as a surprising number of you have noticed I've been wearing a new
smartwatch for the last month or so without reviewing it sorry it's taken so
long but sometimes it does take a while to get to a particular device CU it's
really inconvenient to stop using it long enough for Brandon to get a chance
to shoot some b-roll I've actually had a couple of things like that recently
including the obutto gaming cockpit which is coming soon and this guy right
here welcome to my review of the LG gatch are my favorite Smartwatch so
far experience silent performance with the new Cooler Master silencio 652 s
minimalist design maximum compatibility click now to learn more so after
reviewing the Moto 360 I resolved to let
Android Wear mature a little until sometime after the Apple watch launch so
I could compare its progress to Apple's mation but after seeing how disappointed
I was with the Moto 360's poor battery life with the screen in ambient usually
on mode with no option for Always on at all and the general bugginess of Android
Weare 4.4 one of my colleagues edzel instead of getting scared off of Android
Weare ran out and bought an LG Gat R which he declared to be awesome and said
that I should get one too so I did and it turns out he was right but don't tell
him that the hardware specs are better than the 360 mostly I mean like anything
it's a trade-off but it's a trade-off that I happen to like better the gatr
features a much newer more efficient and significantly faster processor a 30%
larger 410 milliamp battery a power
sipping ped display that some folks are
concerned about burning with but careful selection of watch faces and the short
realistic lifespan of a piece of tech like this thanks to software updates and
limited battery charge cycles makes that a bit of a nonissue for me but some
drawbacks to LG's apprach do show up when we look at the construction the
Moto 360 features a larger display with gorilla glass protecting it and a
reasonably nice leather strap included in the Box while LG relies on the Gat
R's thick bezel to protect its smaller
plastic face and includes one of the worst leather watch straps I've ever
encountered in my life although the fact that it can be easily changed out for
any standard 22mm strap like this Kevlar fabric one that edzel picked up for his
without any special tools makes it less
of an issue because that's a great way to enhance the comfort and style of the
watch to appeal to folks who like velcro bands metal bands or anything in between
and maybe that's the biggest reason that I like the gatr better LG didn't blow me
away with their like Space Age industrial design and great you know
durable material choices but the watch
just plain suits me better and at the end of the day it's a watch and I have
to wear it the build quality is solid enough I didn't get any chips or
anything on it in the last month or so and the round sporty look appeals to my
practical side which I suspect will be the case for a lot of LG's target
audience for this thing since the folks who are into Super high-end formal dress
watches were unlikely to buy something that doesn't have mechanical movement
anyway but if you're going to appeal to practical people then you better provide
some practical functionality right the gatr has a heart rate monitor visible on
the bottom of the unit that I didn't use at all because as long as the old girl's
still ticking in there I'm not too fussed about how fast but it also has
some stuff that does matter to me including an IP67 Ingress Protection
rating which you can learn more about here but in short means that you can't
go scuba diving with it but that would be stupid anyway because capacitive
touch screens don't work underwater and it only has one physical button on the
right side but in you know your normal
life for normal people it'll keep water and dust out of the casing for as long
as I think a half an hour under a meter of water it's also got a gyro
accelerometer and compass for step tracking and motion control with only a
GPS sensor really missing for folks who want to go running or whatever and not
bring their tethered phone with them now normally I would cover the software of
the device at this point in the review but Android Weare is I mean it's the
same on every device that runs it and it just doesn't really do that much I mean
you can put apps on it you can put
custom watch faces on it both of which I demo in the Moto 360 review which you
can watch here but if you're buying this device so you can use a wrists sized
internet browser instead of a pocket sized one then you're definitely missing
the point Android Weare devices are for lightning fast notifications of
reminders upcoming events and messages quick handsfree memo creation and
replies to emails and text and Hangout messages turn BYT navigation for folks
who don't have a car dock for their phone telling the time onscreen music
control and for me very importantly letting you know when you leave your
phone behind somewhere because it loses the connection and that aside from some
frustrations like poor support from third party applications like Twitter
which in some cases won't even let you read a notification properly much less
open it on the phone or heaven forbid interact with it through the watch and
Google Now's laughable predictions for cards that I'd like to see and finally
the weak media controls that bury you
know your music Control under other cards and totally needs to be revamped
is what the gwat are does so it's getting a glowing review from me but
lonus the Moto 360 does that stuff too and you were pretty harsh on it how much
is LG paying you great question nothing by the way but I actually noticed the
difference in tone for this review too when I was rewatching my Moto 360 video
and reading this one to to prep for this and I was pretty down on that device for
some stuff that in retrospect seems pretty minor doesn't it for some reason
I accept 1 and 1/2 days of battery now actually once I got two to which was
nice I accept the proprietary charger dock that doesn't even have a handy
dandy bedside mode and isn't even a cool Wireless one this time and I accept the
general quirkiness of Android Wear so it
took me a while to nail this down but at the end of the day I think the reason
the gatr gives me so many warm fuzzies and will remain on my wrist now that I'm
done with this review is that I can use it as much as I want have my screen
always on so I can always see the time even without a goofy gesture and still
get that one and a half days of battery that I need that's where the Moto 360
failed me and that's where the Apple watch has already failed me if the
rumored internal battery life targets are anywhere close to True a watch needs
to be a functional watch first before it can get my attention for all the other
little tricks it does which is why I tolerated Pebbles you know truncated
email notifications so willingly up
until now because it was a watch first and it did all that other stuff well now
Android Wear has a watch that it runs onto one that still needs Google to get
their crap together on a few things uh replying to email for example on the
watch leaves it unread in my inbox for some reason but it's still the best
wearable experience I've had so far and I hardly recommend it assuming you've
got as much uh as you'd spend on a decent smartphone to spend on a watch so
that's pretty much it guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment if your
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