Hands-on with the Moto 360 smartwatch (video)

Despite coming out later this summer, the Moto 360 is the star of the Android Wear show, with a large, circular display that promises to show as much information as its square counterpart.

While Motorola is not releasing any specs or build material details — they’re saving that for later in the summer when the device launches officially — we can tell that this is clearly the winner in terms of the latter. Motorola maintains that the 360 is made of “premium materials,” but it’s clear the the chassis, which surrounds the edge-to-edge glass, is made of stainless steel. It looks hefty in ways that the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live do not.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get a good sense of the software differentiation, if any, from the other Android Wear products on the market, but Motorola promises that it will have some non-software surprises for us later this summer.

What I can tell from this hardware is that the Moto 360 is not nearly as large as initially feared, and appears similar in overall stature to the Samsung Gear Live, and only slightly smaller than the LG G Watch. The edge-to-edge glass and chamfered bezels give the smartwatch the impression of a thinner form that it actually takes, while the single button on the right side grants the watch an old-fashioned analog style.

We were able to see only one watch face, a minimalist analog form with white hour and minutes hands and a red seconds hand. The screen, which does not appear to be AMOLED-based, nonetheless has amazing colour reproduction and viewing angles, and the watch supports a gesture to turn on the screen by lifting slightly turning one’s hand away and back towards you.

The screen itself also appears extremely close to the glass, which gives it a very paper-like feel; in good lighting, it’s impossible to discern a backlight.

We’ll have more of the Moto 360 as it becomes available.