Motorola’s Moto 360 has been the unofficial face of Android Wear ever since the platform was announced earlier this year, and for good reason. While the LG G Watch was officially called the reference device for the platform, the style that the Moto 360 oozes caught everyone’s attention, and now we’re seeing from the specs themselves that all that attention was certainly worth it. It’s taken some time for Motorola to perfect the design of their first smartwatch, but it’s one that’s pretty much universally praised outside of the little bar at the bottom that’s been irking some people as of late.
The Moto 360 obvious runs Android Wear, and is the same version as all the other Android Wear watches out there, which shouldn’t be any different going forward. The watch itself can work on its own, but to enjoy it as a true smartwatch you’ll need a phone with Android 4.3 or higher, which most Android phones released in the last 2 years should be running. The beautiful round display prominently featured on the front is a 1.56-inch 320 x 290 backlit LCD covered by Gorilla Glass 3 for extra scratch resistance. You’ll notice it’s not 320 x 320, as the bottom set of pixels is not part of the display at all, rather a housing for the internals of the watch. This keeps the watch thin and makes the bezels smaller, which is a trade-off Motorola felt was worth the minor annoyance of it not being a perfect circular display.
The watch is held on your wrist by a genuine leather band crafted by Horween in Chicago, and is fully interchangeable. The casing itself is made out of stainless steel, and all in all weighs only 49g. The diameter of the watch is a respectable 46mm, with the height coming in at 11.5mm. On the casing itself you’ll find the power button on the right that looks like a standard watch dial, and on the back there’s an optical heart rate monitor. The whole device is IP67 water resistant, which means you’ve got about a half-hour under water until problems could possibly arise.
Inside the watch you’ll find something a little different from other Android Wear watches: a Texas Instruments OMAP 3 CPU instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 found in all the others. The device has 4GB of internal storage for various use-case scenarios including apps and other data, and 512MB of RAM keep things zippy while running multiple apps. Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy is the supported connectivity method, and with a 320mAh battery you’re definitely going to get a full day’s use out of the Moto 360.
Last but not least we’ve got the pedometer for tracking steps throughout the day, and wireless charging for easily dropping the watch on the charging pad at night instead of having to mess with flimsy or annoying clip-on docks. The Moto 360 is one sexy watch with some stunning features packed inside, and while there’s only one variety for the time being it looks like it’s been well worth the weight.