Google went all-in with Android Wear today, showing off watches from LG, Samsung, and Motorola. LG's G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live go on sale today, but Motorola's Moto 360 won't arrive until later this summer.

I just saw an LG G Watch on the wrist of Sungjin Lee, LG's director of product planning, who had been wearing it for several days straight - although he said he hides the face under his sleeve where people might recognize it.

The G Watch, In Person

The G Watch itself is a comfortable roundrect of stainless steel. The face is still big, for a watch; one of my female LG minders was wearing a ladies' watch with a tiny little dial that had to be half the diameter of the G Watch's screen. But the G Watch is light enough that it doesn't feel like a parolee's bracelet, the way the original Galaxy Gear did.

I love the "sandwich" construction of the white model, which has a gold middle layer between two layers of white. It looks tight, fresh, and premium. There's also a black model, because there has to be a black one of everything.

The front is a bright, 1.63-inch LCD screen. There are no external buttons at all; on the back, there's a little reset button you can push with a pin. The watch is always on, and LG promised two days' worth of life. In a tap-to-wake mode, it would last 4-5 days, Lee said. Also on the back, there's a magnetic connector for a separate charger about the size of the watch face.

With the watch always on, I'm concerned about accidental touches; there's no real lock screen. The watch has finger detection so it doesn't accidentally swipe when bumped against things, Lee said.

The 22mm band is standard, so you can replace it with a more traditional watchband; like all default smart watch bands, the band that comes with the G Watch feels cheap. The band is flexible, rubbery silicone with a Teflon coating, which helps keep the white model white. Lee showed how he could scribble with a ballpoint pen on the band and wipe it off with a finger.

So why isn't it round, like Motorola's watch? Lee said it's not that LG couldn't make a round watch - it could if it wanted to. But a square face makes more sense for now, he said. People are conditioned to rectangular UIs from their smartphones and tablets, and a round watch would need an even greater diameter to show the same amount of data, making the face huge, he said.

How Android Wear Works
The G Watch's main face will show time and weather, Lee explained. Flick up and you can move through Google Now cards. IM notifications will pop up on the screen with a buddy picture as the background. Swipe right and you would see a big icon that says "Open," which would pop open the IM app on the phone.

Here's the thing, though. IM apps don't have to be specially programmed with Android Wear support. Android can figure out how to do notification tricks natively. That's pretty cool.

Google's presenters showed a bunch of other features in today's keynote. You can say "OK Google" to command the watch by voice (it has a tiny microphone on the edge). It shows the weather, how many steps you've taken that day, and how long it will take to get to work.

And as the presenters pointed out, it's highly extensible through an API. Google showed off a G Watch running a version of Pinterest that alerts you when you're physically near businesses on boards you follow.

The G Watch looks attractive and effective. It's far more functional than Sony's physically similar smart watch, much less clunky than Samsung's two new Gears (although the Gear Fit is in a different league.) 

The big questions are battery life and that with Android Wear as a software standard, whether the relatively low-key G Watch is going to be overwhelmed by more fashion-forward models. To figure those out, we have to get the Moto 360 on our wrists and the G Watch into our labs.