LG Watch Urbane review – hands on

LG was showing off the successor to the G Watch R at MWC – the curiously-named Watch Urbane. It’s an Android Wear device and, while the G Watch R was intended for sporty types, the Watch Urbane is “designed for a sophisticated and cosmopolitan wearer”.

The watch has a built-in heart rate monitor, so is still useful down the gym. Like the G Watch R, the Urbane has a round 320×320 OLED display, but LG has slimmed down the bezel to give it a sleeker look. The watch body is stainless steel, and unlike the matt finish of the 4G-enabled Watch Urbane LTE, has a polished silver look.

It’s a good-looking watch, but we feel the design isn’t quite as cohesive as that of the Urbane LTE. On the LTE, the bezel curves and blends into the main body of the watch, while the Urbane has a flat bezel with a visible step down to the watch’s body.

We did like the soft leather strap, however, which was easy to fasten and comfortable on our wrist. The watch is 10.9mm deep, which gives it a slightly thinner profile than other round models such as the Moto 360 (11.5mm) and Huawei Watch (11.3mm). LG claims that, thanks to this thinner profile, the Urbane is perfect for either men or women, but our female reporter still found the watch was too big for her wrist. The main problem is its length; the watch is longer than a smaller wrist is wide, so its edges poke out either side, making the strap hard to fit snugly around your wrist.

Inside, the watch is similar to the G Watch R, with a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB storage and a 410mAh battery, for around a day and a half battery life. Like all Android Wear smartwatches, you’ll be plugging this one in every night.

There’s no pricing or release date information yet, but unlike the Korea-only Urbane LTE, the Urbane will be coming to the UK.