A new Motorola Moto Watch 120 seems to have been quietly released in the US at a killer price
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If you're looking for a premium but affordable alternative to Apple and Samsung's latest smartwatches from a brand you trust, the newest entry in the budget-friendly Moto Watch line might be just what you need this back-to-school season.
If you had no idea that Motorola also sells smartwatches in addition to Android smartphones covering all price brackets and mid-range wireless earbuds tuned by Bose, that's because, well, the Moto Watch 100, Watch 70, and Watch 40 are not actually manufactured by the Lenovo-owned company.
Instead, a different outfit called CE Brands is in charge of these low-cost wearables, and the same obviously goes for a new and slightly pricier Moto Watch 120 model.
Wait, when was this thing announced?
To be perfectly honest, we have no idea. That's because CE Brands doesn't exactly have a very strong social media presence, while the Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts linked on the official motowatch.com website are, to be blunt, an absolute mess.
But the Moto Watch 120 did pop up on said website at some point in the last few days with little to no fanfare, followed by not one and not two but three Amazon product listings in similarly unceremonious fashion.
While two of these have the device listed as "temporarily out of stock" at the time of this writing in silver and rose gold colorways, the third one (or should we say the first one?) allows you to order a phantom black variant with an estimated delivery date of between October 1 and October 4.
That's clearly not ideal, which is why you may not want to hurry and instead wait for the other two models to receive (hopefully less distant) shipping dates before deciding to place your order at $129.99.
What do you get for that crazy low price point?
- 1.43-inch Always-On AMOLED touchscreen;
- IP68 water and dust resistance;
- Heart rate monitor, blood oxygen sensor, sleep tracking, stress tracking;
- 300mAh battery good for up to 10 days of endurance between charges;
- Moto Watch OS;
- Google Fit integration;
- Accelerometer, built-in speaker, and microphone;
- Automatic sports detection;
- 100+ sports modes;
- Built-in GPS;
- Bluetooth 5.3;
- All-metal body;
- 50.6 x 44.6 x 11mm dimensions;
- 55 grams weight.
Let's be honest, that's an impressive list of specs and capabilities at first glance for a budget smartwatch contender. At only 130 bucks, the Moto Watch 120 is obviously not designed to take on the Galaxy Watch 7 and Apple Watch Series 9 (or even the Galaxy Watch FE and Apple Watch SE 2), which makes that 10-day battery life... claim and that large and vibrant AMOLED display sound truly and utterly unbeatable.
Of course, there's currently no way to know how this new Motorola-branded smartwatch will hold up in the real world in terms of its endurance between charges, or for that matter, in terms of durability in general. With no words on what kind of processor resides under the "zinc alloy" hood of the Moto Watch 120 and a proprietary Moto Watch OS running the software show in lieu of Google's Wear OS platform, it's also safe to expect the occasional glitch, some general performance compromises, and less-than-stellar app support.
On the bright side, the Moto Watch 120 is advertised as "made for Google Fit" and stuffed to the gills with handy health and fitness monitoring tools, which is a lot more than what other sub-$150 smartwatches can offer today. The "premium" design is also pretty hard to beat in that price bracket, at least based on the official product depictions released by Motorola licensee CE Brands, so we're definitely not going to blame if you do decide to give this thing a chance... when it actually starts shipping.
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