A new Motorola Moto Watch 120 seems to have quietly hit the market in the US at a killer price

If you're looking for a high-quality but affordable alternative to the latest smartwatches from Apple and Samsung from a brand you trust, the latest addition to the budget-friendly Moto Watch range could be just the thing for you this back-to-school season.

Instead, another company called CE Brands is responsible for these low-cost wearables, and the same apparently applies to a new and slightly more expensive model of the Moto Watch 120.

Wait, when was this announced?

Honestly, 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 to the official motowatch.com website are, quite frankly, an absolute mess.

But sometime in the last few days, the Moto Watch 120 appeared without much fanfare on the said website, followed by not one and not two, but three product listings on Amazon in a similarly unspectacular manner.

While two of them list the device as “temporarily out of stock” in silver and rose gold color variants at the time of writing, the third (or should we say first?) lets you order a Phantom Black variant with an expected delivery date between October 1st and 4th.

This is clearly not ideal, so you may not want to rush in and instead wait for the (hopefully less distant) shipping dates for the other two models before committing to your $129.99 order.

What do you get for this insanely low price?

  • 1.43-inch always-on AMOLED touchscreen;
  • IP68 water and dust resistance;
  • Heart rate monitor, blood oxygen sensor, sleep tracking, stress tracking;
  • 300mAh battery with up to 10 days of battery life between charges;
  • Moto Watch operating system;
  • Google Fit integration;
  • Accelerometer, built-in speaker and microphone;
  • Automatic sport recognition;
  • Over 100 sports modes;
  • Built-in GPS;
  • Bluetooth5.3;
  • All-metal housing;
  • Dimensions 50.6 x 44.6 x 11mm;
  • 55 grams weight.
Let's face it, that's an impressive list of specs and features for a budget smartwatch contender at first glance. At just $130, the Moto Watch 120 is obviously not designed to take on the likes of the Galaxy Watch 7 and Apple Watch Series 9 (or even the Galaxy Watch FE and Apple Watch SE 2), which makes the 10-day battery life claim and large and vibrant AMOLED display seem truly and utterly unbeatable.

Of course, there's currently no way of knowing how this new Motorola-branded smartwatch will fare in real-world use in terms of its stamina between charges, or even durability in general. With no word on what kind of processor is under the Moto Watch 120's “zinc alloy” hood, and a proprietary Moto Watch OS running the software show instead of Google's Wear OS platform, you can also expect occasional glitches, some general performance drops, and less-than-stellar app support.

On the plus side, the Moto Watch 120 is advertised as “made for Google Fit” and is packed to the brim with handy health and fitness monitoring tools, which is a lot more than other sub-$150 smartwatches can offer today. The “premium” design is also hard to beat at this price point, at least based on the official product descriptions from Motorola licensee CE Brands. So we definitely won't blame you if you decide to give this thing a shot… when it actually ships.

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