Moto360 Display Unit Hands On
-
Hey guys!
I was at BestBuy yesterday and went over to play with their moto360 display. If you haven’t seen non-marketing images of the devices, then here’s your chance!
First, the overall look
And Compared to my daily watch (sorry for quality)
The look works pretty well, if you ask me. My wrists aren’t huge, but it still looks fairly natural on my wrist. It’s a little thick, but not so much so that it stand out if you weren’t looking specifically at the thickness.
I didn’t find the black bar too distracting, but I agree that it would be nice to have a fully circular display. At the same time, I’d much rather have the tiny bezels and a black bar than a thicker bezel (see this and this)
As we already knew, it’s a pretty watch.
From the review by The Verge
The screen looks great at a glance, but not under close scrutiny: its 320 x 290 resolution is low enough that you’ll see jagged edges on letters and can easily make out individual pixels, and the beveled edges of the Gorilla Glass give off a sort of shimmering moiré pattern.
In my opinion, this statement is more misleading than it is useful. The bevel causes a small amount of rainbow moire patterns that the edges (see picture below; look at right next to the button) and yes, if you look close enough, the screen is not perfect.
But my problem with that statement is that the moire patterns are about as noticeable as the rainbow stuff in the image below, and “looking close enough” involves holding the watch about 3" from your face. The screen is good. Trying to point out it’s shortcomings is just looking for an excuse to say something bad about the watch.
Eh. Rotation.
Lastly, the charging station
I don’t know if I missed this or glossed over it in my previous looks, but the charging moto360 is really pretty. I would probably use this at my bedside in the place of an actual alarm clock (my phone is all I have currently).
After holding a demo device, I have to say that my opinion of the moto360 is largely unchanged. It’s a beautiful device with few (if any) aesthetic downsides.
Seeing as it was just a demo unit, I can’t speak to the internals (others with the actual device have said some very unfavorable things). I would like to see some more long term battery life and performance reviews under more normal conditions (i.e. after getting past the new device constant fiddling stage), although I still don’t have high hopes that it will live up to the expectations of a consumer product.
I’m still thinking about getting it, but not because I think it’s a finished product. I think it’s the best bet for an early chance at testing the utility of smart watches. I’ll keep you all posted.
-
Thanks for telling your experience.
I still kinda want one but at this point I’d feel it’d be better to wait for a “round 2”. This would be great as an enthusiast, and even though I’d like to call myself one (with not enough money to actually enthuse about something ;)) I’d still rather wait and invest in a more solid product. Mainly because I can’t even use it right now (WP) and because it’s not something I can easily afford.
-
The release in the UK is supposed to be today with reports of some o2 shops receiving deliveries and fulfilling their preorders.
@Almost did you get any hands on with the black one or was it just the silver one?
Once stock has settle ok in the UK I may buy one. Would probably make certain people pretty jel :P
-
Yeah. I thought it was made of plastic. Then I found out that there are no plastic moto360’s :o
The silver looked better in my opinion, but I’ll see if I got any pictures of the black one later.
