Moto 360 Review

Recently I purchased a Moto 360 watch off the Motorola website after months of hearing hype about it. Retail price for the watch with a leather band is $249.99. My initial impression of the watch was not so great, but after learning how to "properly" use it, I've come to kind of enjoy it. It pairs great with my Moto X.

The watch was released on September 5th and reached my doorsteps on September 10th. Out of the box, the watch looks beautiful with the classic round watch face and leather wristband. Everything looked really sleek. There's about 10 default watch faces that you can choose from, but I'm sure as time goes on developers will create more.

The Moto 360 charges wirelessly through a dock. I read a review where someone said the dock was chunky, but it honestly was not that bad. The dock and watch actually makes for a nice bedside clock at night. The watch does not take very long to get a full charge. Less than an hour and a half on the dock and it's good to go.

The first day I used the Moto 360, I was really disappointed with the battery life. I took the watch off of the dock at 7am and the battery had died by 4pm. Not even a full work day. I was seriously considering returning the watch. However, after some research I learned how to make the best of my battery life. The most important thing you need to know about prolonging your Moto 360's battery life is that you should not have it on ambient mode. What is ambient mode exactly? Basically the watch face is always on and just brightens/dims depending on lighting. This was what killed my battery life so quickly on day 1. On day 2, after turning off the ambient mode, my watch was able to last from 7am all the way to 11pm and still have 20% battery left. Huge difference.

While the Moto 360 has the ability to be voice activated, it's not that responsive. It doesn't hear me say "OK Google" about 50% of the time which is annoying because it makes me look like an idiot yelling at my watch. Sometimes my phone responds (from my back pocket) instead of my watch. You can activate voice commands by tapping the watch face, but I thought it'd be cooler to just talk be able to talk to my watch.

The Moto 360 responds to a lot of the same basic voice commands as my Moto X. You can ask it for the weather or how to get somewhere and the screen will display everything for you (even the turn by turn navigation). You can also ask the watch to show your steps (pedometer) or to check your pulse.

Like other Google Android devices, the watch can show you cards with relevant information. For instance, mine shows me each day how long it'll take for me to get to work. Once basketball starts again, it'll probably display score cards for me as well.

The watch is said to be waterproof although I have been to scared to test that aspect and in any case, I don't want to ruin the leather band. Motorola will have metal bands available, but they're $80 each and I'm not going to fork over anymore for this watch. The watch face itself is covered with Gorilla Glass.

A cool feature that I found this morning is the remote control camera. Now people can take selfies without having their arms show up. Basically you pull up the dedicated Google Camera app on your phone and then your watch will display a button for you to press when you're ready to take the picture. The button will set off a 3 second timer before it goes off. After the picture is taken, it'll display on the watch for you to look at.

Overall, the Moto 360 is good watch. The sleek design is fantastic and breaks the norm of rectangular smart watches. I'm excited for new apps for the watch. I just wished voice response was a lot better.