LG G Watch review: Android Wear finally gets wearables right

Smartwatches, just like 3D TVs, have very much been a take it or leave it gadget. They never really did anything compelling enough to make us want to invest.

This all changes with Android Wear, Google's own smart watch OS. Finally, we now have something that plays properly with Android and delivers an experience to your wrist that you actually want.

LG's G Watch is a fairly simple affair when it comes to hardware. The company has likely kept it simple to ensure that you get a whole day's worth of battery life out of the device.

That means a 1.65-inch IPS LCD screen, 4GB of internal storage, 512 Mb of RAM, a 1.2GHz processor and a 400 mAh battery. The only really disappointing spec is the 280 x 280 display resolution, which could do with being a fair bit sharper.

Thankfully, the screen is nice and bright, and works perfectly well in direct sunlight. Unfortunately there is no automatic display brightness, which does mean you end up using quite a lot of battery unnecessarily.

Other than that, LG's G Watch hardware is perfectly acceptable. It's a slight step above Samsung's offering in the display and battery department, which may help you make a decision between the two.

This one is a little harder to cover. The G Watch doesn't really have any design to it. It's literally a little black screen you strap to your wrist.

At 37.9 x 46.5 x 9.95 mm and 63 g, it's about as small as your average Swatch. As such, it's never uncomfortable, big or bulky. You can happily wear it all day without it getting in the way.

For those who like to show off, it's not going to catch anyone's eye - that is until you flick the screen on and start playing with it.

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The charger is a flat set of five pins that needs to sit in a cradle, not unlike Samsung's previous 'Gear' efforts. It's irritating, really, as we would've loved to see microUSB making an appearance for direct charging.

Either way, the G Watch is comfortable, simple and clean. LG played it safe and we can't really complain.

Android Wear and the user experience

Android Wear is a very simple and straightforward thing. It is, for all intents and purposes, all a smartwatch needs to be.

Google Now is at the center of everything the watch does, alongside standard Android notifications, which are relayed to the watch.

The fact that Google Now is so central to the experience does mean that you really need to allow Android access to the inner workings of your life in order to get the most from it.

On top of that, your voice and pronunciation has to be of the sort that gets on well with LG's G Watch and Google Now. If it does, you basically have the answer to every question imaginable mounted on your wrist.

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The voice control element of the G Watch is also necessary to get anything more out of the device than telling the time.

You can ask it to set you a reminder, or an alarm, or to open an app and view it on your phone. It doesn't go that far beyond that yet, which is what does help contribute to making this device feel distinctly first generation.

Cards make up the rest of the experience. They appear whenever the G Watch deems them relevant and consist of information like weather notifications, the number of steps you've taken, or emails and even directions.

The user interface itself is initially very confusing, but a bit of practice and you get your head round it very quickly. Swiping up and down scrolls through cards, while swiping left opens up more information about each. Scroll to the right to get rid of the card.

We would've liked to see more explanation and help included with the G Watch out of the box. Android Wear actually is quite a formidable piece of kit, but very little is offered in terms of helping you familiarise yourself.

What has us convinced that the G Watch and Android Wear are going to work, is the potential that they have.

Incorporating the notifications menu into the watch already puts it well ahead of what has been done before. Spotify, for example, could be played and paused using the G Watch.

This is only the tipping point as well. The full force of Google Play - and developers ready to support a much more open ecosystem - means that it's only going to grow.

It's early days yet, but the G Watch's functionality already makes it decent. That said, it's the long game that really matters.

Verdict

We really didn't want to like LG's G Watch. The last few months have seen us strap so many smartwatches to our wrist, never to be convinced, that we were dreading the idea of Android Wear starting it all over again.

Thankfully though, this is a device that actually adds something to the wearables experience. For the Android user, it's the first time we would advise investing in one of these accessories.

Sure, it might be just the start of Android Wear's journey onto our wrists, but there is much more promise here than we've seen before. LG is only going to make these things thinner and better looking too, so expect rapid improvement over the coming months.

For now though, the G Watch has us very excited indeed.