Durability – Oh good. 1-Day battery life.
In terms of the durability, the Moto 360, has a battery that will last at least a day which we find a little lacking. Charging the watch is simple as all you have to do is put it in its cradle and this easy to read nightstand watch face comes up. In a pinch, you can take an Apple Watch charger to charge your Moto 360 as well.
In terms of scratch protection, the Moto 360 is covered in a sheet of Gorilla Glass 3 so everything short of sand paper will not leave a mark. The smartwatch isn’t waterproof so don’t go swimming with it or showering with it.
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Functionality – A sub-par smartwatch experience
Connecting to the Moto 360 is done through the Android Wear App and Moto’s own Connect app. Like the Apple Watch, the Moto 360 requires an Android phone to pair with so you won’t be able to run this device on just a desktop. In terms of 3rd party apps, you can easily download additional apps from the Google Play store so you can easily customize what you see on the Moto 360. The custom watches faces is a nice feature which we wished the Apple Watch had more of.
For handling, we found this motorola smartwatch touchscreen a little too sluggish for our liking during our testing period for our Moto 360 review. Its not slow but it doesn’t always registers swipes so it gets a little annoying at times. This was something we didn’t notice until we used an Apple Watch and a Samsung Gear S so its not terribly noticeable.
There is one button on the 360 and for the most part, its useless. It seems like Motorola engineers looked at a normal watch and said “that watches have the little knobby thing so we need to have that knobby thing”. Depending on how your watch sits on your wrist, there is a chance that you can constantly turn the screen on and off which ties into how the Motorola 360 is uncomfortable at times.
The viewability of the touchscreen is quite nice and works well in all light conditions though some apps will get cut off due to the circular face.
User Interface and Notifications
One of the standout issues that we came across for our Moto 360 review was the user interface. The UI for the Moto 360 needs to be refined as notifications generally get annoying because its always in your face and takes up a good portion of the watch face. The real estate that the notification takes gets annoying when you’re using a different watch face you won’t be able to tell what time it is for parts of the day.
The actual notifications themselves are quite nice as each notification will be slightly different. It’s a nice added feature to see a person’s picture on a Facebook notification or the Netflix notification will have a picture of the TV show you’re watching. This doesn’t really add an functionality but its just nice.
The best part of these notifications is how easy it is to open the corresponding app on your Android. Swipe over and press “Open” and it shows up on your phone (see the video for a full demonstration).
Navigation
Navigation of the 360 is also a bit clunky and it took me a while to get into the right mindset for the watch. Unlike the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear S, you don’t have an app interface. To find the right app, you need to tap once, scroll through a ton of useless options until you find “start” and then select the app that you want to use. The 360 is smart enough to put two of the recently used apps at the top of the menu which helps with the access.
Sensors
In terms of the sensors on the 360, you have an accelerometer and heart rate sensor but no GPS. Any sort of GPS functionality comes from the paired Android phone. The heart rate sensor is a little finicky as well and doesn’t track your heart as well as other smartwatches. Also, under sweaty conditions, the heart rate sensor doesn’t always work.
