The display is big. It’s a pretty sharp-looking, 1.43-inch OLED Corning Gorilla Glass touchscreen display; all the dozens of Motorola’s proprietary watch faces look pretty nice and bright on it. The bezel has two buttons on the side. You can push and twist the crown to turn on the watch face and scroll through apps. The other is a Polar-style Function button that I assigned to take me straight to the exercise modes.
This Android smartwatch is compatible with Android 12 and up and supports Bluetooth 5.3 (I paired it with a Moto G phone). Unlike many watches at this price point, it also has onboard dual-frequency GPS, so you don’t need to use your phone to take it out on hikes or runs.
There are two main selling points to this watch. First, the battery life is incredible. I’m very active and track multiple activities each day. I’m also a really restless sleeper, which can affect battery life quite a bit. Motorola claims you can get up to 13 days on one charge, and I got 11 with adaptive brightness on and raise-to-wake enabled.
It’s important to note here that with health-focused smartwatches, your mileage really can vary a lot. Probably the most battery-life-eating function is blood oxygen measurement, which you can toggle to measure manually, continuously, or only at night.
It has one microphone and one shockingly loud speaker that sounds relatively clear. Unfortunately, I mostly hear the speaker during one instance, which I will discuss later.
The second, of course, is that Motorola has integrated Polar’s specialized wellness platform into the watch. In addition to the aforementioned dual-frequency GPS, there is an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, an ambient light sensor, and an e-compass. Aside from Garmin, most fitness trackers and smartwatches with these sensors and a bright display typically offer no more than a week of battery life. Motorola has accomplished this handily.
Turn It Off
Photograph: Adrienne So
It’s really interesting to see Motorola render Polar’s UI usable with its signature fun colors and cute, readable designs. The best way to describe it is that everything looks much less technical. Polar's UI is very technical. I have been reviewing fitness trackers for years and am still a little unclear on how I’m supposed to affect my autonomic nervous system (ANS) status to boost my recovery.