Review: Motorola Moto 360 (2015)

The second generation Motorola Moto 360 takes the design up a notch with two sizes, 42 mm and 46 mm, and some pretty nice Moto Maker customization. It can be ordered with a contrasting bezel and a variety of leather and stainless link bands. Let’s take a quick look at the specs before we go into our in-depth review.

Specs:-

• Processor: 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
• Display: 1.56-inch 360 x 330 (233ppi) and 1.37-inch 360 x 325 (263ppi) LCD with Gorilla Glass 3
• Memory: 512 MB of RAM
• Storage: 4 GB internal storage
• Battery: 400 mAh and 300 mAh non-removable
• OS: Android Wear

Review

Hardware

Design & Build Quality

The new Motorola Moto 360 is available in 42 mm and 46 mm sizes; it’s more for sizing and comfort. The first generation was 46 mm, and it’s better suited to big boned men. The 42 mm is the more mainstream size.

Much like the predecessor, its highly responsive display and the slight protrusion gives better viewing angles. However, previous Moto 360 users will still find the second generation model having the blacked-out section at the bottom of the display. It’s more of a personal annoyance than anything major, but as we’ve seen competitors launch a fully circular display and it seems strange Motorola has failed to do so here.

Its build quality has also seen an improvement compared to its predecessor. Overall, we really love that Motorola has launched the second generation of its smartwatch in two different size.

Display

The Moto 360 display is much improved in terms of brightness and color saturation. It is protected by the Gorilla Glass 3 instead of sapphire crystal, but we expect it to hold up well to its competition. Like the predecessor, it has an ambient light sensor hidden under the blacked-out section at the bottom of the display.

Performance

For the second generation Moto 360, the company upgraded the CPU to a quad core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 CPU so there’s no lag as compared to the first generation model. The rest of of the specs are on par with its competition, 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage.

Other sensors equipped with the watch are a pedometer and an optical heart rate monitor. The optical heart rate monitor is no longer an always-on feature. Rather, it’ll take the user’s reading every 5 minutes. Paired with Moto Body, it help monitor users overall activity level, providing detailed stats about the user’s activity levels along with reminders to help the user reach their daily and weekly activity goals.

We also noticed that the vibration on the new Moto 360 is pretty subtle and easy to miss but overall, there’s an improvement on the performance of the second generation Moto 360.

Battery Life

The first generation Moto 360’s battery life was short of good. However, we are glad that the new Moto 360’s battery life has very much improved. In fact, it will make it through to about noon the next day if users forget to charge it. The 42 mm models have a 300 mAh battery while the 46mm has a 400 mAh battery (there’s more room for that larger battery). We have the 42 mm for review, so we’re quoting our results based on that. We’d expect the 46 mm to last 1.5 to perhaps 2 days on a charge.

Software

The new Moto 360 runs the latest version of Android Wear based on Android 5 Lollipop with support for a few new and important features like syncing to the iPhone (syncing to Android devices is still a core feature) and Wi-Fi sync to increase device to watch communication range; no more disconnects when users walk to away from the paired device.

There are a few games, calculators and other handy apps that users can interact with on the smartwatch itself. Still, we would like to think that Android Wear smartwatches are basically an extension of the user’s device and that’s Google’s plan for Android Wear all along. Users will no longer need to pull device out of pocket to check for notifications.

Final Thoughts

The Moto 360 (2015) is available in two sizes and both men’s and women’s models. There are a variety of colors, bands and bezel treatments to choose from, and the price isn’t higher than the competition. In terms of functionality, Android Wear is slowly moving forward.

Overall, we really enjoyed the great improvements over the first generation Moto 360. Moto keeps the price relatively reasonable, with the price starting at $299 for the 42 mm and $349 for the 46 mm, and a variety of upscale tweaks like a stainless band, bezel patterns and gold color can raise the price anywhere up to $399 for the 42 mm and $449 for the 46 mm.