LG Watch Urbane (& LTE) Review

This is strange but nevertheless what LG has decided to do. It seems a number of new smartwatches with a more high-end design are arriving to compete with the Apple Watch, which will launch in April. Looking very much like its predecessor, the LG Watch Urbane has been upgraded to a full metal casing, which will be available in a nice silver option and a blingtastic gold. You’d think that the LTE model is the same but with added mobile connectivity, but it’s actually quite diff erent. Its design is similar but chunkier and has three buttons on the side although the screen is still touch-sensitive. The Urbane LTE will only be available in silver, though, and has a less in-yourface matt fi nish. An issue is that both are big watches, so anyone with a small wrist is likely to fi nd them unwieldy. Each off ers an IP67 dust- and waterproof rating. Apart from the design, the Watch Urbane and Urbane LTE remain the same as the impressive G Watch R so they both use a round 1.3in P-OLED screen (320x320), a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and 4GB of internal storage.

They also have the same heart rate monitor on the underside which is on the G Watch R and other sensors including a barometer, accelerometer and compass. However, while the regular model has 512MB of RAM, the LTE model gets double at 1GB and it also has a larger battery at 700mAh compared to 410mAh. As well as 4G LTE connectivity, it off ers NFC and Wi-Fi which you won’t get on the regular model or other smartwatches in general for that matter. If you don’t mind the size, both models are desirable devices but the price which is always so important is yet to be announced for the LTE model. Expansys has the Urbane up for preorder at £299 so the LTE is sure to fetch an even higher price. As mentioned earlier, the Watch Urbane runs on Android Wear so there’s no change compared to LG’s previous smartwatches. However, the Urbane LTE runs the fi rm’s own ‘Wearable Platform’ which is based on webOS.

You can still interact with it with the touchscreen but the buttons provide a quick and easy way to access certain things. The top button opens up quick settings where you can switch functions like location, NFC, brightness and other things. The middle button simply switches between the watchface and apps list while the bottom one is a back button unless long pressed in which case it automatically dials a preset number and sends the location of the watch for emergencies.

The interface is easy to use and whether you’d want to or not it can make calls thanks to the mobile connectivity and the built-in microphone and speaker. We’ve not been able to test this out at MWC. There is a bunch of apps preinstalled including a music player and fi tness tracking for various sports such as golf and trekking. The NFC inside can be used for payments and while we’ve only spent a short amount of time with the LG Wearable Platform, our initial impressions are very positive.