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LG G Watch R

Editor's rating (1-5): Where to Buy

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What's Hot: Good looking, colorful and bright P-OLED display, better than average battery life.

What's Not: Android Wear is still a work in progress with a UI that can be challenging if you don't want to speak to your watch.

Reviewed January 5, 2015 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)

Some day we'll laugh at articles that laud the amazing long battery life of watches like the LG G Watch R and Sony Smartwatch 3. Two whole days on a charge--woohoo! Indeed, that is better than current Samsung and Moto smartwatches that average a day of use, so us techies get a little jazzed by two day battery life. Still, before smartwatches became a thing, everyone wanted and expected five days or a week on a charge. Pebble comes close, and nothing else does.

Though the $299 LG G Watch R is one of the best Android Wear watches we've reviewed, like all Android Wear watches it's much better once you seriously temper your expectations. There's nothing wrong with the G Watch R's hardware or design--that stuff is tops, albeit oversized. It's the OS itself and the idea of Android Wear that leaves me wanting: it presents the smartwatch as a second screen for your Android phone. Problem 1: lots of folks don't use Android phones (yes, if they use iOS they can jump on the Apple Watch in February 2015 or use the Pebble Steel now). Problem 2: is a second screen for your phone really worth $300? Or $250 like the Moto 360 or even $199 like the stylish Asus Zenwatch? That depends on your disposable income and lust for wearable tech, but even the most enthusiastic techie has a little internal gremlin that says "you could just take your phone out of your pocket". There are those who'd argue that our information and social networking obsessions will only escalate when Facebook and CNN are just a wrist away. Android Wear is about "timely" (that's Google's pun, don't blame me) information and not much else. That is changing quickly though, and in the past few months Google Play's Android Wear section has a selection of apps that do more than just notify you of email, texts, stocks and the weather. There's Evernote, calculators and rudimentary games. The watch has a pedometer and a reasonably accurate heart rate monitor for the health conscious, and a vibration motor for alerts but no speaker.

But let's look at the G Watch R itself: it's a good looking watch with a round face that looks like a men's diver watch. It's worlds better looking than the LG G Watch (no R) that looked no better than a $25 Timex. With the R, LG saw the light and made something that actually looked like a watch and had some class. It's a similar yet different esthetic from the also round Moto 360, which is more understated and minimalist. The metal bezel is raised above the 1.3" P-OLED display to protect it, but it's also a style element in black metal with increments marked at the quarter hour and hour. It looks great if you use one of the many analog watch faces LG provides. It makes little sense if you opt for digital faces. The band is black leather, and if you like you can interchange it with any 22mm band. The black stainless steel casing is robust yet it's not chunkier than a men's sport or diver watch. The watch is water resistant down to 1 meter, but obviously the leather band isn't. Even though it's actually 1.6mm thinner than the Moto 360 it grated against my wrist and hand bones more than the Moto thanks to the traditional protruding strap mounts. If you're a 6 foot tall guy you probably won't have that problem since these watches are designed for you fellas and not a slim gal like me. At 2.18 ounces, the LG isn't heavy, though it outweighs the 1.73 ounce Moto 360. As smartwatches go, the LG G Watch R has quality and class written all over it, even if the look is more sport than work.

The 1.3", 320 x 320 P-OLED (plastic OLED, a flexible display tech) touch screen is a high point: it has AMOLED's saturated colors, infinite contrast and rich blacks, and it uses less power than LCDs. There's no ambient light sensor like the Moto 360, but I found the middle brightness setting fine for outdoor use. Since there's no ambient light sensor taking up space, the watch face doesn't have the flat tire look of the Moto 360. Even better, the watch sleep screen is bright and detailed enough to easily see, unlike some smartwatches that blank the screen or use a view that's too dim to be useful. Thus the LG G Watch R succeeds at its prime directive: to be a watch that's always displaying the time. You can disable the sleep screen watch face, but I don't think most folks will want to since it doesn't tank battery life as with the Moto 360. Should you find the sleep screen too bright in a movie theatre, you can easily "mute" the display by placing your palm over it until it shuts off. The "awake" watch face is only on for a few seconds, and you'll turn it on by moving your wrist toward your face in the traditional motion for checking the time. Alternatively you can use the button on the watch's side or tap the face. You can't control backlight duration, though we found the 2-3 seconds long enough for a glance at information. It did make filming our video review nearly impossible! When you touch or swipe on the watch face, backlighting stays on, for the same 2-3 seconds.

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