“Better late, than never”, or so I’m told. Motorola sent over a Moto 360 for us to start our review one, seeing as our Moto Maker order has been delayed. So we finally have a Moto X Pure Edition and a Moto 360 2nd Generation in the house. Motorola sent over a 46mm Men’s Moto 360 here with the silver case, and bezel along with the Cognac Leather band. The one that we ordered from Moto Maker is pretty much the same, except we got a 42mm Men’s version and the bezel is the micro knurl. We should have that in hand soon, and we will show off some pictures showing the different sizes as soon as we get the other one.
So I’ve been wearing the Moto 360 today, and this is the first time in about 4 months that I’ve worn a smartwatch. Typically, I just wear my Fitbit Flex. So for me it took a little bit of getting used too, having a heavier item on my wrist. But it looks great, especially with the Cognac or brown leather here. Which is Horween leather. Now last year, Motorola sourced the leather for both the Moto X and the Moto 360 locally from Chicago. We are unsure if that is the case this year, but it appears to be the same leather. Which looks and feels really nice.
With the previous Moto 360, there were two major issues. One was battery life and the other was the performance. Last year, Motorola had decided to go with a TI OMAP processor, that was quite old. And you could really see it struggling when we got our hands on it last fall. For the most part, it handled well, but there were those times where it would stutter a bit. This year, Motorola has gone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, the same processor that is in every other Android Wear smartwatch. And so far, there hasn’t been any issues in performance here. Of course, we can talk more about that in the full review, as we would have used it a bit more. The other thing is battery life. It’s still a bit early to tell how well battery life will be here, but so far it’s looking good. Not 2 days good, but good enough to get through a full day, at least.
Motorola also moved the crown a bit. Instead of it being at 3 o’clock, it’s now at 2 o’clock. That’s the same spot that the Huawei Watch has placed theirs. Motorola mentioned that the reasoning for this was because it would get mashed up against your hand. So this way it’s a bit more pleasant to use, and still works well. Although, I hardly use it, as I typically just tap on the display. Speaking of the display here, it’s an LCD display and not an AMOLED. Not a huge deal, but it does still look quite nice, and outdoors, there’s definitely enough brightness to see the display. Always important.
The combination that we have here will set you back about $349 now from MotoMaker. You can take a look at our unboxing down below, as well as check out some pictures of the new Moto 360.
