Moto Watch Fit - A Smart Dumbwatch!

Having had a meander away from WearOS with the CMF Watch Pro 2 recently, with pretty positive results, I thought I'd give Motorola a try with their new one, the Moto Watch Fit. It's an oblong, Apple-style shape I guess, rather than the circular that CMF (and many others) went for with their take on what is, really, more of a Smart Dumbwatch!

It's an attractive-looking device which comes with a green/yellow fabric strap, they call it Trekking Green (a Pantone colour of course), which uses Velcro-type stuff to attach and wrap around the wrist. Works well and the design accommodates for very large and small wrists. If you don't like that, though, you can swap it for another one (from Moto or anywhere else) as the lugs are a standard 22mm, so well done Moto.

One of the huge advantages of not being baked into the WearOS platform is battery life - and as with the CMF watch, it can last weeks instead of hours (or just about a day or two with some of them if you're lucky) with WearOS. Moto claim here 16 days, which I shall be putting to the test of course. The downside is that unlike WearOS it doesn't plug into an ecosystem with universal apps, app store and open nature that developers can write for and make available. What you get here is what Moto (will) serve up and make available.

So the first casualty of that is no access to the million and one watch faces that are available for WearOS, but to be fair, Moto supply 80 choices, so surely something to suit everyone! In fact, one could say that a million and one is far too much choice, flexible an option as it is! Most people, in my experience, are going to pick one they like and stick with it anyway. There's also an option to use Moto AI, inside the companion app (so not relying on any particular (Moto) phone), to create your own watch face using text prompts - so we are back to a million and one after all!

It's £89.99 in the UK at time of writing and has, up to now, been quite hard to get from mainstream stockists. I got mine direct from MotorolaUK's website and it was delivered for free, and promptly by UPS. For the purposes of this review, I have paired it up with my Moto Razr 50, but as it's completely universal and controlled entirely by the app, it will work just the same on any Android phone. And just to prove it, I also set it up on my Pixel 9. The box it arrives in is white, 3" x 3" x 2". Inside you get a USB-C to proprietary cable (don't lose it as there's no other way to charge the watch) and a couple of 'lug adapters' in case, as I said above, you don't want to use their supplied strap and prefer another 22mm one. The supplied one is also a little elasticated. Not hugely, but enough to ensure that once you have it set for the size of your wrist, it can be wrenched off over the hand without having to undo it every time. Just.

Physically, it measures 44.46mm high, 37.9mm wide and is 9.5mm fat (in the middle). It weighs 25g which is not surprising as per the aluminium frame, and it feels/looks stealth-like on the wrist. You hardly know it's there really, light as a feather. Alongside my Pixel Watch 3 (45mm version) it feels/looks positively dinky, the latter being fatter and bigger in every direction. But then, as above, it does a lot more, so probably not surprising - and the Pixel also has a gorgeous domed screen glass which is a step up really in terms of class - again, not surprising at significantly more cash - in fact about three times as much! The very slightly curved (at the edges) screen is smooth and lovely under the fingers - and the surrounding aluminium gives it a polished look/feel too. On the right side is a button sitting slightly proud of the flat, which largely functions as a 'get home' or power-functions button. There's no sensor in it. On the back it's black with a central island housing sensors and to one edge, the release for the strap lug assembly.

So yes, the 1.9" screen is an OLED one, fronted with Gorilla Glass 3 (so watch out for micro-scratches or get some sort of protector, I guess), the watch is certified as IP6/8 and to 5 ATM so should be good for wearing pretty much all the time, whatever you're doing, going by that. I wore it in the shower last night - hopefully I haven't knackered it! They say it's not 'waterproof' and only certified for 'fresh water' so maybe not soap and shampoo! As with Moto phones, the OLED panel is gorgeous. Bright and colourful and vibrant. Don't know if it's the same P-OLED as the phones, but it looks like it might well be. The screen can be set to always-on, or not, timed and adjusted for brightness. The always on display is not the watch face that you choose but rather, after the screen timeout length you set, goes to the same Moto-stylised AoD clock that is present on the modern Razr phones - which is very nice. But there's no way to change that.

The watch doesn't have a speaker or microphone, so notifications are visual and vibration-based only and making/taking phone calls directly on it are right out! The Moto Watch App, on any Android 12 or newer phone, connected via Bluetooth 5.3, controls all of this and is almost as littered with options as a WearOS companion app. The vibration motor has 3 levels of intensity and I have it on the top one, which feels right for me. Not enough to wake or annoy, but enough to make me notice. You can then have a dot on the screen when something has come in, if you like.

There's a 'tiled' UI which the user can add/remove stuff from (via the watch or app), such as weather, fitness, sleep, music controls, steps, heart rate, blood/oxygen - much of the stuff you'd expect on higher-end smartwatch systems really. The UI is a swiping one of course and you swipe right from the home screen for a list of the Moto 'apps' - yes, each 'function' is considered an 'app'. Music controls, weather, Heart rate, torch, workout and so on. Swipe left for whatever tiles you've set up in rotation, up for notifications and down for 'quick settings' (which you can assign/add/remove in the app. Here is where you will also see the current state of battery (if you don't have it in your watch face) and confirmation that Bluetooth is connected.

I have to admit that I'm not much of a fitness fanatic, so testing here will be about the basics, not going down the gym! The first thing I noticed was how badly I sleep! As you can see from my screenshot here, I keep waking up and most of my sleep is of the 'light' variety! I've never done any sleep tracking much before because 'smart' watches have batteries that I always feel that I need to charge overnight, along with my phone. Yes, I know, it could be charged fairly quickly each morning, but I like to wake in the morning knowing that my devices are ready to go! With a 16-day battery (potentially) this goes away and lets me leave the watch on as I sleep. The blood/oxygen seems to work as it should, usually offering me a reading of about 98%, so I must be healthy (at least in that respect!), heart rate, which can be set to how often you want it 'measuring', there's a 'stress' measure which seems to tell me that I'm calm(!) - and other stuff, hooked up to Health Connect (Google's replacement for their Google Fit app) if you let it, before heading into all the 'workout' type stuff.

There are over 100 'sports modes' for those who want to use them, which you can select on the watch and start things going manually. It's not smart enough to detect what you're doing automatically, but when you're done it does write the data to the app (which, if you sign into a Moto account, will save the data for you in their cloud too). I guess that if you're serious about fitness you'd likely have a more up-market, less budget device than this anyway which will detect more. Bu there's outdoor walking, indoor walking, skipping, cycling, swimming, rowing, badminton, calories burnt - all the usual stuff you'd expect from a fitness app/watch. There's GPS built into the watch, so you can get distance tracking within the data too. You can set goals and track progress then review it all in the app.

Testing the battery now and the claim for 'up to 16 days'. This, of course, will be an estimate based on someone using the watch without an always on display running constantly - or spending 8 hours a day in the gym - or getting 200 vibrating notifications a day - or constantly running music (and thus controlling it), and so on. You get the idea. Probably 16 days under very strict conditions. However, we'll see I shall fully charge it now, wear it and not take it off, then see what happens. Motorola don't seem to quote anywhere how long it takes to charge from 0% to 100% but rather confirm on their website that users will "get power for the day with a 5-minute charge" - whatever that means! Observing now as I charge from 50% - it's taken 20 minutes to get to 75% - then another 40 minutes to get to 100% (an hour from 50% to full). So I guess that (based on the second half being generally longer to charge than the first with these devices' batteries), maybe an hour and a half, start to finish. Which is no investment in time at all if it does, indeed, last 16 days! I'll come back here and update this when tested fully.

But overall, it's a great watch for the (relatively) simple life. I think it does more than the average fitness band type device - and certainly feels much more like a 'watch' than a 'band'. Does most of what I need it to do - and seems to do it well, with more functionality than I had hoped for - and an app which is very detailed and has oodles of settings and options to play with. I hope they bring more watch faces along as time goes - as more than 80 as there may be, many of them are kind of cartoony/childish - and maybe that's where Moto think that they're pitching this watch. But I think it's neat and very good value for money for those who are happy to trade a deeper ecosystem functions for battery life and something a bit simpler. Recommended.