by Garrison Walters
I got a Fitbit for Christmas and found it really useful. Unfortunately, the band was hard to operate and challenging to keep attached. I bought a “guard” but eventually lost the band with the very small electronic part embedded in it.
The Fitbit was my first fitness assistant device, and it gave me the bug. I really liked the information it offered and wasn’t bothered at all by having it on my arm.
So, when I saw the Moto 360 on sale at Best Buy for half the price of the iWatch, I decided to go for it.
An iWatch would actually have cost me a lot more than its already high sticker price since I’d have needed to dump my fairly new Samsung Edge and get an iPhone as well. An easy choice.
The Moto came with the usual minimal instructions. The idea these days is that a product—hardware or software--is so easy to use you don’t need an instruction manual or a guide to operation. Here’s a message from me to the industry: it isn’t that easy. The illusion of simplicity causes people to waste a lot of time.
Someday, this “no instructions” approach will go away. In the meantime, it makes you wonder—how far does the trend go? For example, when corporations buy politicians do they get instruction books? As in, “How to operate your new United States Senator”? Or do the CEOs have to keep trying things until they get it right? Just wonderin.’*
The Moto with metal band is, in my opinion, nice looking. If you’re into inscrutable black-mirror type objects. Adjusting the band does require expert help, but it took the lady at the mall just a few minutes, for which she charged a flat eight bucks. In my case, with what I’d call a medium male wrist, one extra link from the two provided in the case was needed.
The watch feels quite comfortable to me. That might not be true on a much smaller wrist, though.
As noted by others, the size of this watch is not for everyone. It’s quite large. That could be a serious problem if you’re into fashion and you’re a woman. On the other hand, the size is a plus if you want to be able to actually use the device.
At its current size, the Moto 360’s screen has enough resolution to be easy to read and to look good.
Is it usable? I think the answer is “yes” if you think of it as a notification device, and “not much” if you think of it as a watch.
The Moto 360 works very well for notifications.
If you’re a fan of the eerily prescient Google Now, you’ll find the notices about flight times and incoming messages very useful. It’s great to see things with a quick glance rather than having to constantly retrieve your phone. Indeed, I can see situations, such as a canceled flight, where the faster notification could make a big difference by helping you to beat the crowd for rebooking.
Little Moto integrates nicely with Google Maps. Directional notices, such as “turn in 200 feet,” show up reliably and are useful if you don’t have navigation in your car.
Given that most people sufficiently interested in technology to buy a gadget like this actually do have vehicle navigation, I’d offer another use case: walking. It’s a whole lot easier to find your way to an urban address with occasional glances at your watch than if you have to hold your phone and keep refreshing the screen.
Another very handy use case is traffic notifications. Google Now gives me these even when I don’t have a route planned. If there’s something to worry about in the next few miles, I’m warned.
Cool. But don’t let your gaze linger. It’s not a good idea to remove your eyes from the road and take your hand from the wheel at the same time.
Actually, you couldn’t look at this device for very long, because the screen times out so fast.
The very short display time is puzzling. I would guess it lasts for 3-5 seconds. That would be OK if it was only the default and you could adjust for your preferences. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Indeed the settings menu has very few options.
Also, the pattern of swipes and taps needed to find and follow up on information isn’t intuitive, nor does it appear to be consistent. Sometimes, when I guess at the sequence and get it wrong, Little Moto doesn’t want to respond at all. I just get a glossy black stare.
The voice recognition is great. When I bring the watch reasonably close to my mouth and say “OK Google,” I can then respond to the command screen with something like, “take my pulse.” The process starts immediately and works well.
Contrary to the views of some others, I’ve found the information on heart rate to be consistent and, as far as I can tell, accurate. Close enough, at any rate, for the purpose.
One use of the voice recognition is to say “take a note” (or similar). When the screen pops up you can dictate a note that’s transcribed immediately and reasonably accurately (assuming your phone has an Internet connection.
Unfortunately, “reasonably accurate” isn’t the same as “perfect.” And, when the system gets it wrong, you’re in trouble. Google’s Moto 360 voice recognition often interprets my attempt at “the” as “Steve.” On a computer, this isn’t a big problem because you can easily make corrections. On a watch, you can only correct it by retrieving the note on your phone (or later, on a computer). This is not convenient at all and makes it useless for sending texts or e-mail. Unless of course, you’re OK with sending more than usually garbled messages to your friends.
After some searching around (no instructions, remember?) I located my notes in the Google Keep app on my phone. That’s good—at least if you have Android.
I don’t have a concern about the battery life since the watch easily lasts a full day even when I stress it. Also, I don’t mind connecting it to the pleasant little charger at night.
But beware--the battery doesn’t last when you set it to “ambient mode.” The idea with this mode is that the watch face is on all the time, just very dim. Forget it. The illumination in ambient mode is too faint to be readable, at least on a consistent basis. I stopped using it after one day—the loss of battery life would be OK if the screen was useful. It isn’t.
Little Moto works well for fitness. It connects to My Tracks on the phone and gives me updates on time and distance when I bike or walk. This is very nice, since checking on this information is too hard to do on the phone. [See the Update, below] Some additional fitness apps would be nice, though.
I’ll agree with the mainstream view that the Moto 360 needs more and better apps.
On the other hand, counting and comparing the number of available apps, as many reviewers do, is dumb. This is a limited purpose device and 20-30 good apps is probably more than enough.
In summary, I like my Little Moto as a “device,” but not much as a watch.
For one thing, I found the “wrist flick” method of viewing the time to work intermittently. I couldn’t trust it, so gave up and looked at a regular watch that I continued to wear on my left arm.
Watches are normally something buyers expect to have for a number of years. Even people who see them as jewelry and have more than one think of watches as good for ten years or more. I regularly wear several because I like the design. For me, watches function as jewelry (though I could care less whether others admire them).
However, the literally faceless black spot of the Moto 360 doesn’t qualify as bling. Unless, of course, it harmonizes with some obscure religion, perhaps one based on Dorothy Parker’s infamous story, “The Lottery.”
Should you buy one?
Well, first remember that the functionality of the first wave of digital watches is seriously limited by their processor power, their battery life, and to some extent by their screen quality. All of these will be dramatically better in three years, at which point your 2015 iWatch or Moto 360 or whatever will be in the back of a drawer somewhere. So don’t think of this as a watch, think of it as a soon-to-be-obsolescent cell phone accessory and don’t pay more than $200 for it.
*Of course, there could also be an FAQ. Like, “What to do if your family values Senator gets involved in a sex scandal.
UPDATE
* I've learned that Google's excellent My Tracks software, which provides a record of where's you've been and more, absolutely kills battery life on the Moto 360. I'm lucky to get half a day when My Tracks is running. I assume this is because the phone and watch are constantly communicating. Too bad.
