LG Watch Style - Android Wear 2.0, battery life and verdict
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LG Watch Style – Performance and Android Wear 2.0
Inside the LG Watch Style is Qualcomm’s wearable-friendly Snapdragon
Wear 2100 processor, as seen in the Huawei Watch 2. This is alongside
512MB of RAM, which is shy of the 768MB included in both the Huawei
Watch 2 and LG Watch Sport. The standard 4GB of storage is included for
your apps and music.
Most importantly, these are all used to power the Android Wear 2.0
operating system. They all combine to provide a slick and responsive
experience devoid of judder and slowdown. Apps fired up with little
hesitation and scrolling through menus using the crown felt satisfyingly
smooth.
Android Wear 2.0 also makes use of a lot of swipe in gestures from the
edge of the screen to navigate and bring up menus. It’s here that I
appreciated the LG Watch Style’s casing that didn’t prove a hindrance
like that of the Huawei Watch 2’s. The latter’s raised ceramic bezel
meant your finger had to drop into the screen to swipe in from the edge.
All of the best features of Android Wear 2.0 are otherwise present,
including Google’s handy digital assistant, which is accessible by
holding the crown. This lets you use voice commands for anything from
asking questions to sending messages and activating smart home devices
remotely.
The Google Play Store is available directly from your wrist, which is
a convenient if not groundbreaking addition. The new on-screen keyboard
lets you jab away at responses or use swipes gestures to generate a
message.
Notifications are much better handled in Android Wear 2.0, making
much better use of screen real estate and feeling less cluttered.
Annoyingly, however, the vibration of the LG Watch Style is rather
muted, especially compared to a Garmin Vivosmart 3 I wore on my other
wrist, so it’s very easy to miss a notification coming in.
Watch faces can also be customised with ‘complications’ to provide
more dynamic information. Many of the default watch apps will show your
step count, for example, but you can swap this out.
Without the benefits of GPS and a heart
rate sensor, the LG Watch Style’s fitness credentials are obviously
reduced. You still at least have access to basic step counting and you
can use Google Fit to track your strength workouts, where I found the
rep counting functionality relatively useful.
But if you want a Android Wear
companion for your more serious workouts and runs, you’re better off
looking elsewhere. For readers in the UK, LG has told me the Sport model
isn’t getting released there, so that largely leaves you with the
Huawei Watch 2 as your best bet.
LG Watch Style – Battery life and charging
With the reduction in physical size and
the loss of fitness-oriented sensors, it wasn’t too surprising that the
battery capacity would take a hit.
At 240mAh, it’s quite the reduction from the LG Watch Sport’s 430mAh battery or the Huawei Watch 2’s 420mAh cell.
Even then, I would have hoped the loss
of a battery-sapping heart rate monitor would offset the reduced
battery, but the LG Watch Style still barely made it to 24 hours of
battery life.
If I took the watch off charge at 8am I
would go to bed around 11PM with about 25% battery life left. Failing to
charge overnight guaranteed it would be dead by dawn.
Compare that to the Huawei Watch 2 that
could just about scrape it to two days before needing a charge and it
begins to feel a bit disappointing.
However, it’s a similar experience to the
similarly-priced Asus ZenWatch 3. Admittedly, I would go to bed with
more gas still left in the tank, but still not enough to not require a
charge overnight so the difference is almost redundant.
You charge the LG Watch Style using a
magnetic dock that attaches to the back. It’s a fuss-free charging
experience at least, although the charge isn’t particularly quick,
taking about an hour to get to full capacity.
Should I buy the LG Watch Style?
For the fashion-conscious the LG Watch
Style is one of the more attractive Android Wear offerings on the
market. If you don’t mind sacrificing the sports-centric sensors in
favour of a smaller size, it’s a great choice.
It would almost be the perfect
mid-range Android Wear watch if it weren’t for the decidedly average
battery life and lack of NFC for Android Pay. However, up against the
similarly-priced Asus ZenWatch 3 it gets my nod.
Available to buy for around £229/$249, it’s often also bundled together with the LG G6
on certain contracts to sweeten the deal. If you’re wanting to decide
whether the bonus is worth it, the LG Watch Style makes for a fantastic
companion to a great phone.
Verdict
A stylish Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch for anyone not needing something sporty
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