Review: Motorola Moto 360
Smart watches are an emerging piece of tech. Right now as far as I am concerned, the best smart watch out there for Android fans is the Motorola Moto 360 which was served up to me by Telus. I like the Moto 360 for a number of reasons. First it actually looks very good:
It is elegant and though it’s a bit big for my tastes, it fits on my wrist. The metal case and the leather strap that is clearly a quality one helps with that. But what really makes the Moto 360 work is the 1.65-inch display that protrudes ever so slightly from its round shell. It runs almost completely edge to edge, encircled by only the smallest of bezels. The display has terrific viewing angles, and is easily viewable outdoors. If you do look closely, you’ll see that some images can look a bit jagged, but I seriously doubt that anyone would complain. Another reason why I like the Moto 360 is that it is waterproof and dustproof to the level of the IP67 standard. For someone like me who does sports outdoors, that’s very welcome.
The Moto 360 works with all Android smartphones that run Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and up. iOS and anyone else is out of luck, not that this is a shock. But broad compatibility is a good thing as it scoops up a significant amount of the Android community. In terms of how you can use the Moto 360, your emails, texts, calls, tweets, weather information and the like pops up the screen. In many cases, there’s also an easy way to respond without ever taking your phone out of your pocket. You can also perform basic Google searches, set reminders, take notes, and get quick directions to the nearest Starbucks. Google Now even works. Though I do feel like a bit of a dork talking into my watch. You also get a heart rate monitor and a pedometer inside the Moto 360. But when I compared it to the heart rate monitor that I use while exercising and a pedometer that I had lying around, neither seemed accurate. I’m not sure why as similar experiments with other devices have not shown a wide variance of any sort. Strange. Having said that, every function worked perfectly and was easy to use. One feature that I really liked was the array of faces that are available. You can really customize the Moto 360 any way you want to suit your needs or feelings.
Battery life matched what Motorola says which is that you’ll get a day out of the batter. That’s very good as anything less would make it useless. When it’s time to charge, you can charge it using a cool black wireless dock that the Moto 360 slots into sideways. The only thing that I would say on that front is heavy usage is likely to result in you getting less than a day of usage.
The Moto 360 is $279.99 at Telus. For now, as long as you have an Android phone, this is the best smart watch out there. I wonder if I feel the same way when the Apple Watch eventually ships? We’ll have to wait and see.
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