yous tin printing the push to bring up the main app menu, or hold it to call upon Google Banana.

Inside, the Sofie has 512MB of memory and 4GB of storage. For sensors, it has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and an ambient lite sensor. The picket is rated for upwardly to 24 hours of use, but in reality, a unmarried charge is more than likely to get you somewhere betwixt eight and 16 hours, depending on your usage. That'south on the shorter side for smartwatches, and means you'll have to charge the Sofie every nighttime. And while information technology has an IP67 grit and water resistance rating, you probably shouldn't accept information technology into the shower because of the metallic links in the strap.

From a pattern standpoint, the Sofie is undeniably stylish, if non exactly understated. This is the sort of smartwatch you wear when you desire people to notice you—or if you walk through life similar every street is a runway. While it'due south the perfect accessory to a little black apparel and stilettos, it volition look out of place if your sense of fashion hews closer to hipster flannels and denim. And while the Sofie is much slimmer than, say, the hulking LG Watch Sport, it still got caught on my jacket and sweater sleeves from time to time. The Michael Kors Access Grayson is substantially the aforementioned lookout man, merely more masculine, with a larger 1.4-inch display and 47mm example.

Swapping straps is easy. All you take to do is press on either side of the lugs and the strap will pop off. The default metallic option is attractive, but you do need some initial patience to have out the individual pins so it fits your wrist (or you can take it to a watchmaker to do for you). Michael Kors has boosted metal and leather straps bachelor, just they'll cost you a pretty penny. Leather straps get for $l, while the metal ones are $95.

Michael Kors Access Sofie

The main trouble I had with the blueprint is that the strap ofttimes popped off of my wrist during testing. More than a few times, I took off my coat to discover the watch had fallen off into the sleeve. It also came undone twice during workouts.

Dazzler vs. Brains

Almost Android Clothing watches come with some preinstalled apps and software, but the Sofie keeps things pretty shut to a stock experience. The biggest addition is the Michael Kors Access app, which is primarily focused on customizing your watch face. In that location are plenty of chichi options to cull from, and you can make and save your own custom designs. You can also link up your Instagram or Facebook accounts and make watch faces out of your own photos, which is a corking feature.

That's most information technology as far as any unique out-of-the-box functionality goes. Android Article of clothing watches come preloaded with bones Google apps, like calendars, Google Fit, and Google Conditioning. You'll have to download any others from the Google Play store, which is home to a decent amount of big names, but withal lags behind Apple Watch selections.

Technically, the Sofie can track your steps and workouts. Just in practice, I found it besides uncomfortable to article of clothing during strenuous activity, and its less-than-stellar battery life means you lot're better off with a defended fitness tracker for logging all of your activity on a consistent basis. Additionally, you lot won't find fettle features that are becoming standard on many other smartwatches, like GPS and centre charge per unit monitoring.

Michael Kors Access Sofie

While it's not exactly suited for fitness, the Sofie is perfectly capable at other smartwatch tasks, like relaying notifications from your connected phone. Android Wear 2.0 is an improvement on the offset generation, but it nevertheless has a ways to go to take hold of upwardly with the relative simplicity of Apple tree'due south watchOS. And while Android Wear devices are compatible with both Android and iOS devices, iOS users are still improve off with an Apple tree Watch. For a more in-depth await at Android Wear 2.0 and its features, check out out Huawei Spotter 2 review.

Style Over Substance

Watches are just as much near aesthetics as they are most telling the time (or nowadays, delivering your text messages). But with the Sofie, you're paying a premium for the Michael Kors brand and design at the expense of functionality. The base model Apple Watch Series three costs $20 less and has a smart, modern await, along with longer battery life and much stronger fettle features. For Android users, the Samsung Gear Sport non only costs less, its slim case and swappable straps make information technology adjustable to a wider multifariousness of styles.

Even if manner is your elevation priority, the Sofie isn't versatile enough for the price. It's not suited for workouts, and frankly, information technology looks out of identify for days when you just want to lounge around in sweats and comfy sneakers. While I applaud Michael Kors on the attempt to expand smartwatch way to women, the quest for a truly functional and fashionable model continues.