Moto 360 tries to be the best smartwatch, and doesn't quite get there
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Transcript
[MUSIC]
Hi.
I'm Scott Stein.
In mid 2014, it looks like everybody's trying to put the future on your wrist.
There are tons of smart watches and tons of up coming smart watches.
And the Motorola Moto 360 is one of the ones that was supposed to be a shining star.
There's a round watching running Google's Android wear software.
It's futuristic looking.
It looks like it's gonna bring the world on your wrist in a way that hadn't been done before.
Well after having used it for a while, the verdict is that it's not really all that much different from other android wear watches.
Having used an android wear watch, we'll there are a couple already out there and there are a lot more coming, and it runs google's own operating system for wearables.
You have to have an android 4.3 watch or later to run it.
And what it does is you can talk to it.
You can get notifications on it.
It will also work with compatible apps just like the Samsung Gear Live or the LGG watch and others to come.
The difference here is that Motorola's is the first round one.
There are gonna be other round smart watches, but this one is a very elegant design.
Motorola took great care to put a leather band on here, there's also gonna be a stainless steel one coming soon.
And the steel face feels very clean and minimal, but, you know, even the gorilla glass screen shows that the LCD watch face underneath, and the screen in general is a little less vivid than maybe you were expecting.
There's also a black bar underneath, because of a light sensor, so it's not even fully round.
And the battery life.
Well it's about as good as the battery life on other Android wear watches, which is about two days at best.
So you're dealing with something that's not super long battery life, although it does come with a very neat inductive charging system, so you can pop this Moto 360 right into your bedside cradle and boom, it becomes a bedside clock.
That's great but keep in mind if you're gonna put that into a bag or you wanna put it into an airline seat pocket that's not really gonna stick on, it might fall out.
So the Moto 360 is the best-looking Androidware watch but it's no different than other ones.
It can't make phone calls, it's not fully interactive with all of its notifications, and it can get kinda confusing with all the weird ones that pop up.
I would have wanted this to be even better.
This is the best of the bunch after only three, but the Moto 360 is definitely grounded from that high flying futuristic standpoint that we hoped for in the past.
My favorite smartwatch is the Pebble Steel.
It's nice looking.
It works with iOS and Android and it looks good in broad daylight, has a long battery life.
And notifications are easy to read.
It doesn't have a touch screen it's not all that exciting underneath but it works.
Now the Moto 360 has a touch screen.
You can talk to it.
It has a heart rate monitor but it's hard to tell what you're really judging other than heart rate.
And the battery life is shorter.
So maybe I like the design but it doesn't feel as all day and everyday useful as something like this.
Which would you pick?
Hm, maybe you like the design here.
I still prefer this a bit.
I'm Scott Stein at CNet with a look at Moto 360 on my wrist.
[MUSIC]
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