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Motorola's new $100 smartwatch foregoes Wear OS, available for pre-order now
- The Motorola Moto Watch 100 is here, complete with a $100 price tag and a custom operating system.
- The device has a surprising amount of fitness-tracking features at this price point.
- The Moto Watch 100 is now available for pre-order, with a ship date of December 2021.
Update: November 16, 2021, at 5:27 PM ET: The Motorola Moto Watch 100, first reported by Evan Blass on Twitter, is now official and available for pre-order. The article below has been rewritten to reflect the change.
It doesn’t look like every smartwatch maker is jumping on the Wear OS 3 train. Motorola has quietly revealed its next smartwatch, the Motorola Moto Watch 100. It’s available for pre-order now for just $100.
The Motorola Moto Watch 100 isn’t necessarily a successor to the third-gen Moto 360 smartwatch, although it does share many of the same design cues as the 2019 wearable. The watch features a round display with large lugs and two physical pushers on the right side. The 42mm watch case is made of aluminum, so it’s quite lightweight at just 45.8 grams. The display measures 1.3 inches, though it’s an LCD panel, not OLED.
The most significant change between this model and the third-gen Moto 360 is its software. It doesn’t run Wear OS. Instead, it runs something called Moto Watch OS, which is likely based on real-time OS (RTOS). RTOS smartwatches, such as Amazfit wearables and the OnePlus Watch, typically offer longer battery life but skimp on the smartwatch integrations. Indeed, the Moto Watch 100 will supposedly last up to two weeks on a charge.
Fitness and health are a major focus for the Motorola Moto Watch 100, too. It offers 26 sport-tracking modes, including hiking, indoor and outdoor rowing, indoor and outdoor running, Crossfit, American football, and more. The watch can track metrics such as steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled, stride length, average and max heart rate, pace, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen saturation via an integrated SpO2 monitor. It’ll also track your sleep duration, efficiency, and SpO2 levels at night.
You’ll connect the Moto Watch 100 to a yet-to-be-launched Motorola fitness app. From what we can see of it so far, the app looks nicely designed, though we’ll have to wait until December to dig into it.
Notably, the Moto Watch 100 doesn’t come directly to us from Motorola. Motorola licensed out its name to eBuyNow, the same company responsible for resurrecting the Moto 360 name in 2019.
Sound like the right smartwatch for you? The Moto Watch 100 is available for pre-order from Motorola.com or motowatch.com for $99.99 in two colorways: Phantom Black and Glacier Silver. The Moto Watch website says the watch will ship by December 10, 2021.