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Hands on: LG G Watch review

Hands on: LG G Watch review

A bit of smartphone on your wrist


Our early verdict

"A solid entry into Android Wear at an affordable price"
For
  • Nice design
  • Vivid display
  • Voice recognition
Against
  • Low battery life
  • Usefulness is subjective
  • No heart-rate monitor
Look out, Dick Tracy, we can now see Facebook notifications on our wristwatches and ask for directions on the road! Does that sound exciting? Or are you asking yourself, "Why God, why?"
Whether you're excited or apathetic, the LG G Watch is here with Android Wear, and in my very limited time with it, it's been pretty cool, but slightly underwhelming. Maybe that's actually a good thing. After all, you don't want this to be a distraction, but a complement to your smartphone instead.
LG G Watch review
With Android Wear, you basically get to deal with lots of the things you'd normally do on your phone. Instead of pulling your Android smartphone to check for notifications, they all come straight to your watch - or they're supposed to, at the very least. And it all happens with a low-power Bluetooth connection between the watch and your phone.
Whenever your phone receives a certain type of notification, it goes to your watch. You can also reply to certain notifications, like Google Hangouts, simply by tapping that you want to respond, and then you can speak your reply while it's translated into text. With this system, you'll rarely ever have to touch your phone.
But before we dive into the software and everything you can and will be able to do with it, let's talk about the hardware first.

Hardware

Obviously, we're not dealing with smartphone-level graphics or processing here. The LG G Watch has a 1.65-inch 280 x 280 display, and it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz processor and CPU.
The battery is a 400mAh unit that promises up to 36 hours of battery life on a single charge. We haven't even had the watch for that amount of time, so we'll have to report back with our findings on battery life. But so far, it looks like it's going to be closer to about 24 hours.
LG G Watch review
Think of a dramatically scaled-down smartphone, and that's what the G Watch sort of looks like. It's square, there's a bezel and there's a display. The watch has no buttons on it, so you'll be interfacing with your finger or you voice.
If you flip it over to the back of the watch, you'll see a small set of connectors that are used to charge the watch when it's docked in its charger. The charger itself is very small and connects to a power source via microUSB.
LG G Watch review
If you decide to plunk down the $229 that the LG G Watch retails for, you'll be able to choose black or a white and gold model. It's dustproof and water resistant to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes.
The strap is made exclusively for LG, but if you want to add your own touch, it'll fit any 22mm strap out there, so you can tweak the look and feel as you please.

Software

Getting down to the meat of things, we have Android Wear. First and foremost, being a watch, it tells you the time. Duh. But the cool thing is you have numerous watch faces and styles to choose from.
Beyond telling you the time, like a watch should, Android Wear will also ping you with Facebook notifications, text messages, Google Hangouts messages, Facebook Messages, and it will also count your daily steps to remind you how lazy you are.
LG G Watch review
The annoying thing is that while some of the notifications can be handled from your wrist, many can't, and it forces you to unlock your phone to handle them. At the very least, you can decide by glancing at your wrist whether you want to attend to a notification - just like, you know, glancing right at your phone and doing the same exact thing, except on your wrist!
Think of it like a nagging significant other strapped tightly to your wrist, but with the option of muting it whenever you want. You wish you could do that with your significant other.
You can also think of Android Wear as having more convenient access to Google Now, so you can ask it questions and request it to do things, and sometimes it will get you results, and sometimes it won't. It's not perfect.
LG G Watch review
Another cool feature is the ability to control music playback from the LG G Watch. It's pretty limited right now since you can only pause or play music, or skip songs or go back. Oddly, the Next and Previous buttons are on separate screens (i.e. you have to swipe left or right to hit those respective buttons). It would be nice if you could adjust volume, but it's possible that a software update will address that.
With Android Wear, the LG G Watch will also serve as a compass and GPS of sorts. If you're riding your bike or going for a walk, you can ask for directions via Google Now.
LG G Watch review
It seems like the only thing that the G Watch doesn't do right now is monitor your heart rate. Being a first-generation product, it's likely that a heart-rate monitor will find its way onto future iterations of the product.
Fitness buffs will undoubtedly appreciate the step counter on the G Watch, but a heart rate monitor and a way to track sleep would round it out really nicely.
It's only a matter of time, of course, until Android Wear and supporting watches offer these features.

The competition

Right now, the only real competition is Pebble. Of course, there is the Samsung Gear Live and the Moto 360, but at this point, choosing between the Android Wear watches is mostly a matter of style and taste.
Pebble has a few things going for it, namely its looks and the fact that it's compatible with both iOS and Android. The LG G Watch, like other Android Wear watches, work only with Android. That's a given. We'll have to wait and see what the iWatch will be like, if or when it comes.
The Pebble also offers battery life of up to 4 or 5 days, which is more than double what the LG G Watch promises.
The downside is that the nicer Pebble, the Pebble Steel, is $250. That's $30 more for the LG G Watch, which arguably offers more features than the Pebble.

Early Verdict

The LG G Watch is sweet, and with a price tag of $229, it's really easy to make it an impulse buy. I mean, if you're buying a decent watch anyway, you're likely going to be in the neighborhood of $300-500. And those watches won't show you Facebook notifications.
For a first-generation product, it's not bad. The screen doesn't need to be razor sharp, and it doesn't need more power than it already has. It could use better battery life, but charging it every night is easy and it'll easily get you through the day.
If you're in the market for a new smartwatch, and you're an Android user, the LG G Watch is it.

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