GADGET: Motorola Moto 360 review

The basics

Hello Moto. After years trapped in mobile mediocrity, Motorola is back with a bang, two extremely promising ANDROID SMARTPHONES and the sexiest smartwatch yet, the Motorola Moto 360. Like LG and Samsung’s intelligent tickers before it, this timepiece runs Google’s Android Wear software, just on a slick circular display with analog vibes. But does it really deliver on its promise and nudge you with the alerts you really need? And how long for before it needs to recharge? We strapped one on to find out.

The good

The Moto 360 may run the exact same software as several other competitors, but it’s the first to get something crucial right: it looks like a watch. It comes with leather or metal straps in your choice of colour. The circular 1.56-inch screen is a huge aesthetic improvement over the square, unhelpful screens of smartwatches we’ve tested in the past, and allows for all sorts of actual circular watch faces (Including an awesome imitation of the watch interface from Goldeneye 007. Sadly, it can’t be used to detonate mines or shoot lasers.), which you can quickly choose between with a single long press. The 360 behaves itself too, only lighting up when you tilt it to look at the time, and shutting off if you cover the face with your hand for a moment.

Set up is painless (though you’ll need an Android 4.3 device or higher): you just turn on Bluetooth, install the Android Wear app, and that’s it. Any apps already on your phone that work with the Moto 360 will start delivering alerts straight to the small screen, letting you read, dismiss, archive and even reply to messages, see your steps or get public transport and walking directions on the go. You simply swipe up and down to view each type and dismiss them with a swipe to the side.

For a first generation effort, this works much better than we expected: you could quite feasibly wade through your inbox in the morning on the train without pulling your phone out of your pocket, if you can cope with the funny looks. The way Android Wear handles multiple notifications of a single type (a flurry of emails, for instance) is very well implemented: you can see a snippet of each message at a glance, and tap each one for the full view, then swipe to archive, open on your phone or reply with canned responses or a VOICE MESSAGE - which works shockingly well thanks to the Moto 360’s twin mics. And apart from the strange health alerts telling you ominously that you have to get “five more days of heart activity” this week, the 360 seldom showed something we didn’t want to see. Just be careful when using the 360 on the move: the small screen requires a lot of concentration, causing our intrepid reviewer to walk straight into a bush.

The bad

The Moto 360 is attractive, but don’t be fooled by official photography: it’s not petite. At 11.4mm deep it’s a chunky timepiece that attracts attention when the screen is off. You’ll really notice it weighing down on your arm if you’re not used to heavy watches - it feels not unlike you’re trying to balance a small tin of baked beans on your wrist. Expect stares, questions and puzzled looks when talking into it in public.

The software itself meanwhile is admittedly out of Motorola’s hands, crafted as it is by Google, but it could still do with some work. Android Wear is focused on giving you what it thinks you’ll want, not what you need, so if you dismiss a notification you can’t then get it back until the OS feels like nudging you again. The small screen also means it really struggles to list answers for you, which is a real problem when searching Google Maps for a nearby chain store rather than a unique address: a search in central London for TESCO threw up several results dozens of miles away in Surrey rather than branches just around the corner. Some notification types are not particularly rich either, just telling you you have an update without actually showing you what it is (Facebook, we’re looking at you), which is about as useful as one of those watches that shows the time in binary code.

The biggest problem with the Moto 360 however is the battery life. We managed to eek 24 hours out of it on a charge once, but if you use it heavily on the train to work and back, you’re looking at something much closer to 12 hours. That’s almost inexcusable in a product category where we used to measure battery life in months or years, but Motorola has made it as easy as possible to charge up the 360 by bundling in a small USB wireless charging dock that turns the watch into a night stand. Still, if you struggle to remember to charge up your phone regularly, there’s no chance you’ll cope with a dead smartwatch on your To Do list too.

The bottom line

Should you buy the Motorola Moto 360? If you’re shopping for a smartwatch and you don’t own an iPhone, absolutely. This is the best model we’ve tested yet in this nascent new genre, and Android Wear looks like it could give Apple’s own Watch a run for its money in time. That’s not saying a great deal however when the best model we’ve seen so far needs to be charged as often as your SMARTPHONE. If you’re a watch fiend who likes to live on the bleeding edge go right ahead, but for everyone else, perhaps consider sticking with your actual SMARTPHONE for getting your alerts wherever you are in the go. There’s plenty more work to be done.