Wearable electronics are slowly gaining their audience: it all started, of course, with geeks and gadzhetomanov, but today it is no longer, no, and you will see someone on the subway or on the street with fashionable “smart watches”.

My acquaintance with the Android Wear platform began almost with the release of the very first models, and continues to this day. Of all the copies that passed through my hands, the most pleased (and remained in the end) were LG's round-the-clock hours. About the experience of their two-month operation in the "every day" mode today and talk.

I already have the experience of owning a smart watch, as I have already said: there were LG G Watch, Sony SmartWatch 3, and even Moto 360; except that Samsung didn’t have time to talk to Gear Live from Samsung. Of course, round-the-clock and the impression is completely different, and in everyday life they are different from the square ones. In the Moto 360, a “sloppy” design with a lower segment was just a log in the eye, and, despite their lightness and simplicity, they didn’t take root at all. But with LG, the story came out completely different.

Look and feel

The fate of the first mover did not fall on LG Watch R. But the share of the first hours, which are made not for reporting to the board of directors or technology demonstration, but for the user, came.

Beauty with a bright slashgear strap.

What makes Watch R different from the models that are already on the market?

The first really round design, which is available in the Russian Federation to anyone who wishes (if there is a certain amount in the wallet, of course, since Moto360 is not officially supplied to Russia).

Excellent appearance, suitable for a suit, shirt and tie, as well as for ordinary casual clothes, not related to the business style. The watch case is made of stainless steel, and the strap is made of calf leather.

OLED-display, which allows you to keep the clock in the state of activity all day, do not turn off the screen. After the experience of operating previous models, I got the strong impression that I used some kind of demo version of the Android Wear platform, and not a ready-to-use product. This also has no hint of “unfinished” hours from the point of view of everyday use: put it on your hand in the morning, use it all day, took it off in the evening: everything, as with regular watches. With one exception. The clock is really smart!

Iron

The insides of all the smart watches on the market are about the same 1 : Snapdragon 400, 512 RAM, 4GB of internal memory, battery for 400 with a little mAh, WiFi and BT 4.0 LE. The differences are mainly in two parameters: the size and shape of the display (and of course, its resolution) and the presence of a heartbeat sensor.

1 - Gear Live has a very modest battery (at 300 mAh), and Moto 360 uses an old Ti OMAP as a CPU and also does not shine with battery capacity.

The display of the LG Watch R is round, the resolution is a cut square of 320x320 pixels, the diagonal (more precisely, the diameter) is 1.3 ". It is made using P-OLED technology, that is, it does not have a separate backlight - each pixel is a microscopic LED and emits light independently. More Furthermore, the display is made with the same technology as that of the notorious LG G Flex: it is flexible, because the plastic substrate is used although the clock, this feature not enabled, it adds them to a pair of glasses on a scale of vitality..

With regard to pulsomera enough to say what about It is used. A photoplethysmograph is used - a sensor with a bright LED that “shines through” the skin and “sees” blood pulsation in the vessels. According to the data received, the software records your pulse in hours.

Similar methods are used in serious medical equipment, only there the sensors are not sharpened for mobility and low power consumption, they “see” better and allow you to analyze the picture much more seriously: detect diseases of the cardiovascular system and examine the internal organs in a non-invasive way.

Personal experience and capabilities of the device

Hours-hours-hours ... On the one hand, it is completely incomprehensible why they are needed today for an ordinary city dweller (except, bluff). Time can almost always be determined by phone, and it will be more accurate than any other source: regular synchronization with Internet like omax services allows you not to bother about the annual backlog of 5-7-10-20 seconds. On the other hand, this is not a mechanical or electronic chronograph, but a modern high-tech gadget that combines the functions of a fitness bracelet and a notification center. Watch in this case is a nice bonus, no more.

Almost immediately after my appearance, the watch was updated from AW 4.4 platform to 5.0, and this review concerns the latest software version.

In the “factory” supply we have as many as 24 different dials available: some of them are standard solutions for the Android Wear platform, some are the fruit of the creation of designers from LG itself.

Personally, I prefer the Weather Time for Wear app : in the standby mode, it provides a minimalistic digital watch, a short weather forecast and shows the number of steps taken. In the active state, the information and its display is conveniently configured. Who has a "smart" watch - they will understand who else does not have - they can look at the Google Play screenshots, although they do not reveal all the features of this watch face, and we are discussing here not third-party applications.

The autonomy of the watch is striking for this class of devices. If you use a watch with a “non-fading” screen all day long, and only extinguish it at night (transfer LG Watch R to “Theater mode”) - the battery will surely last for two days from 9 am to 11 pm. If you turn on the automatic activation of the display by the “gesture” (wrist movement towards yourself, the gyroscopes very successfully track the position of the clock and the number of false alarms are surprisingly minimal) - enough for three days. The clock is charged from zero to one hundred percent in an hour and a half with the help of a docking station. By itself, the dock is plastic, it has a microUSB connector for a network charger or USB connection to a computer. You can charge the clock only from it; there is no backup charging method (such as a plug behind a plug on the clock itself).

In addition to the amazing survivability of the watches themselves, I would like to note a really noticeable increase in the operating time from one charge of the “mother device” - a smartphone. In half of the cases, it is enough to look at the watch to make sure that nothing important has come and to “wake up” a multi-core and multi-inch smartphone does not make sense.

In addition, having a smart watch with you is almost impossible to forget or “lose” the phone. There are applications that "cause" the phone from the clock, if you can not find it at home. In addition, the watch itself signals with a vibration motor if you have gone too far and the phone is out of reach of the Bluetooth connection. Well, or the phone left you without your knowledge.

The interface on the round display looks strange, but the feeling that “something is wrong” does not appear. On the contrary, round watches look much nicer and more “watchable” than their square counterparts. And even despite the luminous dial, there are much less questions than square models with an IPS display. The main thing is not to publicly say “Ok Google!” In them :)

Basically, I used the clock as a fitness tracker, wrote down the results of the morning run, periodically (gee-gee, bought a watch, pancake) watched them for a while. Perversions in the form of launching GTA III or installing a separate browser did not: firstly, the round screen does not contribute to this, secondly, why do I need a five-inch nexus then? :) Well, of course, I received dozens of notifications per day. About letters, hangouts, calls. Every evening there was a little less than 50% charge on the clock; if you did not forget to “put out” them for the night - in the morning the indicator fell by another 2-3 points. In principle, the device really lives for two days. Especially if you turn off the screen when it is not needed (that is, at night). In addition, they charge very quickly, and even 15 minutes at the docking station give a noticeable increase in battery performance.

Some complain about the lack of mechanical strength of such devices. Not to say that I treated the device deliberately carelessly or, on the contrary, blew dust particles from them, but no drops, strikes, immersions in water and other adversities of everyday life left any noticeable marks on the display or case. All the same coal-black contour, even on the edges of the device: the most prominent and prone to damage areas.

Amenities and Disadvantages

The manufacturer claims IP67 dust and moisture protection, and honestly abides by it. Not that every day I NEED to wash in the shower without fail along with the clock, but this experiment on the first day after the purchase they still survived, and further daily rinses in warm / cold / soapy water did not affect their performance. The strap, however, will not be happy with such procedures - but we will assume that daily swimming for watches is the exception rather than the rule. In addition, if you do not imagine water procedures without controlling the time spent, you can always replace the leather strap with a “sporty” or metal bracelet: the fastenings are quite standard here. Come for the pleasure? Full

Magnetic docking station, by contrast, raises questions. It would seem: LG engineers are smart people, made beautiful watches, applied the latest technologies and created a cool display. What didn’t have enough in their Asian heads to make the attachment to the docking station such that the user didn’t care what side to “flop” the clock on charging?

No, from me, of course, will not lose anything, if I check every time whether the device was correctly installed or not. Over time, the "right" will become a habit, and I will not check at all. But after all, Apple watches are surely deprived of this problem!

Another controversial point I would call the design of the button, extinguishing the screen. On the one hand, it gives authenticity to the watch image, somehow reminding both the stopwatch button and the crown of the watch. On the other hand, the part even rotates, but no functions are tied to its rotation (most likely because rotation is purely a consequence of mechanical fastening of parts and is not monitored by anything). In general, there are questions to the crown button, but they rather refer to cavils.

Owners of iPhones, unfortunately, are content with waiting for Apple Watch for a lot of dollars. Rumors of official support for Wear on iOS are still rumors. Recently, a video confirmation of a third-party application from one of the authors of Cydia, which implements some of the capabilities of Android Wear on iOS, using the protocol from the Pebble watch, has appeared.

Results

It so happened that I talked to almost all popular models of watches on Android Wear, and some were in private use for a long time. So, after the LG G Watch R, they all seem to be bullshit and just a demo version of Android Wear, and now I don’t want to use them.

LG G Watch R look great on advertising posters, and in real life.

LG continues to delight with high-quality devices: first Nexus, then unusual LG G Flex and an interesting flagship in the face of G3, now here’s a watch that is really nice to use every day. One minus they have - the price due to the dollar is not very democratic .

We are waiting for LG Watch R2:With a normal dock, which does not care how to place the phone, in three colors (hee-hee), including golden. Well, and pretentious LG Watch R2-D2 Edition in white and blue version, of course!