Motorola’s smartwatch proves beauty is only skin deep

“Hey, is that the Moto 360? Man, it’s good looking”

That’s the reaction I got from an observant TSA agent who spotted Motorola’s new Moto 360 smartwatch on my wrist while I waited in the security line at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.

In fact, that’s the reaction I’ve gotten from everyone who has seen Motorola’s new smartwatch. Since it made its brief debut earlier this year, the Moto 360 has been one of the most coveted gadgets around that’s not named after a fruit. That’s thanks largely to its good looks.

But unlike its analog cousins, a smartwatch has to do more than look good. So is the Moto 360 both beautiful and functional enough to be the first must-have smartwatch?

An absolute of beauty

I know I just said this, but it bears repeating: The Moto 360 is one gorgeous smartwatch. OK, it’s not exactly a Movado or a Rolex. But as smartwatches go, this is the most beautiful offering around. And, yes, I’m counting the as-of-yet-unreleased Apple Watch.

The reason the 360 looks so good is because Motorola went out of its way to make a smartwatch that actuallylooks like a watch. The company’s designers and engineers didn’t try to create a sci-fi-style wearable bracelet straight out of Star Wars. Instead, they went to work trying to make a piece of technology that people would actually want to wear.

Beyond looking good, the Moto 360 is also incredibly comfortable to wear. In fact, comfort is part of the reason Motorola chose to use a circular design for the 360. Early versions of the watch that used square screens tended to rest awkwardly on testers’ wrists.

The centerpiece of the Moto 360 is its gorgeous 1.56-inch touchscreen display. Overall, the screen was responsive to inputs, never giving me any trouble when I swiped around the display.

Each Moto 360 comes in black or silver and includes a sumptuous black, gray, or light-gray leather wristband. The black 360 comes with the black band, while the lighter 360 comes with either the gray or the stone-colored band.

If leather isn’t your thing, you can always wait for the Moto 360 with a steel band to hit the market on Nov. 11. Unfortunately, that version will cost you an extra $50 over the standard Moto 360’s $249 price tag.

Form over function
In case you haven’t noticed, I love the way the Moto 360 looks. But as far as actually using the watch, that’s a mixed bag.

The 360 runs on Google’s Android Wear operating system for wearables. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because a host of other smartwatches, including LG’s G Watch and G Watch R, Samsung’s Gear Live, and Sony’s SmartWatch 3 also use the operating system.

The software works only with Android phones running Android 4.3 and later, so if you don’t have that, you’re out of luck. And, unfortunately, Android Wear doesn’t hit the mark yet as a good user experience.

I like the fact that the OS can receive every update and notification for my phone that appears in the Notifications Drawer, but you can’t interact with these notifications on the watch very much.

Instead, you’re usually met with the option to either dismiss the notification or open its associated app on your phone. And when you dismiss a notification, there’s no way to get it back on your own. Instead, you’ll have to wait until Android Wear determines that you need it again.

And that’s the biggest issue I have with Android Wear. It controls what you see and when you see it. If you want to see something, like the score of the Mets game, you have to use voice dictation to ask for it. There should be a better way to see the information you want without having to talk to your watch in public.

Replying to messages is also a problem for Android Wear. If you get a Twitter notification, for example, you can see what someone tweeted at you, but you can’t tweet back. The same goes for Facebook and most email apps besides Gmail.

Android Wear does have some redeeming qualities, though, such as the ability to control music on your smartphone. You can also perform searches for basic information via voice dictation and perform measurement conversions on the fly.

I also appreciated the fact that Android Wear was able to pull information from my email, like my hotel’s location, and display it on the 360.

Voice controls
Speaking of voice controls, the 360’s are activated by saying “OK, Google,” followed by your command. Motorola’s engineers told me that they went out of their way to make sure that the Moto 360’s voice recognition is top-notch. But during my time with the watch, I found it lacking.

There were several times when I found myself yelling, “OK, Google” at the top of my lungs, because the 360 didn’t recognize my input. Other times, the watch understood my input but timed out before I could give it a command.

The majority of the time, the 360’s voice recognition worked well. But when it didn’t, it was incredibly frustrating. Imagine how strange you’d look standing on a subway platform yelling, “OK, Google” at your wrist over and over again. That was me last week.

Fitness
The Moto 360, like most Android Wear watches, comes with a built-in pedometer and heart-rate monitor. Motorola also has developed its own heart-rate monitor app that not only lets you check your heartbeats per minute, but also tells you whether you were inactive, active, or performing vigorous activity based on how fast your ticker was pounding.

Moreover, the app is programmed to recognize how many minutes a day you’ve been active and lets you know if you’ve met the 30 minutes of recommended activity each day. It then tells you if you’ve met the pre-programmed weekly goal of 30 minutes of activity every day for five out of seven days per week. That’s pretty nifty.

Still, you have to remain motionless when checking your heart rate with the 360, which isn’t ideal for runners or other exercise fanatics. You also have to make sure that the watch is close to your skin to ensure that it can read your heart rate, so you can’t wear the 360 too loosely.

Performance
Beyond its lackluster voice recognition, the Moto 360 never gave me any trouble when it came to overall performance. I swiped through Android Wear’s card-based interface without a hiccup or a slowdown. Though, as I said, the voice recognition definitely needs work.

The only problem I have with the Moto 360’s hardware is its battery. The 360, like all Android Wear devices, features two display modes, ambient mode and standard mode.

Ambient mode keeps the watch face on at all times in a dimmed state, lighting it up fully only when its internal motion sensors recognize that you are moving the watch to check the time or to interact with it. Standard mode keeps the watch face off at all times and lights it up when you move it to check the time.

With ambient mode turned on, I averaged between 12 and 14 hours of battery life. Admittedly, I was checking the time and playing with the interface a lot, but I still expected more out of the 360.

I managed to coax a bit more juice out of the watch by turning down the display brightness to the lowest setting, but it was still well short of Motorola’s claimed 24 hours of battery life. To get that much out of the Moto 360’s battery, you’ll have to keep ambient mode turned off and interact with the display more judiciously.

Basically, you’re going to have to charge the 360 every night along with your smartphone. The Pebble and Pebble Steel smartwatches, which both use e-ink displays, can last up to five days on a single charge.

It’s worth noting that Apple’s new Apple Watch will have a reported 24-hour battery life as well. So, for now, it looks like a single day of battery life is the limit for smartwatches with color touchscreens.

Should you get it?
I genuinely want to like the Moto 360. Despite its flaws, it’s the best-looking smartwatch on the planet and the best Android Wear watch yet. But my issues with Android Wear and the watch’s limited battery life keep me from giving it a full endorsement.

If you’re interested in smartwatches that can give you all-day battery life and let you check your notifications whenever you want, then you might want to look into the Pebble Steel. Its display isn’t anywhere near as good as the Moto 360’s, but then that’s what gives it such a long-lasting battery.

If you’re absolutely married to the idea of getting an Android Wear watch, then the Moto 360 is easily the one to go for. But I’d recommend holding off on the Moto 360 until Google can give Android Wear some additional functionality.