Motorola announced the Moto Watch Ultra today, its first watch in years running Google’s Wear OS instead of the simpler in-house software its recent models used. The full spec list is a 46mm stainless steel body, a 1.5-inch pOLED screen, a Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 chip with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, NFC for Google Wallet, LTE, and a 550 mAh battery Motorola rates at two days. It goes on sale unlocked on September 10 at $349, and reaches Verizon on September 24. Health tracking comes from Polar rather than anything Motorola wrote, which is how a Wear OS maker without access to Fitbit gets a fitness platform at all.
Android Police’s Rita El Khoury spent a day with one and found the compromises where you would expect them. The screen is covered in Gorilla Glass 3 rather than the Gorilla Glass 5 on the Pixel Watch 5, and it peaks at 2,700 nits against Google’s 3,000. The Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 has no satellite connectivity, though it does carry a low-power coprocessor for background work like notifications and heart rate. Those choices are what keeps the price down. An LTE 45mm Pixel Watch 5 runs $530 without an extra band, so Motorola is asking a little over half as much for a bigger watch that ships with two straps and takes any standard 22mm band.