While a lot of the wearable world has been distracted by not-quite-launches at IFA in Berlin and Fashion Week in New York, or vague rumors from some tiny startup in Cupertino, Motorola was actually shipping product this week. The Moto360 became the first Android Wear smartwatch to hit the market, and the first reviews are pretty positive.
The Verge was nearly rhapsodic, loving the design and noting (correctly) that the best thing about it is its unobtrusiveness — no small trick for such a hefty gadget. The reviewer gave minor dings to the device for a slightly pixelated display and a tendency to cut off the edges of notification cards, which is an artifact of squeezing a rectangular UI onto a round device. The big problem is major one indeed: the battery won’t last a day. Who’d want a watch that won’t get through the day?
Ars Technica was a bit more restrained and superficial, noting how much better is is than anything else on the market, but they hadn’t had the thing for as long as The Verge seemed to have. First impressions were OK, and they promised something more in depth Sunday night.