Test of the Motorola Moto 360, a connected timepiece

The Motorola Moto 360 is the most anticipated Android Wear connected watch, and it is finally available several months after its announcement. I've been wearing it on my wrist for a week. Some have problems with the battery… Are they (still) right? Here's what I think.

Let's start with the "raw" characteristics: the Moto 360 has a 1.56-inch LCD screen in 320 by 290 pixel definition (205 ppi) treated with Corning Gorilla Glass. We find Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy, water resistance up to one meter deep for 30 minutes (IP67), wireless charging (induction, Qi), 4 GB of internal storage and 512 MB of RAM. Finally, it is 4.6 cm in diameter and 1.15 cm thick.

The design of this watch is obviously amazing

The design of this watch is obviously amazing. It's the first connected watch that looks like a standard watch. Its stainless steel construction and leather strap only increase the impression of quality. The Moto 360 is minimalist, natural with this very thin bezel around the screen and a single button on the right side.

The downside to this round shape is that it makes a lot of things more difficult. First, the software. Android Wear has not been optimized for round watches. It's not disabling, but it is noticeable – the text is occasionally cut off, we sometimes guess the icons and several dedicated applications are not functional. It's pretty clumsy… But it's brave of Motorola. This Moto 360 will allow developers to appropriate this screen format.

Flappy Bird-like!

Second, the source of a good chunk of the criticism is that little black bar at the bottom, where the ambient light sensor is nestled (to automatically adjust screen brightness) and the hidden connectors that tie the display panel to the remains of the insides of the watch. Maybe the black bar is disturbing. Maybe it's not.

Personally, I have found a few tricks so that it is not annoying. For example, find a dial with a black background – or a frame provided for this purpose – for example with a suitable image as the wallpaper.

The screen is just fabulous. We can find a somewhat low pixel density (1.56 inches for a definition of 320 by 290 pixels, or 205 pixels per inch), but at a normal distance from the eyes (30 centimeters), we cannot discern any pixel at the naked eye.

The beveled edges all around the screen really give this impression of quality… nevertheless, we quickly notice a visual anomaly at the level of the chamfer (the small surface formed by a cut edge) on the glass. We end up with a refraction that gives rainbow colors and distorts the image. An annoying little detail.

The base bracelet uses a spring pin (22mm standard), so you can easily change it. It's interesting, especially since we see that Apple has chosen a proprietary system for its Apple Watch. The supplied strap is in black leather, it comes from the American company Horween Leather Company – neighbors of Motorola in Chicago. It's not as fancy as the steel straps that will be available later, but it's a lot better than the rubber bands often found on smartwatches.

Picture gallery

Motorola Connect

Motorola offers a dedicated app for customizing and accessing heart sensor data. The application is simple, but well done.

Motorola Connect

Motorola pushes advice based on its activity… Basically, I have to move more!

Autonomy is much better than expected

You should know that I had the right to the famous update, from the first start of the watch. This update is supposed to bring real autonomy optimizations.

After a week of use, what do I think of the Moto 360's battery life? It is largely adequate. My Moto 360 has never turned off for lack of autonomy, nevertheless I install it every evening on its wireless charging docking station, and it acts as a very practical bedside table alarm clock: the screen remains discreetly lit with the battery level.

Official Android Wear app

Very important point. Android Wear must be configured to give you the important information you need. Without configuration, you will receive all kinds of notifications, so it is better to choose which notifications to receive. What are the most important? SMS, calls, e-mails… Your watch should be perceived as an organized and personalized extension of your phone, and not an extension with a pile of rubbish thrown away without any sorting.

Yes, you will need to charge the watch every night. For me, it's not a problem: I constantly take off my watch before sleeping. But actually, it can be a love kill, especially since you won't be able to use the watch as an alarm clock (vibration), nor any sleep analysis app – this type of app is very interesting to analyze this type of data to know the quality of sleep.

Like smartphones, I think smartwatches should last a "full day", as long as you have notifications turned on. For once, the Moto 360 meets these criteria. It never fell below 20%, even on very busy days – 6:30 a.m. to midnight.

Performance, one of the sensitive points

One of the sensitive points concerns performance. While the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live are both powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, the Moto 360 is powered by an older TI OMAP 3 processor.

Even though Android Wear doesn't lend itself too much to benchmarks, we've launched VFP Benchmark, a test that calculates the raw performance of the processor. In this test, the Moto 360 and its TI OMAP 3 placed ahead of the LG G Watch and its Qualcomm Snapdragon 400. At least, this is true in single precision (used in the vast majority of applications) while in double mode accuracy, Qualcomm's SoC takes the lead. The multitasking scores are amazing since they should be higher on the Snapdragon 400 due to the presence of 4 cores. Bad optimization of Android Wear or benchmark?

Why this choice ? Surely because the specifications of the Moto 360 had been defined several months in advance. Nonetheless, I find their choice disappointing, it's almost as if he just used the MotoActv in a shiny new box. It's a 6-year-old architecture. The result: you don't notice it at first glance, however you notice lags here and there. I assure you: nothing bad. Images may be choppy and loading may be slow on some apps. But honestly, I don't understand this choice. The brand must have a huge bedroom filled with TI OMAP 3. This is the only plausible explanation.

Conclusion

At the office, I'm not the only one to have adopted the Moto 360. I gathered feedback from Edouard Marquez (Sidereo):

After several days of use and having installed the latest update, the Moto 360 does not deserve the relentlessness of the first tests. The battery, which is regularly singled out for being limited, certainly offers less autonomy than the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live, but easily lasts the day.

Being a “moderate” Android Wear user, I sometimes come home with 20% more battery after a long day (6 a.m. -> midnight). Some lags are sometimes visible (very random), but this behavior tends to disappear over the updates.

Everything else is then a success: Motorola's "watchfaces" with customizable color, heart rate detection at regular intervals, wireless charging (Qi)... Also owner of the Samsung Gear Live, I no longer have it turned on since I received the Moto 360, proof that Motorola has done a good job. It is certainly not perfect, but it is currently the best compromise on Android Wear.