After months of waiting, easily one of the most exciting smartwatch releases of the year is finally here, the Diesel On Fadelite X Mad Dog Jones limited edition. Announced alongside the regular On Fadelite smartwatch at CES 2020, it was originally set for release around April, shortly after the standard edition. However, we’ve had to wait until September for it to make its public appearance.
What makes the On Fadelite X Mad Dog Jones special? It’s a design collaboration done right. Based on the clear On Fadelite, this limited edition model comes in a special box featuring artwork by Mad Dog Jones, an artist who publishes his heavily Asian-influenced work on Instagram. Open the box and you’ll find the watch comes with both the regular strap and a very cool special version with more of Mad Dog Jones’ artwork on it. Dig deeper in the box, and there’s a cloth covered in his imagery too.
Fire up the watch and there are two special faces created by Mad Dog Jones, called Dream Blocks and Hungry. Special edition watches aren’t uncommon in the world of traditional watches, but are less regular occurrences in smartwatches. The Skagen Falster 3 X By Kygo model is another recent successful collaboration, but it lost points by coming in the same box as the regular Falster 3, making it feel a little less special.
How about the technical side? This is the same as a standard On Fadelite, so it has a 44mm case with a 1.19-inch screen, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip. The delay in release means this chipset is outdated, having been superseded by the Snapdragon 4100 recently. It’s paired with only 512MB of RAM too, which has never been a winning combination before, with most smartwatches benefiting from 1GB of RAM. We’ll see if it impacts the watch’s performance when we review it.
Other features include a heart rate sensor, 4GB of internal storage, NFC, GPS, and a battery that can be recharged to about 80% capacity in 50 minutes. The watch uses Google’s WearOS software. You can read our hands-on with the On Fadelite from CES here.
The On Fadelite X Mad Dog Jones smartwatch can be found on Diesel’s online store now, where it costs a little more than the standard model. It’s priced at $295, or 279 British pounds. Diesel has not said how many Mad Dog Jones editions will be produced.
