Motorola Moto 360 2

Android Wear smartwatch has a lot going for it

Motorola has launched a new version of its Moto 360 smartwatch. Our expectations were high as the original model is third in our best smartwatches chart.

Price

Prices start at £229 and the most expensive option will set you back £349 – this is the men’s 46mm model, with gold case, micro knurl bezel and metal strap. For comparison, prices for the Apple Watch

starts at £299, while the entry-level LG Urbane is £219 (seventh and fifth in our charts).

Design

We loved the original Moto 360 when it launched early in 2014. It was one of the first Android Wear smartwatches and had a circular display, which helped it look more like a traditional watch rather than a lump of tech strapped to your wrist.

Our biggest complaint was that a portion of that circular display was dedicated to the ambient light sensor and therefore didn’t have pixels. This resulted in an irritating ‘flat tyre’ effect. That’s why we’re so disappointed to see that it’s still there. If you want to use a circular design as your clock face, you’ll find that the bottom is cut off in an ugly and frustrating fashion. It might seem like a small criticism, but it makes a big difference.

Motorola has put a great deal of time and thought into the rest of the design, and designs for both men and women are available. The colour options in the men’s collection are black, silver or gold option, and there are two wrist size sizes: 42- and 46mm. The women’s line-up offers only a 42mm wrist size, along with silver, gold and rose gold colour options.

The Moto 360 2 has a stainless steel body, and is significantly slimmer than it older brother, helping it look sleek and in some cases elegant with the leather straps. The physical button on the side of the watch has been moved up slightly to the two o’clock position, making it easier to use.

As we briefly touched upon at the beginning of this review, you can customise the Moto 360 through Moto Maker. The previous Moto 360 had limited

options, whereas the latest model offers more choice. You can even choose to have a different colour bezel around the watch face, for example, and Motorola doesn’t charge extra for that.

You do have to pay extra for ‘micro etch’ for women and ‘micro knurl’ for Men though, which is an additional £20. Tiny lines are cut into the metal to add these effects.

In terms of durability, the Gorilla Glass display combined with IP67 dust and water resistance should keep it safe in most conditions, though you won’t want to wear it swimming or in the bath.

Hardware

We’ve talked about how the Moto 360 looks, but what can it actually do? Each model comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip, with a 1.2GHz quad-core processor. This brings the Moto 360 into line with premium smartwatches such as LG’s Watch Urbane and the Huawei Watch (placed fifth and second in our top smartwatch charts).

Performance is generally very good, though in our tests it occasionally froze, mostly when dismissing a notification or card. This is a shame since it’s not something we’ve experienced on rival devices. It also takes a couple of seconds to load some apps.

That Snapdragon chip is paired with Adreno 350 graphics, and there’s 512MB of RAM and 4GB of onboard storage should you want to download songs and listen to them while you’re out and about without your smartphone.

This brings us on to our next point, which is that the Moto 360 can connect to Wi-Fi, which means you can use lots of its internet-requiring features

without your smartphone as long as you’re able to connect to Wi-Fi.

We’ve talked a bit about the screen size, but taking a closer look at the resolution you’ll find that the 42mm model is 360x325 pixels at a pixel density of 263ppi, while the 46mm watch offers 360x330 pixels at 233ppi. Both are clear, crisp and an improvement on the original in this respect. However, as mentioned, that flat tyre is a real sticking point.

Like the original watch, it has a heart-rate monitor located on the rear. It works better than most we’ve seen and gives a reading without requiring you to push the watch into your skin. We’re not convinced it’s always accurate though, providing a reading of 100bpm while sitting a desk writing this review.

There’s no GPS, so it isn’t a great choice for those looking for great fitness features. You’ll want to hold out for the Moto 360 Sport when that arrives.

Depending on which model you buy, the Moto 360 2 either has a smaller or larger battery than the original – the 42mm watch’s is 300mAh battery, while the 46mm is 400mAh. Our review sample had the larger and we found that with default screen settings (always on), it lasted a couple of days with light usage – heavier users will likely need to charge every night.

Charging can be a faff with smartwatches, but Motorola makes things much easier with the wireless charging dock (pictured). This means you can simply take your watch off at night, leave it on the dock while you sleep and it will be topped up when you put it back on, no matter how much you’ve used it. The problem comes when you find yourself away from the dock for whatever reason since you can’t just plug in your smartphone charger.

Software

The new Moto 360 runs Google’s Android Wear OS for smartwatches, which means it’s fully compatible with most Android devices, and interestingly also with the iPhone now that Google has released an Android War app for iOS. iPhone users won’t get the full range of features, though.

Moto Body is Motorola’s fitness app, which uses the Moto 360’s sensors in the to track steps, calories burnt and heart rate, and can also be used to track specific workout activities.

In addition to this, Motorola has also added Live Dials for the Moto 360, which means you can see information such as weather forecasts and your step count at a glance right from the home screen. Tapping on these takes you to the related app

on the watch itself. There aren’t as many faces to choose from compared with some recent rivals, though you can, of course, download more.

Verdict

The new second-generation Moto 360 is a decent smartwatch that offers excellent build quality and hardware. The battery life and performance are also good. All of this would have lead us to a wholehearted recommendation, if only Motorola had made the one change we wanted – removing that flat tyre from the display. As much as we like the Moto 360, it’s hard to look past this, as small as it may seem. Chris Martin

Specifications

Android Wear (Android 4.3 or later) and (iPhone 5 onwards, with iOS 8.2 or later)

1.37in, 360x325, 263ppi (42mm) 1.56in, 360x330, 233ppi (46mm) Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 with 1.2GHz quad-core CPU Adreno 305, 450MHz GPU 512MB RAM 4GB internal storage Bluetooth 4.0 LE Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g Accelerometer Ambient Light Sensor Gyroscope Vibration/Haptics engine Optical heart rate monitor (PPG) Dual digital mics Wireless charging with included dock IP67 dust and water resistant 300mAh (42mm) 400mAh (46mm)