LG watch review, see what you think?!

Just four smartwatches can pair up with your iPhone: the Huawei Watch, Asus ZenWatch 2, new Moto 360 and LG Watch Urbane. The second caveat is that only the Urbane is out.

We're currently testing out how well the LG smartwatch works with our iPhones and will update this review shortly. In the meantime, here's how to setup your LG Watch Urbane with iOS devices.

Original review continued below...

Frankly, LG's first smartwatch didn't offer much. Though, its second, the LG G Watch R, has proved to be far superior despite being a bit plasticky. It seems like the third time's a charm for LG, with the LG Watch Urbane looking the sleekest of the bunch.

However, the Urbane is essentially a dressed up G Watch R with nearly identical dimensions and innards.

With more premium materials, the watch is, of course, going to cost more. Though at $349 (£259, AU$459) - the same price of the cheapest Apple Watch - it doesn't seem like LG is asking for too much. Still, you can pick up its predecessor for $100 less and pretty much have the same smartwatch.

You can now get the Watch Urbane for a little less than the original asking price, I found it online for $300, £230 - making it slightly more acceptable.

Pricing aside, the Urbane has a distinct look that's certainly polished, but it's clearly been tailored for a certain demographic. Despite images of women sporting a variation of the Urbane, it looks like this watch was made for businessmen. This isn't a huge problem, of course, but good luck getting women interested in wearing a chunky piece of metal and leather that won't fit right.

The Urbane has the advantage of being the first Android wearable with the latest Lollipop 5.1.1 software. But again, the other smartwatches will get updated soon, meaning there's really nothing special about the latest LG timepiece save for its style.

The LG Watch Urbane sports a 1.3-inch P-OLED display (320 x 320, 245ppi) which matches the LG G Watch R to a tee. The Urbane is also a bit smaller than its rounded rival, the Moto 360, which comes in at 1.56-inches.

Like the G Watch R, the Urbane's screen is lovely to stare at but sometimes looks pixelated, depending on which watch face you plop on the front. I found the Classic face had the most pixelation on the dial. The moons on the Moonphase face also look a little blotchy.

Put it side by side with the Apple Watch and it's the Cupertino firm's timepiece which has the better screen, but on its own you're unlikely to have an issue with resolution.

Direct sunlight is an issue for the Watch Urbane, as it is for the G Watch R, and I did find myself having to cup my hand round the device a few times to see what was on screen. Viewing angles meanwhile are more than acceptable, something is has over the Pebble Steel and Pebble Time.

Pebble Time Round review: A smartwatch that doesn’t seem like one

One universal truth about consumer electronics is that they never have enough battery life. Instead, gadget makers opt for thinner and lighter designs, and battery is the first thing to go in pursuit that extra curb appeal.

Smartwatches might be the rare case where this isn’t a misguided strategy. Short of some quantum leap in battery chemistry, smartwatches will never rival the years-long battery cycle of a real watch, so you might as well get in the habit of charging them every day or two. In the meantime, any improvements in battery efficiency should go toward making devices that are more fashionable, and less bulky.

Pebble seems to have realized all of this with its Pebble Time Round smartwatch. Breaking tradition with every Pebble watch yet, the Time Round makes no effort to achieve week-long battery life. Instead, it lasts a couple days, tops, but is slim enough to make people believe you’re not wearing a smartwatch at all.

This trade-off goes a long way toward covering up Pebble’s biggest underlying problems.

Smart, but not intimidatingly soJARED NEWMAN

The Pebble Time Round is much slimmer than your average smartwatch.

The Pebble Time Round is so eager to pass as a normal watch that it’s kind of jarring at first. The bezel is unapologetically large, to the point that certain models have analog-style five-minute marks printed directly on top. (I’ve come to despise these numbers for how they look against non-analog watch faces, and wish Pebble offered a number-free version of the silver watch I reviewed.)

And yet, no one seemed to mind much as I showed the Pebble Time Round to friends and family. There’s no way to measure this, but a surprising number of people asked about the watch with genuine interest, and marveled at how they could see themselves wearing one. Maybe that’s damning with faint praise, but it immediately made me wonder what those people really thought about all the other smartwatches I’ve sampled.

The Pebble Time Round’s appeal owes largely to its color e-paper display, which remains on at all times. Combined with a low-power processor, the Time Round can survive on a much smaller battery than watches with OLED and LCD screens. As such, it’s 33 percent thinner than an Apple Watch, making it feel more at home on smaller wrists. Pebble even offers a choice of 20 mm or 14 mm bands, the latter of which might look a bit silly on a chunkier timepiece.

JARED NEWMAN

Pebble Time Round, flanked by the 42mm Apple Watch Sport (right) and Pebble Time Steel (left).

But this display does have a major downside: Like the square-shaped Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel, it’s too dim to be legible unless you catch it in just the right light. You can invoke a backlight by shaking your wrist or tapping a button, but that defeats the purpose of having the always-on screen. The Pebble Time Round supposed to act like a real watch, but often falls short.

The Time Round makes a couple other minor trade-offs compared to other Pebbles. The battery only lasts a couple days, but that’s at least enough to support sleep tracking, and 15-minutes on the charger is enough to last until bedtime. The watch isn’t waterproof like its predecessors, but should survive the occasional splash.

More screens, more problems

Like its square siblings, the Pebble Time Round can display notifications from a phone paired over Bluetooth, and supports step counting and sleep tracking through apps such as Misfit. It runs some basic third-party apps, which you control with a set of push buttons, or in some cases with voice controls. There's also a feature called Timeline that lets you scroll through past or upcoming information, such as sports scores, calendar appointments, or missed calls.

Pebble isn’t trying to change the world with its smarts--and that's not necessarily a bad thing--but it’s still disappointing to see how little progress the platform has made with app support. You won’t find official apps for Slack or Wunderlist, to name a couple examples, and I'm still dreaming of a way to track fantasy football scores. Timeline remains underutilized as well, with roughly a couple dozen apps that support the feature. We've also yet to see any Smartstraps, third-party bands that connect to the Pebble's charging port to add new functionality. The fact that Pebble is an underdog in an unproven market is really starting to show.

JARED NEWMAN

The Pebble Time Round's rear port is just for charging, as Smartstraps have not yet hit the market.

One could even argue that the Pebble Time Round has made the app situation worse, as developers must accommodate two types of displays now. Many developers haven’t bothered to support the round version, including big-name partners like ESPN and Jawbone. Bifurcating a platform that’s already short on developer support is a questionable move at best, and down the road, Pebble might need to make some tough decisions about where app makers should focus their efforts.

Better on Android

Pebble’s other nagging issue is that it doesn’t work as well with an iPhone as it does with Android handsets.

iPhone users can view and dismiss notifications, and trigger voice commands on supported apps. But notifications are non-actionable, which means no deleting e-mails, liking Facebook posts, or replying to WhatsApp messages by voice. An experimental feature allows AT&T users to answer text messages with voice or canned replies, and it worked well in my experience, though there’s no word on when other carriers might be supported.

By comparison, Android users get all the same actions that appear in their phone’s notification tray. So instead of just getting a glance at notifications, you can decide how to deal with them straight from the wrist.Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told me the company’s working on a solution for iPhone users, though this has yet to materialize. As it stands, Pebble is not a bad smartwatch with an iPhone, but it’s a much better smartwatch with an Android phone.

PEBBLE

Pebble Time Round: Different sizes, different colors.

But here's the thing: Every smartwatch right now has its own deep flaws. The Apple Watch tries to do too much, and at a starting price of $350 for the Sport version, it's much more expensive than the leather-and-steel-clad Pebble Time Round. Android Wear has yet to offer a watch that looks great on smaller wrists, and Samsung's Gear S2 is sorely lacking in apps and wrist band options.

In previous iterations, Pebble tried to stand out on battery life and its always-on display, but that alone wasn't enough. The Pebble Time Round instead acknowledges that curb appeal wins, and puts all of its inherent strengths into offering as much as possible. The result is a timepiece that people might actually want to wear.

Fossil Q Founder review: An imperfect but fashionable smartwatch value

Smartwatches are creating unexpected new rivalries, where tech companies like Huawei and Samsung are going head-to-head with jewelry firms like Tag Heuerand the Fossil Group. The Fossil Q Founder is a worthy Android Wear watch that shows that watch companies can make tech products nearly as well as tech companies can make watches.

Reviewing Android Wear watches can get a little repetitive, as they're all basically the same watch in different styles. Reviewers will highlight (perhaps even exaggerate) their other minor differences, but when you get down to it, Android Wear is more or less a matter of pick your style.

... and since style is nothing more than a highly personal preference, sometimes the best we, as reviewers, can do is show you some nice, high-res pictures and let you decide for yourself.

In addition to that, there are a few other variables to keep in mind if you're considering the Fossil Q Founder. First, this is a men's watch – and is sized accordingly (46 mm diameter, with a pretty big 1.5-inch display). Unlike some smartwatches, though, it looks more like a snazzy watch that happens to be big, rather than a tech product that's big because of engineering or supply chain issues.

On a style level, we'd put Fossil's first smartwatch up there with the Huawei Watch and Moto 360 – and that's a good thing. We'd have no problem wearing this piece to any event, no matter how formal.

Battery life is another big differentiating factor, and the Fossil Q Founder holds uppretty well there. With our regular use, it drops a respectable 4-6 percent per hour – it should easily last a full day for most people. But it also has a strange behavior where, when strapped to its unique charging pillow, its battery doesn't charge completely, stopping at anywhere between 96 percent and 99 percent full. It takes what was already less than spectacular battery life and makes it merely good enough.

The watch's display isn't forging any new ground, but it looks good – better than its 240 PPI resolution would have us expect. At a typical watch-viewing distance, text looks plenty crisp and its colors and viewing angles don't give us anything to complain about.

The Fossil Q Founder is an imperfect, but very nice, smartwatch that provides very good value. The steel band version we're reviewing rings up for US$295, which is less than what Huawei's and Motorola's similar smartwatches cost withleather bands. Their steel band versions reach up to around the $400 range.

We still think the Huawei Watch is the best smartwatch in this general price range (the Apple Watch's prices for steel band versions shoot up to near $1,000), but if you want to save $100 or so and get what's a sharp-looking Android Wear piece in its own right, the Fossil Q Founder could make for a good last-minute gift for yourself or a loved one.

The Fossil Q Founder is available now, starting at $275 with a leather band and $295 for the steel band version we reviewed.

Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2 and LG Watch 2016

In the Digital Life Labs' Gadget Zodiac, however, it's been the Year of the Smart Watch, though it could be said there has been something a little sheeplike about the way all the gadget makers have followed each other into the watch business.

But sheep or smart watch, there was one device clearly out ahead of the herd in 2015: Apple's Watch, the best smart watch on the market, rivalled only in the latter part of the year by Samsung's Gear S2.

Apple's Watch set a new bar for smart watch design, not just in terms of how easy a smart watch should be to use (though arguably the Gear S2 raised the bar again later in the year), but also in terms of how fashionable it can be to have an electronic gizmo strapped to your arm. Apple released 40 different variants of the Watch, all made of different materials or in different colours, compared to the two or three options most other smart watches offer.

From left: LG Watch Urbane, Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2 Supplied

But with 2015 still being a fairly early year in the evolution of the smart watch, all of smart watches that came out this year, even Apple's Watch, had their limitations.

None of them has a battery life that's anywhere near good enough. They've all got to be charged every two or three days, an improvement on 2014, but still a far cry from the years and years that other electronic watches can offer between battery replacements. Not that smart watches need ever last a decade without a recharge, the way a Seiko Kinetic can. But a fortnight long charge life would be nice. Long enough that you're not constantly worrying about the battery level.

And none of them has a heart-rate sensor that can be relied on. Every one we've ever tested has our heart rate fluctuating by 10, 20 or sometimes 50bpm between one reading and the next, meaning we've either all got very dodgy tickers here in the Labs, or the sensors aren't worth a damn. You'd be better off just looking at the second hand on your smart watch, and counting your pulse rate yourself.

Not that the heart rate sensor matters all that much, which gets me to the greatest limitation of all: most of the functions on a smart watch are likely to end up going unused once the novelty wears off. I've had a smart watch of one type or another on my wrist for most of 2015, and apart from the notifications of incoming emails, calls and texts, I mostly just used them to tell the time. I'd wear my old Seiko Kinetic, which I never, ever have to recharge, except my eyesight is fading and I can't read it without glasses. Meanwhile I can put huge, easy-to-read faces on the smart watches.

Still, having all those other apps strapped to your wrist does come in useful occasionally. Smart watches make really, really good egg timers, for instance. Pricey, but really really good.

GEAR S2

If ever a company threw the baby out with the bathwater, Samsung did it when it went from the Gear S to the Gear S2.

The original Gear S was probably the most feature-laden smart watch of all time. Not only could it make calls when paired with your Samsung phone, it could make calls even when it wasn't paired. It had its own SIM – something that we may see a return to in coming years, when e-SIMs will let us have multiple devices all on the one mobile phone plan.

This year's Gear S2, on the other hand, has very few features. It runs an operating system that Samsung help create, known as Tizen, and as such it doesn't have many apps compared to other smart watches, and it doesn't couple as closely to its paired Android phone as an Android Wear watch does. You don't get Sonos notifications on the Gear S2, for instance, so you can't use it to control your hifi the way you can use a Wear watch.

But the thing about the S2 is this: the features it does have are terrific. The screen on the S2 is great, and the mechanism Samsung uses to control the S2, a dial around the face of the watch that you spin to activate different functions, is superb. Apple's Watch, which you control by spinning the Digital Crown, was easy to use, but this is even easier.

And, unlike the Apple Watch, the watch faces on the Gear S2 are completely customisable, so much so you can even get online and find any number of face designs, some of which might even bear an uncanny resemblance to the trademarked designs used by other watch makers. There's one face out there that looks just like a Mondaine face, for instance, that people with poor eyesight might find very easy to read.

If only the Gear S2 still had a speaker in it, so you could still use it to answer incoming calls when your phone is out of reach, the way you could with the original Gear S.

APPLE WATCH

Apple's Watch does have a speaker, and you can use it to answer calls when your iPhone is lost in the bottom of your bag. It's just one of the things that we like about the Watch, better than any of the other smart watches we tested in 2015.

Other things we prefer about the Apple Watch include: the straps, which tend to be better quality than those you'll find on competing smart watches; the novel Time Travel feature, that lets you change the time just by spinning the digital crown, to see what appointments you have or what the weather forecast will be at that other time; the Friends system, that gives you quick and easy access to your favourite contacts just by pressing a button and spinning the crown; the notification system, which is more comprehensive than notifications on the Gear S2, and not as out-of-control as the notification system on Android Wear; and the fact that it's Apple, which rightly or wrongly means its tends to be better supported by third-party app and accessory makers.

The only thing we dislike about the Apple Watch, more than other smart watches, is the way it's tied so closely to the iPhone. Other manufacturers let you use their watches with competing phones. Apple doesn't.

LG WATCH URBANE

The best looking Android Wear watch we saw all year was LG's Watch Urbane, which was shown off to great fanfare at Mobile World Congress in March and then quietly went on sale in Australia in August, so quietly that LG wouldn't even let us borrow one for in-depth review, no matter how many times we asked.

But that doesn't stop us nominating it as our choice Android Wear watch for 2015. When it comes to Android Wear watches, looks matter a great deal, because other than how they look they're all pretty much the same. Google is fairly strict about its vision for Android Wear – the wearable operating system that ties in closely to Google's Android operating system – so there's not a lot of variation in user experience between the makes and models, nor in what apps the Wear watches will run.

The main variation; is the watch face round, or is it square? The square ones, such as Asus's ZenWatch 2, tend to operate a little better in terms of notifications, which Google still hasn't figured out how to do on a round face without cutting off letters and words in the corners. But to us, that advantage isn't enough to overcome the advantage the round watches have in the looks department. And, to us, the LG Urbane simply looks more like a watch than the others.

If you've got an Android phone, an Android Wear watch will give you the best integration between phone and watch right now, so much so that you can effectively run some apps on your watch (such as the Sonos controller mentioned above) even when there's not actually a watch version of the app.

If anything, the integration is too good. When you first set up an Android Wear watch, you can be overwhelmed by the amount of useless stuff your Android phone sends to it. But with a bit of patience and a lot of Googling, you can eventually home in on just the notifications you want for your watch, leaving everything else on the phone where it belongs.

Moto 360 Sport review: Best Android Wear smartwatch for recreational runners

The 2015 Moto 360 is an excellent Android Wear smartwatch to use with Android and iOS. The Moto 360 Sport is the same watch with a few optimizations for those who want to use their smartwatch to track running sessions.

Since I am a runner I was hoping the Moto 360 Sport would be a smartwatch that I could use to track my runs with GPS, measure my heart rate, and stream music wirelessly to my Bluetooth earbuds. It satisfied two of three, but failed miserably when it comes to streaming music.

SPECIFICATIONSProcessor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.2 GHz quad-coreDisplay: AnyLight hybrid 1.37 inch (35mm) diameter, 360 x 325 pixels resolution (flat tire bottom), Gorilla Glass 3Operating system: Android Wear 1.3.0.xRAM: 512MBWater resistance: IP67 dust and water resistant ratingStorage: 4GB internalRadios: Bluetooth 4.0 BLE, NFC, and 802.11 b/g WiFiSensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, optical heart rate, barometer, ambient light, GPSBattery: 300 mAh batteryDimensions: 45 x 11.5 mm and 54 grams

The Moto 360 Sport matches the Moto 360, and most all other new Android Wear devices, with the addition of GPS. The only other Android Wear device with GPS is the Sony SmartWatch 3, but that device lacks an integrated heart rate monitor.

HARDWARE

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Unlike the customization options of the Moto 360, you need to choose from a watch with black, white, or orange band and that is what you will have for the life of the watch. The band is not interchangeable and there are no customization options with the watch face. I tested the white silicone band watch with silver bezel.

The AnyLight hybrid display is a first for Android Wear and it worked very well. It is designed to adapt automatically to the level of natural light. When you are indoors then the full color LCD will appear, but when you are outside running in bright light then the display will change to reflect the natural light and make it very readable. I even found running at night to be a great experience as the display was fully readable in the darkness without being so bright that it messed up my vision while running on dark roadways. I was very pleased with the color and performance of the display and would love to see this technology on more running watches.

The bezel on this white test unit has a flat portion in brushed silver with the angled part of the bezel having the Motorola micro knurl finish. It looks great and adds a bit of style to the front of the watch.

At the 8 o'clock position you will find a silver opening in the silicone band where the microphones can be found. A raised textured button is positioned at 2 o'clock and is easy to find and press. The back is all black with a soft matte edge and glass back with the heart rate sensor positioned in the center.

The rest of the watch around the face and the band is all silicone material. The white one is a dust, hair, fuzz, and dirt magnet and collects anything flying in its vicinity. I personally would not buy the white one as it just shows too much of this collection to the naked eye. The silicone on the band is thicker than what I've seen on other bands, but it is very malleable and stretchy so it is comfortable when you have it strapped on. The slots for the clasp are angled so that it stays on your wrist in a very secure position.

The Moto 360 Sport is definitely focused on running and it looks like a sport watch. You may be able to wear the black one in the office without calling much attention to it, but the white and orange are too bright and bold for the boardroom.

GPS is included and in my testing over the past two weeks I compared its performance with a Polar V800 GPS sport watch, a Samsung Gear S2 3G, and a Microsoft Band 2. The Moto 360 Sport matched the V800 closely in most situations and I trust it for running. There does not appear to be any way to auto-pause with the Moto Body Running app so some of my minor differences could be in regards to my stops at traffic lights that the V800 picked up.

The Moto 360 Sport always showed far fewer calories burned that the V800. However, my V800 external heart rate strap exhibited some issues, so I think the Moto 360 Sport was more accurate for calories. The heart rate of the Moto 360 Sport closely matched that of the Microsoft Band 2 and I was satisfied with its performance. I am not a runnner who focuses on heart rate levels during my run though, but there is a display in the app focused on heart rate zones and performance that I will discuss in the software section.

The battery will get you through at least one full day in smartwatch mode, but drops significantly when running. With music and GPS active during my 45 minute runs I saw the battery drop 38 to 42 percent. Thus, the Moto 360 Sport would get me through a half marathon, but not a full marathon. It's a good device for the recreational runner, but if you run at night after work like I do then you will have to throw it on the charger as soon as you get home and get it charged up before you run.

Just like other Moto 360 devices, a wireless charging dock is included in the package. Connect your microUSB cable and charge it at night.

I enjoy listening to music when I run most of the time as it has proven to increase my pace due to the distraction from the pain and beat of the music. The Sony SmartWatch 3 set the bar for Android Wear music support and I was hoping the Moto 360 Sport would match it. Music is managed from your phone in Google Play Music. Way down the list of settings is an option for managing your music on Android Wear. Music on Android Wear appears to be a low priority for Google as the management of playlists and music is very limited.

You sync music to the Moto 360 Sport via a Bluetooth connection with the Moto 360 Sport on the charger, thus allow yourself plenty of time to load up music before you go running. After loading up music, I connected my BlueAnt Pump HD Sportsbuds and launched Google Play Music on the watch. The music only played clearly and consistently when I held the Moto 360 Sport about a foot from the earbuds without any part of my body blocking the signal. When I ran the music cut out each time my arm swung and it drove me absolutely crazy. This happened on all of my test runs with the Moto 360 Sport attached to both my right and left wrists.

By comparision, the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear S2 3G play back the same music with the same earbuds flawlessly no matter where I mount the watches. It seems to me the Bluetooth radio is weak or not tuned properly to offer a good music experience. It's so terrible that I would never recommend the Moto 360 Sport if you are a person who wants their smartwatch to play music while you workout.

Smart watch and smart band will be trend live and booming in the word.

A whole year has gone by, filled with smartwatches. Apple makes them. Google's software powers them. Sony, Samsung, Asus, Motorola, Pebble. Fossil. Tag-Heuer. It's starting to come from everywhere: Everyone wants to put a high-tech thing on your wrist.

There's a problem, though: none of them feel necessary, or even necessarily desirable. In fact, most of them don't even make a compelling case to justify their price tag.

When people ask me what smartwatch to get (or if they should even get one), I pause, make a noise and probably looked pained. These devices are toys so far. They're intriguing, and sometimes useful, sometimes cool. But their advantages come with drawbacks. Each one is a compromise. It depends on how you want your compromises to feel, and whether or not you're ready to drop several hundred dollars on one of these experiments now...or wait a bit.

Smartwatches won't wow you like virtual reality does. They won't be the thing you can't live without, like smartphones. They are annoying to perpetually charge (even the best ones last about 10 days at most). So then, what's the point?

That, ultimately, is the problem for now. I like wearing a smartwatch, and I find it useful throughout my day. I also like following the technology as it evolves, and I'm fortunate enough to be getting loaner watches that I can wear for weeks or months at a time. That's my job. But would I spend upwards of $250 or more of my own money on one of these things? I might, just for the novelty: After all, I bought aniPod Nano for a watch years ago. But I can't say you'll want to do the same. And that's why no smartwatch has cracked a 4-star rating on CNET to date.

That said, many of these watches have some great features, and some do much better with certain tasks than others. To that end, I'm doling out my smartwatch awards for 2015. And hoping that, in 2016, we may finally see one watch that could combine all of these winning features into one recommendable product.

Pebble Time Steel: always-on, long battery.

Sarah Tew / CNETBest at being a regular watch... almost: Pebble Time Steel

The Pebble Time Steel understands that people don't like charging watches. It understands that we want an always-on screen. It understands that many people like showering with their watches, too. The Time Steel gets notifications and runs some basic apps, as well as works with lots of phones across the iPhone and Android spectrum. But its always-on reflective screen, water resistance and longer battery life are all what win me over most. And the fact that Pebble just added some basic step counting and sleep tracking sweetens the deal even further.

Moto 360's new design is clean and modern.

Sarah Tew/CNETBest-looking from a distance (tie): Samsung Gear S2, Moto 360, Huawei Watch

They're round, sleek and seem like real watches. People stop and ask what they are when I wear them. If you're trying to just wear a cool-looking watch, these smartwatches do the trick. The Samsung Gear S2also has a great rotating bezel and watchfaces that match its slick design. On the Moto 360, however, you've still got to forgive that flat-tire screen with a black slice cut out of it. (If it bothers you, Huawei Watch might be your thing).

Apple Watch: all models are extremely well-built.

Sarah Tew/CNETBest-feeling watch, with the best construction: Apple Watch

Apple's finish and design skills are extraordinary, and the Apple Watch -- from its cool watchbands to its perfect little spinning Digital Crown -- feels better to me than any other smartwatch. The sport and steel models both are great to wear, and feel invisible on my wrist. I consider it a watch that feels better than it looks.

Best everyday watch with a bit of fitness smarts: Withings Activite

There are watches that just do a bit more. Call them dumb smartwatches, watches with benefits, slightly-smart watches, or "connected watches," but the Withings Activite, available in several price-tier design flavors (Pop and Steel both work the same) is a prime example. This isn't a smartwatch at all, really: it's a fitness tracker. It's also basic analog-style watch with a digital underpinning. And it tracks steps and sleep automatically...plus it vibrates. It's easy to wear and -- with a six-month or better battery -- doesn't need charging. It's the most laid-back, good smart wearable of the year.

Samsung Gear S2: surprisingly deep on fitness functions.

Sarah Tew/CNETBest deeper fitness-tracking: Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S2

For running, workouts and other more complicated features, some smartwatches do a better job. Heart rate, targeted exercise logging beyond just step-counting, and the ability to tap into fitness apps that track laps, pace and more: all three of these watches do a fair job at being more active. None of them, however, are better than having a dedicated GPS-enabled connected running watch.

Best for communicating: Apple Watch

Most people I know buy smartwatches for either fitness tracking or getting messages on their wrist. I used to love Pebble for that feature. Now I think Apple Watch does a better job. Its slightly more discreet pop-up messages stay out of sight until I can glance at them, and I can slide my finger down to peek at the rest. Responding is easy, too. I like its smoother, neater style better than Android Wear, which feels clunky. And its voice calling works surprisingly well because its microphone is so good.

Best apps: I don't use most of them, here's why

There are thousands of apps on smartwatches, and I avoid most of them. A friend who just bought an Apple Watch asked me to demonstrate a few. I loaded a sports app, and it took so long I realized we could have checked the phone for scores instead. Apps don't load as quickly on smartwatches, they are harder to navigate and they're just mostly awkward. After 10 seconds of fiddling on my watch, I'm grabbing for my phone...unless I'm somewhere where I left my phone across the room or upstairs. My favorite apps are sports ones, messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, fitness or health apps like Withings or Runtastic, weather apps (Dark Sky) and banking apps. The rest, unless they're baked into the watch software, I tend to avoid.

My favorite things to do on a smartwatch

Pay for things. Track runs. Peek at my heart rate. Check weather. Make sure I didn't miss any messages. Answer phone calls, when my phone's out of reach. Get turn by turn directions on my wrist to buzz me while driving, so I can remember whether to exit soon or not. Check whether I set the alarm. Lock my house alarm. Adjust the thermostat. I use smartwatches for a lot of things...and I'm starting to get used to having the extra wrist support when I'm living my life. Smartwatches are starting to become a bit more like wrist remotes and tiny life-scanners than they were a year ago, thanks to some apps. But, I'd rather use a watch to receive things I need to know about than use it to proactively do things which I can't end up easily controlling...like, for instance, sending someone a text message.

Fitness trackers and smartwatches: blending together into a blur.

Sarah Tew/CNETWhat about fitness trackers?

What about them? There are more successful fitness bands than there are smartwatches. The biggest players in wearable tech right now, according to research firm IDC -- Fitbit, Apple, Xiaomi and Garmin -- are mostly fitness-tracker makers. And the Apple Watch positions itself as a Fitbit contender in most of its advertising. They're purpose-built, and in 2015 they did the job pretty well. Heart rate-enabled bands abound, and they're better than they used to be. More bands get notifications and buzz for alarms, too. They're cheap enough that getting a basic one doesn't feel like a major investment. Fitbit Charge HR is the best of the bunch, but few fitness trackers really seemed to leap up and impress with new ideas this year.

Where do we go from here?

More people are buying smart wrist-things than ever before. But a lot of people I know wear them and stop using them, too. Smartwatches have become an intriguing but also somewhat boring product landscape, all of a sudden -- compared to the white-hot super-hype of the Apple Watch debut, all these watches have begun to blend together, and offer increasingly similar features.

Watches need better batteries, and they need to keep looking better. They need to do more, and do it more intuitively. Smartwatches need to connect to more things beyond the phone, and function well on their own, too. Every major player in smart wearables will be back next year with another round of ideas, and they're bound to mostly be better. Many will start standing alone, connecting with their own Wi-Fi and cellular antennas.

For all the Android Wear watches (and Android Wear software updates), Apple Watch apps and endless watch companies announcing smartwatches that we've seen this year, what I really want the most are better, simpler, longer-lasting watches. Watches we don't have to babysit. Watches that aren't as needy. Maybe, to some, that means just wearing a regular watch instead. I'd almost agree, but my wrist just buzzed and beeped: it's a message I would have missed otherwise. I'm already hooked. But I can't guarantee you will be...yet.

Samsung Gear S2 Classic smartwatch review

The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch is an Android-compatible smartwatch that does not use the Android Wear operating system like the majority of the Android smartwatches that are currently on the market. Samsung marches to the beat of their own drum and has opted to use the Tizen OS to power their watches. Let’s take a look.

Note: Images can be clicked to view a larger size.

Hardware specifications

Processor: Dual core 1.0 GHz
Operating system: Tizen based wearable platform
Display: 1.2 ” 360 x 360, 302ppi
Memory: 4GB Internal Memory / RAM 512MB
Battery: 250mAh Li-ion
Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHZ, Bluetooth v4.1, A2DP, AVRCP, NFC
IP68 Certified Dust and Water Resistant
Case size: 39.9mm x 43.6mm x 11.4mm
Wristband: Large: 130mm x 70mm, Small: 100mm x 70mm

The Samsung Gear S2 watch comes in two versions. There is the Classic version like you see here, with a glossy black case, leather wristband, a rotating bezel and a stainless steel case that is both dust and water resistant. The S2 is also available in a more modern version with a plastic wristband and a smooth edged rotating bezel.

I like the look of the S2 Classic watch because of the leather band which can be removed and customized with any standard 20mm watch band. I also like that the bezel has notches around the edge that make it easier to turn.

An inductive charging dock is included with the watch that allows you to easily charge the S2’s battery without requiring that you plug a cable into the watch itself.

The dock uses a micro USB cable and comes with a USB AC adapter. It’s very easy to dock the watch because the charging base is magnetic. There’s also an LED on the front of the dock that glows red while the watch is charging and turns green when charging is completed. During my testing, I’ve found that a full charge will power the watch for 2-3 days.

The watch’s circular Gorilla glass display is bright and easy to read. You can change watch faces directly through the interface on the watch, or you can use the Samsung Gear app on your Android phone.

It’s important to know that you don’t have to have a Samsung phone in order to use this watch. It will work with any Android device as long as it is running Android OS version 4.4 or newer and that you install the Samsung Gear app which pairs the watch with your smartphone so that it can receive notifications of messages and incoming calls.

The user interface is easier to use than what I remember with the last Android Wear watch that I reviewed almost a year ago. You can use your finger to swipe left or right through the screens, but the rotating bezel is easier to navigate through the menus. Turning the bezel to the left will let you see the last notification and turning it to the right will scroll through your apps. There are also two buttons on the right side of the watch. The button on the top acts as a back button and the one on the bottom is the home button. Pressing the home button will bring up the clock face and pressing it again will let you scroll through your apps. You can also customize the home button to launch the app of your choice when you double press it and to send an emergency text message to specified contacts with your location when you triple press it.

There are quite a few apps pre-installed on the watch, include a calendar, weather app, timer, calculator, maps, voice memo, CNN, Bloomberg and more. You can use the Samsung Gear app on your phone to find and install other apps. Most are free, but there are some premium apps that you have to buy. App selection is weak, but the watch is still new. Apps like CNN will let you read news story snippets and will let you send the full article to the app on your phone for easier reading.

If you receive a text message or other notification on your phone, the watch will vibrate to alert you. You can then read the message on your watch and respond back by selecting a short response from a preset list. This list can be modified by using the Samsung Gear app. There are even emoticons that you can use in your replies. You can also use the microphone on the watch to speak your message, which will be translated to text, and if you have infinite patience, you can use the bezel to select letters from an onscreen T9 style keyboard.

The Samsung Gear S2 watch has 4GB of memory which you can use to transfer photos and music to the watch. These file transfers are done using the Samsung Gear app on your phone. Once the files are transferred, you can play the music using the watch and a connected Bluetooth speaker or pair of Bluetooth headphones. You don’t need to have your phone with you to listen to music. The only downside is that you have to re-navigate to the music app on the watch every time the watch goes idle and you want to switch tracks, pause, etc. That is the experience I had when I paired it with a Bluetooth speaker. Bluetooth earbuds with an inline controller might get around this issue, but I didn’t have any to test that theory.

As far as calls, you can use the watch to make a call by looking up your contact through the watch. Once the call is initiated, you have to use your phone to talk to the person on the other end. The same goes with answering calls. The watch will notify you that there’s an incoming call. You can answer it or reject it using one of the preset messages. If you answer it, you’ll need to use your phone to talk. Although I am not the type of person who would want to talk to someone through my watch, it’s a little disappointing that the S2 does not have a speaker phone feature when it does have a built-in microphone. Note that there is a 3G capable version of this watch that can be purchased through some carriers.

Other interesting watch features include a built-in heart rate sensor on the back of the watch and sensors that track your steps and activity using the S Health app.

What’s missing? As of this writing, the Samsung Gear S2 watches do not have Samsung Pay or Android Pay and it’s probably safe to guess that Samsung Pay will probably not work with non-Samsung Phones. Also, at this point in time, unlike Android Wear watches, the S2 watches are not compatible with the iPhone.

All in all, I’ve enjoyed reviewing the Samsung Gear S2 Classic smartwatch. I like the traditional classic watch look and feel because it isn’t overly bulky and geeky looking.  I also like the tactile rotating bezel which makes navigation quick and easy. The jury is still out about Samsung’s decision to go with a different operating system than Google’s Android Wear. Third party apps are available for the S2, but the selection is not nearly as robust as with Android Wear apps. At least not yet. If you’re looking for a classy watch that might be a little easier to use than Android Wear, the Samsung Gear S2 watches are definitely worth a look.