The Moto 360 Sport comes in three colors: black, white, and something called "flame orange." That's the color the company sent — flame orange. It could have just as easily been "prison orange" or "road construction orange." Or, more to the point, "I really don't want to get hit by a car while running on the road orange."
It's the kind of color that only workout devices tend to come in, but it certainly gets the point across. As its name implies, the Moto 360 Sport isn't so much an evolution as innovation, an attempt to focus its well-received wearable on a specific audience that has thus far been primarily served by the likes of Garmin and Basis.
It's a compelling proposition, a workout watch that's well-rounded enough to be a regular ole smartwatch for the 20-odd hours a day you're not working off your holiday feasts at the gym. The Moto 360 Sport certainly has a compelling foundation to build on, in the form of one of the industry's best Android Wear devices, but the device will need a lot more than bright colors to compete against the top fitness watches.
Design/Comfort
So yeah, there's the that whole flame orange thing. I rarely mention colors right off the bat, but it's really unavoidable in this case. That neon shade hits you right out of the box. Like running shoes, it's perfectly acceptable for the gym or a jog, but you're probably going to have some issues coordinating it with your wardrobe the rest of the day, unless you're a professional Power Ranger.
This is points us to one of the Moto 360 Sport's bigger design issues: the bands aren't swappable. So, choose wisely. For what it's worth, I've also read some reports that the white band is a bit of a magnet for lint and other discolorations, so you're probably best served going with that old standby, black.
Granted, it doesn't pack the same bang as flame orange, but fortunately the customizable Android Wear watch faces should keep most users happy when it comes to customization.
Color choice aside, the Moto 360 Sport is pretty tasteful, so far as sport watches go. As the name (and the CD spool-like package) helpfully implies, the watch face is round, which feels much more natural than the rectangular builds much of the competition sports. The display is a decently sized — but not unwieldy — 1.37-inches. At 11.5 millimeters high, the watch isn't thin exactly, but it's a breath of fresh air after wearing around the bulky Martian Notifier for some time.
Speaking of which, the band splays from the bottom of the watch in such a way so as to leave a bit of a gap between the watch and the wearer on either side, to help deliver ventilation to the bottom of the device during workouts. The band itself is all silicone, designed to repel, rather than absorb sweat — there's a reason, after all, why you shouldn't wear leather watchbands to the gym.
The material also lends durability to the proceedings, being constructed of the same material as many popular phone cases. The silicone covers the sides of the watch completely, making way for the silver bezel around the watch's face, a single button on the left side and a charging surface on the right. Around back is the heart rate sensor, which flashes a bright green light.
All in all, the Moto 360 Sport is a remarkably comfortable smartwatch. The round face sits well on the wrist and doesn't feel as crazily oversized as much of the competition. The silicone is soft of skin and provides an ample amount of ventilation. The inability to swap bands does decrease the watch's versatility fairly substantially, however — a bummer for an otherwise fully functioning smartwatch.
Fitness
OK, so what, precisely, makes the Moto 360 Sport such a good sport, aside from the aforementioned silicone band? The watch has a few more hardware additions up its sleeve — most notably, heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking, both essential elements of the fitness-tracking experience — though it's easy to see a day in the near future in which those features are standard in all wearables in the 360 Sport's price range.
The Moto Body (cringe) experience has been moved front and center, present from step number one. The app monitors steps, heart rate, activity duration, running time, and calories burned. It also pops up updates and encouragment as your day progresses and aggregates all your averages into an analysis card after two weeks of gathering data.
The information offered on the watch itself is, not surprisingly, pretty cursory — there are, after all, limitations of a sub-2-inch screen. Users can dive deeper on the info by downloading the stand-alone Moto Body app — well, Android users, at least. The app has yet to arrive on iOS.
Users of more advanced all-sport fitness trackers offered by competitors like Garmin will find the device's versatility a bit lacking. The 360 Sport collects an admirable amount of data for day-to-day fitness tracking and for those whose workouts begin and end with a daily run. That will probably address a number of users' needs, but falls a bit short for a device marketed as a sports tracker.
Perhaps Moto 360 Run would have been a bit more fitting.
Hardware
The screen splits the difference well between smart- and sport-watch. It's a full color LCD — not the most brilliant available on a wearable, by any stretch, but it's plenty sharp enough to get the job done with Android Wear's card-based OS.
The watch also sports a reflective panel, making it far more readable in daylight. It's a really nice touch for the target audience of athletes — and for everyone, really. A watch that's hard to read outdoors is pretty much useless half the time — assuming, of course, that you ever leave the house.
The display dims itself extremely quickly, which can make thing a bit tough to view while working out, but the feature is necessary because the Sport 360's battery isn't spectacular. The amount of time you'll get out of the watch varies greatly depending on usage, of course, but if you don't lean too heavily on the device as a daily driver, you should be able to get away with docking it about once a day.
Wrap-Up
With the Moto 360 as its jumping-off point, there's no surprise that the Sport is solid device. Motorola's produced a comfortable wearable with a solid build and some nice additional tricks, including GPS tracking, heart rate monitoring, and a screen readable in the daylight. The Sport is, however, still a lot more smartwatch than fitness tracker, relying on features that ought to be built into future versions of the standard Moto 360 line.
While the silicone strap fits well and is great for workouts, the inability to swap it out hampers the device's versatility — and for most users, $299 is probably a bit much to ask for a product only designed to be worn for an hour or two a day. The Moto 360 isn't a bad device, it's just an intentionally niche one that ends up being even more niche than its makers intended.
