After what seems like an eternity, the most promising Android Wear hardware has finally hit the market. While the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live were first to market, the Moto 360 has always felt like the flagship device for Android Wear.

While the software seems like it's headed in the right direction, the hardware for smartwatches has felt like a live experiment being carried out in the marketplace. Pebble has aimed for maximum battery life with a black-and-white e-paper screen, and Samsung's hardware machine gun has been in full effect, releasing everything from a wrist-mounted smartphone to a skinny, curved OLED device focused on fitness.

Spend a few minutes with the 360 and you'll quickly realize that the square, plastic designs other manufacturers are pushing are dead-on-arrival. The Moto 360 design is a huge step forward for smartwatches. It's round, it's comfortable to wear, and it looks like a normal watch.

The sad news is that, while the company mostly nailed the exterior design, Motorola totally dropped the ball when it comes to the internal components. Somehow, it managed to dig up a batch of crusty old OMAP 3 SoCs for its flagship watch. The 2010-era processor is old, slow, inefficient, and power hungry. Couple that with a 320mAh battery and we get around half the runtime of other Android Wear devices.

A smartwatch that looks like a real watch

People always tell me "No one wears watches anymore." Well I do. I have a watch that I occasionally wear as a fashion item. So we're not just going to dive into the technical aspect, but also the Moto 360's ability to be a normal-looking watch.

Wearable devices need to be worn, which makes the look of a smartwatch a primary concern. We were worried that the Moto 360 would be the size of a dinner plate, but we're happy to report Motorola did an excellent job on the exterior design. And while it is on the large size, it's still a relatively normal size for a watch.

The Moto 360 versus real watches Watch Motorola Moto 360 Tag Heuer Aquaracer 300M CAP2112 Citizen Eco-Drive Stiletto Michael Kors MK5538 Type Smartwatch Large men's watch Small men's watch Large women's watch Case diameter 46mm 42mm 36mm 39mm Case thickness 11.5mm 15.7mm 5mm 10mm Weight 49g 210g 90g 99g

The 360 is slightly large for a watch at 46mm, but it's close enough to a large men's watch to look normal. High-end watches can reach a pretty massive thickness and weight, and people still wear those for fashion. With the Moto 360 falling well below the numbers in our Tag Heuer example, it's hard to complain about the weight or thickness. The worst thing you could say about the weight is that the Moto 360 is too light. Weight is often used as a measurement of the quality of a watch. At only 49 grams, the 360 is the lightest watch of our collection.

This is also the first comfortable smartwatch I've worn. I've tried the Gear Live, Galaxy Gear, Gear Fit, Gear 2, and the LG G Watch, and they all end up hurting my wrist after a period thanks to the large, square design. The lug-to-lug distance—that is, the distance between the watch band hinges—is not something you'll find on the spec list, but it's an important measurement that determines how much large the watch feels, and how quickly it can start to bend around your wrist.

Specs at a glance: Moto 360 Screen 1.56" 320×290 LCD (205 PPI) OS Android 4.4W CPU 1GHz TI OMAP 3 RAM 512MB GPU PowerVR SGX530 Storage 4GB Networking Bluetooth 4.0LE Case Size 46mm × 11.5mm Weight 49g (with leather band) Battery 320 mAh Starting price $249.99 (with leather band)

$299.99 (with metal band) Other perks optical heart rate monitor (PPG), dual microphones, IP67, leather band

Here, the Moto 360 blows away the competition. The Gear Live's lug-to-lug distance is about 55mm, the LG G Watch is about 53mm, but the Moto 360 is only 35mm. I have small wrists, and the 360 is the first smartwatch that doesn't want to lift itself away from my arm. The 360 is "cheating" here a bit, since the hinges for the straps are actually under the watch body. It's a great trick that helps the watch feel much smaller than it really is.

Besides the small lug-to-lug distance, the on-wrist feel of the Moto 360 is also helped by the leather band. It's much nicer and more malleable than the rubber/plastic bands you'll find on other smartwatches. The band proudly proclaims it is Horween-brand leather, but there is almost no grain to it, and the lack of stitching or any other ornamentation leaves it pretty plain looking. It's excellent by smartwatch standards, but not up to real watch standards.

The watch band is removable, but Motorola annoyingly recommends going to a jeweler to get the watch band changed. It's not a standard watch band, so you'll be changing one Moto 360-specific band for another 360-specific band.

Coloring the steel black on our review unit wasn't the best decision, either. The overall lightness of the watch and super smooth finish makes it come across as plastic. Eventually, Motorola will sell an all-steel version with a metal watch band, which looks much better.

A marvel of engineering

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

Ron Amadeo

The front of the 360 is almost entirely covered by a 1.56-inch 320×290 round LCD. It's just cool to see an LCD in something other than a rectangle, and Motorola does a great job of highlighting it with ridiculously small bezels and a Gorilla Glass cover with a beveled edge. This feels like the right way to do a smartwatch—it's watch-like, but it's a futuristic reimagining of a watch.

It's not perfect though, the bottom of the LCD has a chunk missing, which explains the 320×290 resolution—you're missing 30 lines of pixels. Those pixels are at the very edge of the circle and not that useful, but a totally-round LCD would look a little better.

The black strip houses an ambient brightness sensor on the outside, and we suspect it gives Motorola a place internally to attach the LCD ribbon cable and other components that would normally go in a bezel. The tradeoff is definitely worth it. We'll take thinner bezels and a missing screen section over a larger bezel any day, and the little black strip is easy to forget about.

If you hadn't guessed from the mention of the brightness sensor, this is the first Android Wear device that supports auto brightness, and it's a big improvement over the manual brightness of earlier devices. It won't disappear in the sunlight, and it won't blind you in darkness. It's kind of sad that this is a new addition to Android Wear—obviously the platform is still immature.

At only 205 ppi, the display is not the mind-blowing super-dense variety that you'll find on a modern smartphone. You will see pixels if you look closely, but the display looks fine and gets the job done. The Gorilla Glass cover is beveled around the perimeter, which looks great and performs the clever trick of hiding the jagged edge of the round LCD. If you look under the bevel at a shallow angle, you can see the square pixels that form the end of a circle—they aren't pretty.

When the display is showing certain colors, particularly white, the beveled edge causes a chromatic aberration around the edge of the watch—you'll see a bit of a rainbow. It's not wildly distracting or anything, but it's there.

Like all Android Wear devices, lifting the device up will automatically turn on the screen. Individual models do this at relatively different paces, but the Moto 360 is pretty fast. There's only a tiny delay between looking at it and it lighting up. Tapping on the screen will turn it on too, and Motorola has even included a hardware power button in the style of a watch crown. Tapping on the hardware button will wake the device, and holding it in will jump to the settings, a nice shortcut for an area of the OS that normally is hard to get to.