It's been a few months with the G Watch, so I figured I'd finally share my experiences with Android Wear, and the OG G Watch. For the basics, I'll start with the tech specs.
1.65" IPS LCD
400Mah Battery
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz CPU
512MB RAM
4GB internal storage
Bluetooth 4.0, 9 Axis sensor (Accelerometer/compass/gyro)
Yep, that's right, watches now have processors and RAM. The great thing about Android wear is that it's pretty well regulated across the board, and even newer devices coming out these days have similar base hardware as the LG G Watch. The only real difference is stuff like speakers, additional sensors, screen tech, and design. Otherwise, pretty much everything you get will have the same internals. I'm happy to say although the G Watch is one of the oldest Android wear devices, it's still receiving regular updates, and recently just received 6.0 Marshmallow, adding doze functionality, along with some other tweaks affecting devices containing speakers, and it added some new gestures.
The adjustment period for the watch didn't take long. I was used to wearing my BM8180, so other than a slightly larger case size, and a larger strap, it wasn't a huge deal. It does take a standard 22mm strap, so it was very easy to find a replacement for the horrible white thing that was included. If I was able to obtain a black model for the same price as the white one, I likely would have kept the strap. I do still have it in it's box in case my new one ever fails. More on that later. As for similarities to my BM8180, well... It tells the time, and shows the date. Other than that, it's essentially just notifications on my wrist. It's very good at a few things - lists in Google Keep (Groceries!), controlling Google Play Music, setting timers, alarms, and reminders with voice. I even find myself occasionally replying with short messages using the thing. The voice recognition is surprisingly good, but that's to be expected from Google. I'll check the weather with the Google Now cards, get ETAs to and from specific places of interest, but most importantly, it's a fantastic notification filter.
For performance, it's always zippy. The 1.2GHz snapdragon, although rather old, is plenty fast for what the watch is doing. The interface is pretty constantly running at 60FPS, with very little stutter or lag. I've had one instance since starting to use the thing that it actually locked up on me, but it quickly recovered itself. For battery life - It really depends on daily workload/notifications. If I'm getting a lot of notifications, or checking things a lot, or heck, even playing a bit of Ingress, battery will usually end at around ~35% with screen always on and the basic digital watch face you see above. If it's a slower day, I can sometimes hit bedtime with 60% or more remaining. A 2 day stretch on battery is definitely possible, but would require minimal use or a low number of notifications. Overall, daily charging doesn't bother me, as I do have the dock right next to my phone's charger, which also gets thrown on the charge when I go to sleep. Charge time is about an hour.
For my replacement strap, I decided to reach out to Popov Leather again. I am still absolutely in love with my wallet I got from them, and the watch strap is no different. I did end up having to trim my strap and add an additional hole, but I don't think you can really tell. (I have what feels like dainty, un-manly wrists, and anything Popov Leather provides should fit the general population just fine!) Shoutout to Popov Leather, they provide a high quality, Canadian made product for a decent price. The strap also looks a heck of a lot nicer than the white one included.
Anyway, for anyone looking to check out Android Wear, find a watch on the cheap and give it a try. If you look hard, you can probably find a G Watch for around 100 bucks like I did! It's well worth the try if you enjoy any form of geekery. I hope to be posting a bit more over the next week or so, as I do have a few other new things to showcase, and some possible future plans to throw onto the internet as well!