I have always been a “watch guy.” I like the convenience of being able to look at my wrist for the time. Having to pull out my phone for the same task has always seemed like waay too much work for a simple task. I am also a huge nerd so obviously wanting to tech-out my watch is desirable. I tried the Fossil Abacus back in the day (think Palm Pilot in a watch) but the technology wasn’t anywhere near good enough to make this any more than a toy.

(Much) more recently I picked up a Pebble, which I love. It looks good (albeit a little casual) and the battery life rocks. It is all about the notifications, bringing information from your phone to someplace easily accessible. It is a fantastic effect and fundamentally changes the way I interact with my phone. It has gotten to the point where I rarely wear my “normal” watches anymore because I miss the interaction. And while it does have some apps, they are largely useless/cumbersome/hard to use (well, the music controller is nice). The utility does largely come from the notifications.

However, now that Google has stepped into the ring, I have been wanting to try our their new offerings.

The Moto 360 has always caught my eye as a damn fine looking watch but the mediocre reviews (especially at first) put me off a bit. But when the LG G Watch R was announced, it seemed like it had the same good looks and round watch face but fewer drawbacks (bad battery life, could last day with the “always on” screen enabled, no “flat tire”). So I got it… it just arrived… before I get into first impressions, I have to take a brief moment to discuss, the name.

Seriously, WTF is up with that name?? LG G Watch R? I work at Dell and while our model names are bad, this takes it to a new level. What is a “GWatch”? Google Watch? Nobody (including Google) calls it that. And the R… obviously stands for round but completely esoteric and non-sensical out of context. And starting with a company named LG, you would think that they would be even more careful to not make their names sound like alphabet soup. Are they marketing this to robots or people??

In any case, some first impressions:

• I love the display – full color, bright and high resolution. It’s by far the most striking thing about it (especially when coming from a Pebble)
• The face is a little big (wide), but still seems reasonable on my wrist (and i have a pretty spindly wrists)
• It’s also a touch thick – it seems like it will get caught in a shirts with tighter fitting sleeves
• I couldn’t get the damn thing to connect to my phone – it’s getting late and I have little people to tend to so I don’t have time to monkey with this now… will have to play more either tonight or tomorrow