gwatch-sunlight

The LG Watch and the Samsung Gear Live both went on sale yesterday and will arrive in consumer's mailboxes in early July. If you haven't ordered one yet, however, you may want to see one of the early weaknesses of the G Watch. Attendees of Google I/O received units and, today, there are a growing number of complaints that it's not possible to view the G Watch in the sunlight. The above image was posted by a team from The Wall Street Journal.

That's a concern, at least for folks who are going to rely on it for things like turn-by-turn directions while walking around, a feature that Google touted yesterday during its Google I/O 2014 keynote, or just wrist notifications in general. We haven't heard much about how the Gear Live performs, but in the past AMOLED has had a hard time performing well in direct sunlight, too, though Samsung's panels have improved admirably during the past several years. The G Watch uses an LCD panel, however, which makes this a bit more surprising since LCD is typically at least OK in direct sunlight.

We have a few units arriving in the office soon so we'll be sure to run both smartwatches through our regular gamut of tests, we just thought you should know about an early issue that's cropping up if you're looking to buy the G Watch.