Motorola distinguishes the $149.99 Moto Watch from the company’s older smartwatches with health-tracking technology from Polar and a price that undercuts even budget-friendly models like the Samsung Galaxy Watch FE ($199.99). In addition, the Moto Watch looks elegant and lasted a week in my battery testing, but it achieves this feat with a proprietary operating system that lacks some basics, like an app store for third-party downloads and NFC for mobile payments. And despite its collaboration with Polar, the Moto Watch experienced accuracy issues during exercise tracking. The Galaxy Watch FE offers greater fitness-tracking accuracy and more lifestyle features, remaining our Editors' Choice for budget-friendly Android smartwatches.

Features: Lots of Sensors, But No Wear OS

Motorola partnered with Polar to provide fitness-tracking capabilities for its smartwatch. The Moto Watch includes an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, an e-compass, a gyroscope, and a PPG sensor under its surface to track activity, exercise, sleep, and stress. An integrated dual-frequency GPS can monitor your location during outdoor workouts. The watch can automatically detect and pause certain exercises while continuously monitoring metrics like calories burned and steps in the background.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

On the lifestyle front, the Moto Watch runs a simple, proprietary operating system. It has a built-in mic and speakers for phone calls, as well as a compass, weather, and calendar apps. It's otherwise meant to act as a pass-through for your phone’s notifications or as a control panel for your phone’s music. For phone-free music listening, it has 512MB of internal storage, which should be enough to hold up to 150 songs. 

The Moto Watch works with any phone running Android 12 and later, and does not support iOS devices. If you pair it with a Motorola phone, you can use the company’s AI on the watch and control your phone’s camera from your wrist.

The simple operating system enables the Moto Watch to last several days on a single charge, whereas most other Android smartwatches need to be recharged daily. That said, the Moto Watch lacks some of the benefits of Google’s Wear OS, which powers most other Android smartwatches.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

For starters, the Moto Watch doesn’t have an app store for third-party downloads. It also doesn’t have Google’s apps. If you want access to Calm, Gemini, Google Calendar, Strava, or any other wearable staple, you’re out of luck. It also doesn’t support Google Wallet or built-in NFC for mobile payments.

Design: Stylish, With Familiar Trade-Offs

The Moto Watch has an aluminum case and a plastic band. Like most other budget-friendly smartwatches, including the Galaxy Watch FE and the $249 Apple Watch SE 3, it has sizable bezels surrounding the display. Nevertheless, the Moto Watch looks good at a glance, and I thought it blended in well with my outfits, whether I was at the gym or hitting the town.

The 1.4-inch OLED display shows vivid colors and clear data, and a stainless steel crown jutting out on the right adds a pop of class. The black, volcanic ash finish is understated but stylish at a glance.

With a single 47mm size, the Moto Watch could be too big for petite wrists, but it fit well on mine. It has a depth of 0.47 inches, which makes it thicker than the Galaxy Watch FE (0.38 inches), but it didn’t feel bulky to me.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

In terms of durability, the Moto Watch features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 over the screen, an IP68 rating, and 1ATM water resistance to depths of up to 33 feet. The Galaxy Watch FE goes further with MIL-STD-810H certification and 5ATM water resistance to 164 feet.

Battery Life: A Clear Standout

Motorola estimates that the Moto Watch can last for seven days with the always-on display enabled and 13 days without. My testing mostly backed up those claims. It lasted for almost exactly one week with the always-on display enabled, and 11.5 days with it turned off. Both results are impressive, exceeding the battery life of most Android watches running Wear OS, including the Galaxy Watch FE, which lasts only 27 hours on a charge.

Recent OnePlus models, like the $349.99 Watch 3, take an interesting approach to extend battery life by combining a low-power operating system with Wear OS. The OnePlus Watch 3 lasted for just over four days with the always-on display enabled, so the Moto Watch still beats it. That hybrid approach likely wasn’t feasible on a budget watch like the Moto Watch.

Other fitness-focused watches with proprietary operating systems performed more in line with the Moto Watch. The $199.95 Fitbit Versa 4 lasted for over six days in our battery test with the always-on display disabled. The $449.99 Garmin Venu 3 lasted for up to eight days on a charge, as did the $299.99 Garmin Vivoactive 5.

Setup and App: Simple and Streamlined

The Moto Watch comes preattached to its band and ships with a magnetic charging pad to USB-C cable (but no wall brick), and a quick start guide. To set it up, download the Moto Watch app, create an account or log in, then put the watch on the charger to power it up. The app will walk you through setup and pairing.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

During setup, you’ll select your wrist preference and button orientation, then the app asks for your height and weight to calibrate its measurements. It also asks for your current activity level, and whether you want essential or advanced sleep tracking, with the latter consuming more battery but adding sleep quality measurements and nightly recharge assessments in addition to duration, sleep stage, heart rate, and blood oxygen data. I went with the advanced settings.

The app then provides an overview of its features before prompting you to enable notifications and download any updates. Once setup is complete, you can use the main Watch tab of the app to access settings and customize your watch. You can add songs, organize the order in which apps are shown, and customize the information panels you can scroll through from your watch face.

(Credit: Motorola/PCMag)

The Health tab shows boxes for your activity, sleep, stress, and other vitals, and you can tap any one for more information and charts, or rearrange the boxes using the settings icon in the upper right. This page in particular looks just like the health information in the Polar app, complete with a logo at the top of the main page. That said, I prefer the compact way Motorola organizes data compared with the more spread-out layout in Polar's own app for devices like the Loop band.

Lifestyle Features: Basic, But Polished

For navigation, press the Moto Watch crown to open the app list or quickly return home from any other page. You can hold the crown to toggle power or turn it to scroll through a page. Beneath the crown is a customizable function button. It defaults to opening up the exercise app, but you can change that in settings.

Touch and hold the watch face to scroll through available designs. Swipe down on the face to open a quick settings panel with icons to turn on Do Not Disturb Mode or Sleep Mode, enable the flashlight, and more. Swipe up for notifications.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

Swipe left and right to scroll through a customizable set of information panels. Options include activity, blood oxygen, heart rate, sleep assessment, stress, and vitality readings, among others. These info panels are similar to the ones in Wear OS. The navigation controls and overall feel remind me of Google's smartwatch platform.

Both the physical and touch controls were consistently responsive, and notifications were delivered promptly. I did miss some Wear OS functionality, though, since I couldn’t use the watch to make payments or even check my Google Calendar. Calls on the watch sound clear, but slightly tinny. The person on the other end of the line is easily understandable in a quiet room.

Exercise Tracking: Strong Potential, Weakened by Heart Rate Errors

Thanks to its partnership with Polar, the Moto Watch can track a wide range of exercises, including all of the basics like biking, running, and walking, as well as various sports and activities like dancing and croquet. It can automatically track elliptical trainer, rowing machine, running, and walking workouts. It also tracks activity stats, like steps taken and calories burned, around the clock.

Recent Polar devices we’ve tested have proven highly accurate at tracking exercise, so I was surprised to run into issues on this front. I tested the Moto Watch for a month while wearing the Apple Watch Ultra 3 on my other wrist to compare their health measurements.

The first Moto Watch unit I tested repeatedly showed wildly false heart rate numbers, so the company sent me a new unit to test. This second unit was better, but its heart rate values still didn’t meet my accuracy standards in my testing.

I wore this second Moto Watch for two 30-minute runs and a CrossFit training session. During runs, it started out in line with the Ultra 3 in terms of beats per minute (bpm), but as I settled into my usual pace, it quickly climbed into strenuous heart rate territory around 140 to 150bpm, while the Ultra 3 stayed within the 120s. My heart rate does go up as I jog, but not by that much or that quickly.

(Credit: Motorola/PCMag)

During the later part of my runs, I sprinted at intervals to check the Moto Watch's responsiveness to a rapid increase in heart rate, and it kept up well during these periods of strenuous work. After the workout, the chart showed the appropriate rises and dips, but an expectantly high average heart rate. The max heart rate value was consistent with Apple’s, as were its other measurements. For runs, the Moto Watch also measures cadence, calories burned, distance, speed, and step length.

For my CrossFit workout, the Moto Watch tracked lower average and max heart rates than the Ultra 3, but its heart rate graph oddly showed a significant increase earlier in the session than Apple's. The Moto Watch also showed much lower burned calories than the Ultra 3 for that workout.

On the plus side, the Moto Watch clearly shows your stats both during the workout and in its summary after a session, and its step counts stayed within a reasonable range of the Ultra 3’s. It could be a capable exercise tracker if a software update can fix its accuracy issues, but it falls short of that bar in its current state. Both the Fitbit Versa 4 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch FE accurately track heart rate during exercise.

Sleep Tracking: One of Its Stronger Areas

Compared with its exercise tracking, the Moto Watch performed better at assessing my sleep. The Moto Watch measures the duration and depth of your sleep, as well as your heart rate and several factors that contribute to sleep quality, such as interruptions and time spent in regenerative cycles.

It missed some data on a couple of nights during my month of testing, but it otherwise showed values that lined up with those of the Ultra 3.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

Its sleep cycle chart matched those from Apple's premium smartwatch, as did its assessment of my sleep time and overnight heart rate. Otherwise, the Moto Watch’s stress measurement aligned with my anecdotal experience, and its blood oxygen saturation numbers matched those of the Ultra 3.