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Motorola's first Moto 360 smartwatch was the face of Android Wear. It was a beautiful, round smartwatch — even if it did have a slow processor, low-res screen and software that clearly wasn't meant for a round face.

Motorola has addressed most of these shortcomings in version 2.0 of the Moto 360, but the landscape has changed drastically since its original release. Apple Watch is out and other companies like Huawei and LG have released their own Android Wear smartwatches with round displays. Pebble released updates to its smartwatch, too, and a round model is on the way.

See also: The new Moto X finally has a camera that competes with the iPhone

In our review of the original Moto 360, we said to wait for version 2.0. Was it worth the wait, or is it just another smartwatch in an endless sea of smartwatches?

If we asked you to draw a wristwatch, there's a high chance you'd draw a circle with two long rectangles on the top and bottom for straps. That's the running design philosophy behind the Moto 360; with the original, Motorola pared its design down to those shapes.

The Moto 360 looks handsome and elegant compared to the Apple Watch and LG G Watch R.

Handsome timepiece

I thought the watch fit well and looked nice, though others thought the leather strap that ran through its underside was unsightly. The new Moto 360 is more of the same, but also refined to look more like a classic timepiece and less like a tiny computer on your wrist.

The most noticeable difference on the new Moto 360 are the watch lugs, the two protrusions on the watch case that hold the strap in. The crown button has moved from the 3 o'clock position to 2 o'clock, which makes it easier to press with your fingers. These nips and tucks may be minor, but they add up to a more luxurious wearable.

The Moto 360 now comes in two sizes: 42mm and 46mm. The smaller 42mm model, which sells for $299.99 (the least expensive model), comes with a brushed aluminum watch case and Cognac Horween leather strap.

Many smartwatches are going for the classic look, but few are as fashionable as the Moto 360. The minimalist design and genuine leather band matched my wardrobe and personal style; it was neither too casual nor too dressy.

Like the previous model, the smartwatch is customizable through Moto Maker — now with collections designed for men and women. You can pick different colors for the watch case, chamfer, whether you want the chamfer to be knurled or not, and a metal band. Some of these flourishes come at an additional cost.

The smaller Moto 360 exists largely to appeal to people with smaller wrists and women who prefer smaller watches, and I think Motorola nailed it. It did its best with the dimensions and fitting in the necessary components without compromising on the Android Wear performance and experience. The 42mm women's model uses narrower 16mm bands, as opposed to the the 20mm band on the 42mm men's mode.

Same software as everyone else

Hardware, by and large, is the only differentiator between Android Wear-powered smartwatches. The software is mostly identical between brands and makes it that much less interesting to talk about.

Image: Jhila Farzaneh/Mashable

This time around, the Moto 360 isn't the turtle lagging behind the competition. Motorola made a smart move by dumping the slow Texas Instrument processor for a speedier 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor. The smartwatch comes with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and a 300mAh battery (the 46mm model has a slightly larger 400mAh battery).

The Moto 360 has all of the typical sensors expected in a smartwatch: accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope, and a heart-rate sensor. The smartwatch also has 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 Low energy and dual microphones.

The Moto 360 charges wirelessly with a dock and has a built-in heart-rate sensor on the backside. The straps are also easily swappable. Image: Jhila Farzaneh/Mashable

The smartwatch is IP67 dust and water-resistant (up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes), but I wouldn't take it for a swim unless I swapped out the leather band for a rubber one.

None of these specs leapfrog the competition in any way. That's my main bone with Android Wear smartwatches: They're all virtually alike in specs and picking one really comes down to style.

The new Moto 360 runs Android Wear 1.3 and the interface looks better than before on the sharper, higher resolution display. The screen is crisper, but I still hate how the screen isn't completely round; it gets cut off at the bottom by a black "slice" or "flat tire" to accommodate the ambient light sensor. I also dislike how the screen is still bezeled, creating prismatic distortions when you look at it from off-center.

The mobile operating system isn't radically different from previous versions. Swipe in from the right to access the apps menu and tap an app to open it. When you get notifications, you can swipe up to show more details from an app like Gmail and then swipe to the left to bring up more options for functions like delete, archive and reply, or to open the app on your phone.

Even as someone who wore the original Moto 360 for about six months before switching to an Apple Watch, I still found swiping around Android Wear to be confusing. That's not just me being an Apple fanboy (the Apple Watch has tons of UX problems as well) — it's just the reality of how poor navigation is handled on small screens.

Using Google Maps on the Moto 360. Image: Jhila Farzaneh/Mashable

As with any smartwatch (Android Wear or Apple Watch), I used the Moto 360 mostly for glancing at quick notifications. Smartwatch screens are simply too small for more advanced, more useful functions. That's not to say the apps aren't good; they load faster than last year's and "OK, Google" voice searches are quicker. There are also many more apps to download. The last I checked, there were more than 4,000 Android Wear apps.

It's great to have music controls and navigation on your wrist, but these are tiny conveniences that I could certainly live without.

The Dials watch face has customizable dials for quick access to certain apps. Image: Jhila Farzaneh/Mashable

The best Motorola addition to Android Wear is a feature that you could easily overlook. On the "Dials" and "Dials II" watch faces, three customizable dials display bite-sized information like the date, battery life and weather. They basically mimic the Apple Watch's complications.

With the Motorola Connect app, you can change these dials to show a variety of settings such as another world clock and calories burned. Tap on them to open the app and show even more information.

The Moto 360 also had respectable battery. I got mostly a day out of it, but on a few occasions, I got up to two days on one charge (with the ambient light sensor turned off and the display brightness lowered). The wireless charging dock is slightly tweaked from the old one, but works the same; plop the Moto 360 on the dock and it starts charging, while doubling as a bedside clock.

Fashionable and functional

We keep hearing how wearables — smartwatches in particular — are set to catch on in a huge way. Technology companies keep shoving them in our faces.

Motorola's second Moto 360 smartwatch is better in almost every way than the first model, but also maintains some of the same flaws — namely the not-fully-round display, a slow heart rate sensor and software that's better on a square display than a round one.

I'm still not sure a smartwatch is a necessity for anyone. It's nice to own, but in no way a must-have (same goes for the Apple Watch) since it's still a companion device that needs to be tethered to your smartphone.

Still, these small quibbles can be overlooked. And I did overlook them, if only because the Moto 360 now works — although with limited features — with the iPhone.