Styler is an Android app that puts millions of watch face combinations at your disposal. It makes creating you own watch face from scratch super-easy, including custom images as well as battery and weather information. Not only that, but Styler gives you the ability to choose from a great selection of presets that come with the app, and even more online, from others that have used Styler to create their own look. You can then take these presets and tweak them to your liking, and you can share your own creations online as well. From a developer team that has been creating quality watch faces for some time, it’s interesting to see them create an app like this, so let’s take a closer look.
First thing’s first, this is an app that only supports Android Wear watches, and you’ll obviously need one to make full use of it. With that said, it’s available to download from the Play Store. Right away, it’s clear that Styler is a lot more expensive than the free options like Facer, but perhaps we can show why.
When you first launch the app, here’s what you’ll be looking at in terms of default view.
It’s easy enough to start customizing from this point on, but as I’m new to things I’m going to find a preset to play with.
As you can see, you get a lot of quality watch faces including in the app as soon as you download it, and the Material watch face is one I’m happy to tweak to my liking. There’s a myriad of different options that you can choose from here. Highlights include an advanced color picker, the ability to use any image you like as a background, font size and color choices for everything, 24HR format and more.
As previously noted, there are choices for watch and phone battery displays as well Weather options and a choice of providers including Yahoo weather. The color picker is nice and easy to use as well:
I tweaked a number of things in the Material preset, and I was pretty happy with the results. I changed a few colors and positions, and here’s the result:
I now have the option to name and share this preset with people if I want. This is just a quick look at Styler can do, after all I’m no artist.
Styler has all the options you could ever need for creating a great watch face, regardless of whether or not that’s an analog or digital affair, but where it really shines is how it so effortlessly handles user submitted designs, all there ready and waiting to download and set on your watch.
The “I see you” preset with the Minion character is a good-looking one, and it does indeed look great on my Moto 360.
Styler is a pretty great app for those looking to create something new for their smartwatch, however there are a few holes in the options on offer. There’s not enough fonts on offer here, especially not for an app that asks a fairly sizable upfront fee for using it, and there are strange choices like the lack of a bold option on the calendar or weather options. Similarly, how the battery life readings are displayed are also pretty lax, too. Of course, these features can be added in future updates, and indeed they should be. For me though, where Styler makes more sense than other apps of this nature is that it’s so easy to get and apply watch faces from the community. Sure, Facer has made this easier over time, but nothing’s easier than browsing for new designs within the app and hitting a single button to see it appear on your smartwatch.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – The app on the phone is nice and quick, watch faces are applied quickly, and there’s no change in performance on the watch face, either.
- Features (5/5) – There’s so much on offer in Styler that it’s hard to think what isn’t on offer here. There are a few gaps here and there, but this is pretty much a complete offering.
- Theme (4/5) – The presets included with Styler look good, but really what things look like on your smartwatch are totally up to you with Styler.
- Overall (4.5/5) – As time goes on, Styler will get better and better, and the few holes here will be addressed. Right now though, there’s so much on offer here that this could be the one watch face app anyone needs.
Pros
- Lots of options on offer, including font sizes, weather providers, battery information, and analog or digital options.
- Easy to use right from the get go, with some great examples of what you can do with the app over time.
- Super-easy to download great watch faces online without the need to use a different website or anything like that, and they’re all free.
- Doesn’t appear to have much of an impact on Android Wear battery life, which is always nice to see.
Cons
- Doesn’t offer enough font choices, especially for an app that asks for such a price upfront.
- Some options like bold fonts and different options don’t exist for everything.
All-in-all, Styler is a great app, and while it is potentially a little pricey, if you look at all of the different watch faces that are available to you, then it does make sense. There are so many choices on offer here as well, that Styler comfortably stands out from the pack, but more font choices are needed. For a lot of users however, the ease of use and ease of importing new designs from online will be what Styler does best for them.