Review: Moto 360 Sport Android smartwatch

The Motorola Moto 360 Sport blends AndroidWear smartwatch technology with a fitness tracker.

PHONE COMPATIBILITY

Although designed for Android phones, such as the Huawei Nexus 6P (which is what I tested it with), the Moto 360 Sport does have some functionality with iPhones, too. It will give you alerts for text messages, Whatsapp, etc, but you won't get full functionality, such as the fitness tracking elements.

ALERTS

As long as your phone is near the watch, or your phone and watch are both on the same wifi network (i.e. you're upstairs and the phone is downstairs), the Moto 360 Sport sends alerts that you have a text, email, phone call, missed phone call, voicemail, WhatsApp message, Facebook comments and messages, Instagram comments and likes, Snapchat alerts, Twitter comments and messages, calendar appointments and more.But don't panic: you can adjust this to cut out most of the alerts you don’t want, so you needn't get pinged 24/7. Also, you can put a setting on your phone to stop any alerts between certain hours, so if you're in a meeting or sleeping, you won't be disturbed.

REPLIES

You can talk into it to write a reply to a message, but you’re going to look a bit daft, and since your phone is nearby, you’ll rarely use this function. However, you can easily set up autoreplies that you can swipe your watchface to send, such as ‘In a meeting, will call you later’. And these are quite easy to use and convenient.

STEP TRACKING

It’s Ok, but not great. The Fitbit is more accurate for steps, but it’s close enough.

HEARTRATE MONITOR

When your heartrate gets above a certain level – based on the information you tell it about your age and weight - it counts that as exercise and tallies it up so you can see how much aerobic exercise you’ve had each day, from brisk walks to dancing or going to the gym. The fact that it measures your heartrate on your wrist, rather than requiring a bulky and annoying chest band, is a double-edged sword. It’s much more convenient than an ordinary heartrate monitor, but less accurate. However, for most people, the convenience makes it a winner.

GPS TRACKING

If you do a run or a bike ride, it gives you your distance, speed, heartrate and calories burned, along with a GPS route. You do need to tell it that’s what you’re about to do, but it’s an easy watchface swipe.

MUSIC

It has space for 4GB of music - roughly 1,000 songs - which you can pair with Bluetooth headphones, so you can leave your phone behind when you go on a run or go to the gym.

BATTERY

Terrible - just like nearly every other smartwatch. It lasts longer than the 18-hour Apple Watch, but that's not saying much. At best, you'll get a full 24 hours out of it. That means if you forget to put it in its charging cradle overnight, you’ll wake up to a dead watch. On the plus side, the charging cradle it sits in is super easy to use. You just drop it in – no faffing about with cables.

SWIPING

This isn't the most user-friendly smartwatch interface. If you want to see a long message and swipe up, instead of showing you the full message, it can take you to the next message or alert unless you are very careful about where you swipe.

APPS

Only a small percentage of Google Apps are compatible with the phone, but that makes sense since, realistically, you’re never going to want to use some of them on a watch.An app on your phone allows you to see your fitness results for the day, week, etc, so it’s quite useful for tracking.

MAPS

This shows only step-by-step directions, not a full map, which is no surprise, given the screen size. In that regard, it therefore functions more as a SatNav/GPS than a map. You either talk into the watch, telling it your destination, or put that info into your phone, then it gives you turn-by-turn directions as you walk using the inbuilt GPS. Most of the time, though, I just whipped out my phone, so rarely used this. However, if your hands were quite full or you were in a dodgy area and didn't want to pull out your phone, this would get you to your destination.

COMFORT

The large watchface makes this clunky on smaller arms, forcing you to push it quite far up your wrist, but the silicone band is flexible enough that it's mostly pretty comfy.

APPEARANCE

The word industrial springs to mind – big, black, bulky and sturdy. But smaller, more attractive versions of the Moto 360 exist, and their functionality is nearly identical, bar a few features, such as the inbuilt GPS. And unlike most other Moto 360s, the wrist band is not changeable. It’s basic black, so inoffensive, but it won’t be willing any design awards.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Significantly cheaper than the Apple Watch, but similarly priced to many other Android watches. However, unlike Apple Watches, which never go on sale, you’ll often find this discounted 30% or more, so bearing in mind what most people actually pay, as opposed to the RRP, it’s actually pretty decent value, particularly given the GPS and inbuilt heartrate monitor.

VERDICT

3/5

A good choice for combined fitness tracker and smartwatch, but its bulk will put off anyone with smaller arms or who wants a smarter watch.