Minimalist styling, lots of potential for Android Wear, water and dustproof
Monolithic styling, separate charging dock, Android Wear still developing
LG's G Watch is one of the first wearable tech devices to run on the Android Wear operating system. It's a promising start, but could the best be yet to come?
Software & chassis
Unlike Sony, Samsung, Pebble and others who've been ploughing their own furrow in wearable tech, LG has opted to use Android Wear as the basis for its first smart watch. Google's software has the advantage that the big company developed it, but also that it will work with any Android phone which it connects to via Bluetooth (so long as it's running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or later).
Style-wise, it's kinda butch. Not everyone wants to sport a solid black monolith on their wrist. It's kinda chunky too.
Practically, that's a good thing, since you get a good-sized 1.65-inch screen to view, but it does have a tendency to take over, especially if you're on the petite side.
It comes with a basic rubber strap, which is comfy enough, though it can get a bit sweaty in warm weather. Fortunately the G Watch is equipped with standard 22mm spring pins so you can swap it for virtually any style of strap you fancy.
It comes with IP67 water and dustproofing, but to charge, it comes with a magnetic plate that clips onto the charging pins on the back (there are no exposed ports and no buttons on the G Watch) and connects to the mains via a standard micro USB connection.
Screen & processor
The 1.65-inch square display offers 280x280-pixel resolution, which is okay on a screen this size. You can easily read emails and notifications, though it feels a little lacking in detail when viewing pictures or web pages. You can adjust the display wallpaper and content, including showing the time subtly, in the corner, or taking up the whole of the display in digital or analogue formats.
The 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 is backed by 512MB RAM, which is pretty powerful for a smart watch. It responds very quickly, and we never felt like it was taking its time. There's also 4GB of memory on board though at this stage you can't really add anything to it. That may change with future updates but at the moment it's just there for apps and data storage.
Operation
In use, the G Watch can actually offer quite a lot. Saying 'OK Google' gets you into voice control mode and you can receive push notifications with Google Now-style cards to tell you about news, weather, emails or Facebook updates. There's a step counter of course, and you can use it to play back music on your phone. It can sometimes get a little confusing however. You can receive notifications of text messages for instance, but not see them.
Unless you're using Google Hangouts, which hasn't exactly set the world on fire as yet.
There's a microphone but no speaker, so you can't take calls on the G Watch, but you can use Google Now for voice commands
The 400mAh battery isn't the most powerful we've come across. It should do you a couple of days at a time, which doesn't seem quite enough to be comfortable. You can extend it a bit though by dimming the screen and switching off the 'always on' setting.
Conclusion
It's a little hard to see the LG in the LG G Watch -- this seems very much like a Google device. And as a showcase for Android Wear, it feels very much like the beginning rather than the finished product. Its minimalist good looks will still seem like a heavy block on smaller wrists and the battery life isn't quite up to scratch yet, but there's plenty of potential for the platform to grow and develop into something genuinely useful rather than just a wearable gimmick.
Software: Android Wear
Processor: 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
Memory: 4GB
Display: 1.65in IPS LCD
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: Micro USB on charging cradle supplied
Camera: No
Radio: No
Battery: 400mAh
Size: 38x47x10mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
