Google smartwatches review: LG G Watch, Samsung Gear Live and Android Wear

Google's first two smartwatches show promise, but are expensive. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The LG G Watch and Samsung's Gear Live are the first Google Android Wear smartwatches and they push the boundaries of how useful a smartwatch can be.

With Android Wear, Google is trying to build a uniform platform for wearable devices to create a convincing reason to buy and keep using another £170 gadget as well as a smartphone.

With the G Watch and Gear Live, Google has only partially achieved that goal.

Wearing them

Both watches have a large footprint on the wrist, larger than most high-end watches. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Smartwatches have always been bulky. While slimmer than some of their predecessors, the G Watch and Gear Live still fit the big watch trend - better suited to a decent-sized man's wrist, and dwarfing the more slender or typical woman's.

The G Watch's metal case feels cool, but sits flat across the wrist - it's not curved. The Gear Live is curved, but doesn't have a traditional watch strap, and uses pegs locked in holes instead of a buckle.

The always-on screen can be turned off in the settings, while the brightness can dimmed to save battery. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

It's a watch, too

Android Wear can actually be a watch - something the (non-Wear) Pebble, which got its start via Kickstarter, is good at but which others such as the Sony Smartwatch 2 and Samsung Gear 2 aren't. The screen is on all the time by default, which hits the battery life badly, though you can turn it off.

There are 25 watch faces to choose from on the G Watch, with more coming in the form of app downloads from Google Play. When the watch is not active, notifications show as a small banner across the bottom of the face, like the top of a card peeking up.

Android Wear

Google Now displays a range of notifications, like weather, commute time, when to leave for events, football scores, etc. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

After waking the watch (by lifting your wrist or tapping the screen), a swipe up from the bottom reveals the first information card.

Each card can be a notification, a step count, information from Google Now, calendar alerts, music playback controls or anything else an app wants to show you. The cards are only displayed when they have something new or are actively doing something, and can be dismissed by a left-to-right swipe.

The cards come with an applicable background - album art for music controls, a person's face for an email (or just the first letter of their first name for those without avatars), and so on.

Music controls pop up while playing music. Swiping to the left brings up track skip buttons. Works for Google Play Music, Pocket Casts and others. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Swiping up and down moves between cards; right-to-left expands the card's options for things like replying, dismissing or opening on the connected (Android-only) smartphone. Each transition is smooth and fluid, in stark contrast to most Android Wear predecessors which can lag and stutter.

More advanced functions must either be accessed by speaking to the watch: 'OK Google, set a timer for 30 minutes' for instance, or by scrolling deeper into the menus from the voice search page. The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live screens are large and detailed enough to display a decent amount of text, but longer emails will require a lot of scrolling.

Google Now

Talking to your watch works well, if you can bear doing it in public. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Android Wear's killer feature is Google voice search and the intelligent digital personal assistant Google Now.

Searching for things and doling out commands for actions works very well via voice - often better than on a smartphone. If it doesn't get it quite right the first time, perhaps hearing 'car' instead of 'bar', you can correct it by saying 'No I said bar' and it will identify the wrong word and perform the right search or command.

You still feel like an idiot talking into your watch, though.

Smartphone notifications

Calendar reminders, emails, text messages, Hangouts - anything that pops up notifications on Android can be fired to an Android Wear watch. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Android Wear has the best handling of smartphone notifications I've seen yet. Any app that appears in Android's Notification Shade on a smartphone will also show up on the smartwatch, although you can limit the apps that can send notifications to your wrist to avoid overload.

Those developers that put in a bit more effort can allow greater interaction with the app on the wrist. Gmail, for instance, you can reply via voice, archive an email or simply dismiss a notification.

Heart rate and fitness

The Gear Live has a heart rate monitor, which generally works well. If it struggles to measure the rate it helpfully suggests tightening the strap so the sensor underneath can fit more snugly against the top of your wrist, which can get a bit sweaty.

Both watches count steps like a fitness tracker, but couldn't match the accuracy of the Misfit Shine I wear every day.

Step it up. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Battery life and charging

The LG G Watch will just about squeeze out two days of real-world use; I would often go to bed with the watch displaying just over 50% charge remaining. The Samsung Gear Live lasted around a day and a half of use. So it's another gadget to charge every night (and won't be useful until you put it on in the morning).

LG's G Watch charges via a magnetic dock, which works well - but the watch cannot charge while turned off. At night it shines a beaming light keeping you awake. I took to hiding it under my bed. You might want to charge it in another room.

The Gear Live has a snap-on module that provides a micro-USB port for power, which is slightly more fiddly. Wireless charging would have been better.

Apps coming, slowly

A small collection of useful apps is currently available, expanding every day. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The app selection for Android Wear is limited, but expanding as developers update their Android apps. The Evernote app, for instance, allows users to pull up recent notes on their wrist and record audio notes straight from the smartwatch.

Google Maps can also give you walking directions to your wrist, vibrating when it's time to make a turn, which works well and avoids having to pull your phone out on the street and become a mugging target.

Directions, including pictures of ambiguous roundabouts pop up as and when you need them, vibrating the watch. Stick in a pair of headphones to have voice guidance too. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Pricey

The LG G Watch costs £160, the Samsung Gear Live £170. You can buy a complete smartphone like the Moto G for much less than that.

Should you buy one?

The times when a smartwatch is indispensable is still quite small, mainly around notifications. Android Wear enabled me to keep my phone in my pocket for longer and avoided a lot of wasted time peering at alerts that I really didn't need to know about. It's a lot easier to glance at a watch and ignore them.

Google's Android Wear offers a lot of potential; controlling music is useful, as is seeing incoming calls. Directions to your wrist worked better than I anticipated and I would use it all time while walking around London.

As the best smartwatches to date, I would recommend the G Watch over the Gear Live unless you need the heart rate monitor. Both could be overshadowed by the incoming Motorola Moto 360, which promises to be the king of smartwatches with a round face and pretty case that looks a lot more like a high-end watch than a gadget.

So unless you must have a smartwatch right now, wait. I'm not sure either would replace my clockwork watch. And that's the biggest issue with smartwatches for many.

Pros: keep your phone in your pocket, Google Now on your wrist, directions, custom watchfaces

Cons: one more thing to charge, big, expensive accessory, limited app selection (at the moment)

Other reviews * Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Fit review: smartwatches on the up

* Sony Smartwatch 2 review: a second screen for your Android phone

* Pebble smartwatch review: doesn't try too hard, but does what you need * Adidas miCoach Smart Run review: a personal fitness trainer on your wrist