Samsung Gear Live smartwatch runs Android Wear, sells July 7 for $200, £170 (hands-on)

When Google’s first operating system for wearable tech makes it debut, you’d better bet that Samsung is first in line. The Samsung Gear Live joined Motorola’s Moto 360 and LG’s G Watch at Google’s annual I/O conference as the first three smart watches to run the wrist-worn OS — and as Samsung’s fourth wearable in total.

The watch will pair with any device running Android version 4.3 or above, a major departure for Samsung — a company whose mode of operation is to preference its own devices at the exclusion of others — but a rule for playing in the Android Wear sandbox.

In the US, the UK and Australia, you can preorder the Gear Live online at the Google Play Store. It costs $200 in the US, £169 in the UK and AU$250 in Australia.

Samsung Gear Live hands-on (pictures)
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Design and build

Samsung’s Gear Live falls somewhere between the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Gear 2 Neo, and the Gear Fit band. It has the Gear 2’s square metal body and thicker bezel, but has different curves on the edges and a dual-peg closure rather than a traditional watchband that folds over and clasps in place: more like the Gear Fit’s band than the Fitbit Force or Garmin Vivofit.

The Gear Live’s flat, smooth band feels comfortable on the wrist. It comes in black and wine red, but you can take a small screwdriver to the watch and switch out the band for various aftermarket options.

Even though the band is comfy, the watch’s square 1.63-inch (33 millimeter) Super AMOLED screen makes a statement. Depending on the size and of your wrist, how accustomed you are to wearing watches, and your personal aesthetic, the Gear Live could fall anywhere from too large to the Goldilocks zone of being just right.

Specifically, the Gear Live will take up a fair amount of space — it’s 1.5 inches tall by 2.2 inches wide by 0.35-inch thick (37.9 by 56.4 by 8.9mm) and weighs 2.1 ounces (59g). Like the Gear 2 Neo, Gear 2, and Gear Fit, the Live juices up through a clip-on charger outfitted with a microSD port.

The screen itself looked bright and sharp with the Gear Live’s 320×320-pixel resolution, a little crisper than the LG G watch by the numbers. Of course, that was also with a screen brightness set to level four out of five. You can dial it down in the settings, but there’s no automatic mode, which could be a little awkward in a movie theater with the always-on screen blaring slightly less brightly, but humming all the same.

As for the rest of the watch, you have a power/lock button on the right side, and yes, a heart-rate monitor on the back. Right now, that’s the one hardware feature that really makes Samsung stand out from its tiny knot of competitors so far. For fitness fans, being able to track your heart-rate and steps would be beneficial.

Inside, you’ll find a 1.2GHz processor, and an IP67 rating that certified the unit resistant to dust as well as underwater dives of up to 3 feet (1 meter) for as long as 30 minutes. That means you shouldn’t worry about wearing it as you go about the day — scrubbing dishes, cooking, washing the car, and so on.

The Gear Live also has 4GB of onboard storage, 512MB RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 300mAh battery. Samsung says that heavy users will get about 24 hours of the watch’s battery cycle, with moderate users clocking about 30 hours before it’s time to plug in again.

Android Wear = Google Now

If you’re familiar with any of Samsung’s smart watches before the Gear Live, the Android Wear operating system is going to be your biggest shock. Gone are the on-screen menu buttons you used to use to navigate around. Instead, voice commands is your main form of input, along with some swiping and occasional long-presses.

Here’s how it breaks down. There’s no standalone app storage or usage here. Instead, everything connects to your phone and the the management app on it — and the experience is mostly an extension of Google’s voice commands and Google Now.

The watch starts off dark (and dims after 5 seconds; this is immutable for now). To wake up the always-on display, you can press the lock button, twist your wrist (and wait a beat or two), or tap the display. If notifications await you, they show up in card form, which you can swipe away to dismiss or swipe up to expand. Swiping to the left reveals finger-friendly icons for making the next move, like opening the notification in your phone or launching into navigation.

You can swipe down from the top to view the date and your battery life meter, or mute and unmute the phone. A long press calls up wallpaper motifs, most of which Google supplied, though a few are Samsung’s own. Holding on the lock button invokes the Settings and its various options.

Samsung’s Gear Live smartwatch (pictures)
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Still, most of what you do on the Gear Live you do with your voice: setting alarms and reminders, navigating, and composing a text message or e-mail to contacts. Samsung, by the way, has splashed out with adding its own stop watch interface in addition to Google’s. You can ask to see your heart rate, which triggers the monitor to do its thing; you can likewise demand to see how many steps you’ve taken.

Notifications displays come in the form of miniaturized Google Now cards and pass along information like stocks, weather, sports scores, and social interactions. You can also control a music player and field phone calls. Notifications are larger and easier to read than notifications seen on Samsung’s other wearables, but this is more controlled by Google than by Samsung, whose customized contributions are heavily curtailed with Android Wear.

We didn’t have a ton of time with the Gear Live, but we did manage to execute several voice commands, including sending short texts and e-mail messages. One drawback popped up immediately, the fact that you can’t approve or abort a message if Google’s voice engine misinterprets you, or if you change your mind. Grammarians also won’t like the usual issue that comes with voice transcription, mainly irregular capitalization and punctuation you have to voice yourself.

Outlook

In the much more closed world of Android Wear, Samsung is at a distinct disadvantage from the other guys. The company can put forward a few more wallpaper tableaus and app interface alternatives, but that’s the extent of things so far. Instead of carving out an identity based partially on hardware and partially on software extras, the Gear Live has to compete mostly on its hardware and its price.

Compared to the LG G Watch, the Gear Live has the slightly lower price ($200 versus $230; although in Australia they’re the same at AU$250, and in the UK the G Watch is cheaper at £159). Samsung’s watch has a sharper screen (320×320 pixels versus 280×280), and a slightly smaller battery. Both arrive in the US on July 7 and other countries at the same time or soon after.

We still haven’t had a chance to test the two side-by-side, or to see how they compare to the Moto 360, so wait for more on that front. While the Gear Live adds nothing surprising, Samsung’s four prior wearables give it the advantage of experience, with a heart-rate monitor that will in theory more quickly connect to Android Wear’s forthcoming health and fitness platform.

For even more announcements, check out CNET’s CNET’s full Google I/O 2014 coverage here.