Motorola Moto 360 Smartwatch

Attractive, but functionally lacking

Posted by Liam Foot on December 25, 2014 Reviews

I'm sure you've heard of this watch in some form or another, made famous for being the first decent-looking smartwatch with a circular face. I bought this on impulse - believe it or not, I didn't hear about it until a day or two after release, and decided to give it a try.

I ordered directly from Motorola, which you should avoid doing at all costs. Motorola support is absolutely horrendous. Three times I've tried to contact them, three times I've been placed in a queue, three times I've waited for 15 minutes only to be told that there is nobody available to help me, and immediately cut off only to start again. If you order from Amazon, you will never have to deal with the atrocious services of Motorola. Now, onto the product.

I think it's a nice watch. I like circular watches, and I like metal bands. Unfortunately, the metal band was not available when I purchased it and being impulsive I went for the stone leather version. The leather is nice - it's soft, it's comfortable, and I do like it, but I feel as if I would prefer the metal band when it finally releases in the UK. It's very much down to how you feel about watches. If you like leather, metal, or even silicon - there is a band for you, or there soon will be.

By default, the display is off unless in use. To activate the display, either press the button on the crown, tap the screen or raise the watch to your face. It's not about twisting the watch to look at your face, you have to actually raise your arm for the display to turn on.

Battery life is good. Back on release, people complained about having a half-day battery life, and that's not the case anymore. After the updates, this watch easily outlasts my Note 3. As a guess, I would say the Moto 360 can last two full days, a complete 48 hours before requiring a charge, which it will do wirelessly on the dock. The dock is very handy, all you have to do is sit the watch on it and it will enter a charging mode where it basically looks like a bed-side clock. This is a nice feature for checking the time in bed, however my eyesight is poor so unfortunately I cannot make use of it.

In the past, I have slept whilst wearing my watches. Although I feel two days of charge is adequate, it has still forced me to change the way I use my watch. Instead of keeping it on my wrist through the night, it now sits on the dock nightly (thought it doesn't require nightly charging) and I wear one of my other watches whilst sleeping. If you like to sleep with your watch, you may feel a little disappointed.

In terms of functionality, it does a few things but nothing essential that your phone won't do. You can use most of the Google Now functionality, such as navigation, appointment making, reminders, notes and notifications.

I purchased it mainly for the notifications. I use a watch face called `Classic' that has bars around the edges of the display to indicate an appointment and its duration. If you have an appointment from 2 to 3pm, there will be a bar from 2 to 3 on your watch face. This is great for me and my lecture schedules, as I can see at a glance when I have to be somewhere. If I then swipe up, I can see my cards which will tell me the location of these appointments.

Notifications are displayed on cards. You get cards just like Google gives them on your phone, only now they are circular. You will get all of your notifications to your watch by default, and this can be changed to block notifications for selected apps. To take actions on cards, you swipe them to the left, and the actions available depend on the app that's notifying you.

Back on release, and for some time after, when cards were dismissed you could not get them back. Thankfully, with a very recent firmware update you can now undo your actions when you dismiss cards. This is very handy for if you accidentally dismiss a card, such as your calendar, which in my case is a card I always want available.

You can use your watch to reply to messages, depending on the app that's being used. Skype, for example, does not allow you to reply from your watch, or even to read the entire message - it merely gives you a snippet of the message, which you must read in full on your phone, or whatever other device you use Skype on. However, using Google Hangouts, you can scroll through the entire message, and swipe left to view the entire thread of previous messages in the conversation. You can swipe left again to send a reply, which must be spoken and translated to text. Hangouts handles this very well, which is not surprising, however I hope that other messaging services will catch up and make appropriate adjustments for Android Wear.

Another thing I use it for is setting alarms and reminders, mostly when cooking. I like to leave the oven unattended, and don't always remember to check it. Now, I pull up my watch and tell Google to "remind me to check the oven in half an hour", and my Moto 360 will vibrate my wrist in half an hour with a note reminding me to check the oven. You can also set an alarm for a similar purpose, but alarms are better used for something where a note is not needed, such as waking up. In fact, the watch buzzes so violently for alarms that it wakes me up even sitting on my desk, and will buzz itself off of its dock. Remember that by default, the watch sets alarms using its own, built-in app. This app cannot be accessed through your phone, and sometimes decides to set an alarm for every day of the week instead of the one-off you intended it to be. It took me some time to figure out, but to disable alarms set through the default app, you must tell the watch to "show alarms", and from there they can be disabled.

One other thing I will touch on is the `health' side of this smartwatch, where it counts your steps and monitors your heart rate. If you're looking for this sort of functionality, I think the Moto 360 will disappoint you. It claims to count steps, however it will count several hundred when I've not moved. Whilst it can monitor your heart rate when asked, sometimes it will work, and most times it will not. It does have sensors to detect things such as turning your wrist, however these sensors are so poor that the Bing Torque app by Microsoft, designed to activate Bing at the flick of your wrist, even specifically notes issues with the Moto 360 not working with this app due to its poor sensors.

I can't recommend this watch to everyone. I feel that it looks nice, has a sizable screen, however it falls very short in terms of its sensors. It doesn't do anything spectacular and won't change your life, but considering the little things it does, it does them well. I bought this watch because it looks nice and I wanted notifications on my wrist, and I'm happy with what it provides. If you went with an LG G Watch R, or even a Microsoft Band, you would get a more functional device. However, a functional but unattractive device on my wrist isn't something I desire.

So, who is the Moto 360 for?

I feel that the Moto 360 is for people who won't miss the £200 from their pocket. Honestly, If I said this was a wise investment I would be lying through my teeth, but I do not regret the purchase. If you need a new phone, spend on the phone instead. If you want a new watch, £200 isn't a massive sum to spend for a nice one, and if you value the way your watch looks, you should be happy with this.

This review is also available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2S1II7F8MJSUA/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

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