Hands On With LG's Hybrid-Mechanical Watch W7

The wildest smartwatch I've seen this year, the LG Sentinel W7 runs for three months on a charge equally a mechanical watch. Light it up, though, and it becomes a full Wear Bone smartwatch with the UI under the mechanical hands.

It's tremendously ambitious, but the mechanical hands and the Article of clothing OS interface have a tendency to disharmonism. I got some time with it at LG's Wednesday launch event.

The Watch W7 isn't huge for an Android picket—information technology's big, to exist certain, just felt about the aforementioned size as the Samsung Galaxy Spotter. Android watches are simply big. There are 2 buttons and a turnable crown on the right manus side, and the bands are removable.

LG Watch W7 Interface

The bones "watch just" manner has a blackness screen, with mechanical hands pointing to numbers inscribed around the edge of the telephone.

The mechnical hands integrate well with digital spotter faces; I actually liked ane face with time rings that were closed to the signal where the hands were. Information technology's a really cool fusion of the physical and the digital.

They play along with certain other applications, as well. A set of core "master tools"—a compass, stopwatch, barometer, altimeter, and timer—use the hands, with the hands pointing to magnetic north or counting downwards the timer. Those tools seem to exist in a low-power middle ground betwixt the screen-off fashion and full Wear Bone.

LG Watch W7 Compass

But the deeper you become into Article of clothing Bone notifications, the less customized it is, and as a consequence the mechanical hands and the Wear Os interface start to clash. Scrolling and tapping on the touch screen is surprisingly smooth, with no parallax issues, given how deep the display is in the torso.

Simply the easily volition ofttimes cover words on the screen, or comprehend things like text-message quick replies that you might want to tap. Pressing the top-right push button moves the hands to ix:xv, which makes the display more than readable, but that feels like a kludge.

LG Watch W7 Face

In full Android Wear way, information technology only runs for 2 days on a accuse. And for $450, you aren't getting a lot of flagship smartwatch features—there'south no centre charge per unit monitor, GPS, or LTE. At least it'southward IP68 waterproof.

The W7 comes out on Oct. 14 for around $450. That'south a lot for an Android Article of clothing smartwatch, but virtually of them don't have the mechanical element.

LG has been committed to Google's Article of clothing Os smartwatch OS for years, but Google-powered smartwatches haven't taken off in the U.s.a.. IDC'southward global smartwatch tracker has Apple, Xiaomi, Fitbit, Huawei, and Garmin as the top five players, but points out that Huawei (the only Google Bone player in the mix) has "been heavily focused on the Chinese market place."