Android Wear was revealed last week at Google I/O and two watches are already on preorder: Samsung's Gear Live and LG's G Watch. They only work with Android 4.3 and above (go here with your phone to see if yours works) and the best one, the Moto 360, won't be available until later this summer.

First and foremost, a watch needs to give you the time. Fortunately, Android Wear does that just fine. The two watches we've tested default to an always-on mode with a black background and white text for the watch face.

You can select from multiple watch faces by holding down your finger on the home screen. The Gear Live has about a dozen and none of them are great, but the G Watch has over 20 and some are really stylish. Unfortunately, Android Wear doesn't allow developers to create custom watch faces yet, though Google tells me that will come in time.

Android Wear is a little remote for your notification center

Google's take on the smartwatch isn't too different from what the people behind the Pebble figured out last year: it should be all about notifications. At its core, Android Wear is a little remote for your Android phone's notification shade. Everything that appears there also appears on your watch, and when you dismiss notifications on the watch they also disappear on the phone.

Google being Google, there are some other features added on that rely on the company's traditional strengths. You will get Google Now cards in addition to your notifications, showing you things like the weather and upcoming flights. There's also robust voice control, allowing you to do everything from searching to texting to setting timers. Some watches have fitness features too — both the G Watch and the Gear Live have a step counter and the Gear Live also has a heart-rate monitor.

Getting around the watch is simultaneously dead simple and a little complicated. It's dead simple as long as you treat the watch as a dumb terminal to your phone and don't worry about finding those advanced features. You simply swipe up to scroll through your notifications, swipe right to dismiss them, and swipe left to access more options for each one. It gets complicated when you want to dig into some of the options; they're so buried under hard-to-find "Start" and "Settings" menus that I can only assume Google wants you to mostly ignore them. Fortunately, you can do exactly that most of the time.

There are more settings to be found in the companion Android app. You can dig into specific notification and pairing options, like muting specific apps. I'm also happy to report that Wear respects your Gmail notification options — if you don't have email set to buzz your phone, it also won't buzz your wrist. More importantly it’s where you'll manage associated Android Wear apps, which will be available after July 7th. Different apps can register themselves to different voice commands — so, for example, "Okay Google, take a note" could someday be mapped to Evernote.

Tapping on the main home screen activates voice actions, as does saying 'Okay Google" when the screen is on. There is some logic baked in to that voice action, but not enough. It's smart enough not to launch a search on both your Android phone and the watch (it defaults to the watch when available), but not smart enough to know who is saying "Okay Google." It took about 15 seconds for the people around me to figure this out and start messing with me by yelling "Okay Google" when they saw me with my watch. Add in the fact that this thing can send emails and texts with just your voice, and you might have problems if your friends want to mess with you.