LG Watch W7 Features: Reasons to Love This Smart Watch

The reviewer for this post LG Watch W7 features was compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product.

I admit that as much as I love gadgets and tech, I’ve held off on purchasing a smart watch for myself. I didn’t want something that just guilted me for not moving or was purely another connection to my phone.

When I found this, I loved the more unique LG Watch W7 features, especially the fact that it looks and acts like a watch first. While I readily admit this isn’t the smart watch for everyone, it fits what I want it to do.

You can find the LG Watch W7 at Best Buy for $449, although it’s currently on sale for $200 off!

LG Watch W7 Features I Love

Basic fitness tracking

I am not hard core into fitness. While I go to the gym regularly, I don’t monitor my heart rate – and I know I’m not alone. The LG Watch W7 lacks a heart rate monitor due to its design, but I’m ok with that.

The watch does, however, track my steps and active minutes. It uses the guidelines from the American Heart Association and World Health Organization to provide goals you can customize.

It shows me the steps I’ve taken and my active minutes. While my phone tells me the same with its built in health app, I miss out on all the steps and activity when I don’t have my phone on me… like when I’m at the gym. This counts them for me.

Access this by swiping right to left, and it shows you your current progress. Not only do you have you current numerical values, but you also have a bar going around the outside of the watch to show visually how close you are to hitting your goals.

The watch pairs with Google Fit to provide you with other neat feature like a guided breathing session that takes two minutes to help you relax. Once you complete it, it shares your breathing time and how many deep breaths you took.

You can also track your workouts, and the watch lets you choose your activity. My favorite? Flossing – and yes, you read that right.

The LG Watch W7 is a watch first

For me, this is a plus. I want to wear a watch that looks like a watch. This has the traditional round face with numerals around the face and mechanical hands.

No one knows I have a smart watch unless they see me interact with it, and that’s the look I prefer. Unlike my phone or many other smart watches, I don’t need to have an always on screen or press a button to see the time.

This phone has mechanical hands like a traditional watch, and if you don’t recharge your smart phone (and you’ll need to each night), the watch functionality remains intact for 100 days.

To see the smart screen, I simply rotate my wrist towards myself, and the screen lights up to show me if I have notifications (an orange alert at the bottom), the seconds, day of the week, and day of the month. It also shows me the battery life remaining, so I can be sure to recharge it in a timely manner.

I can customize my notifications

One thing I realized quickly is that I receive a katon of email every day. That means my wrist buzzes nearly nonstop – or so it feels. Most emails I receive are of the not urgent variety, so I ignore them or delete them. I go back and forth between turning on my email notification and ignoring most buzzes and turning it off to know that a buzz generally means a text or a phone call.

Fortunately I can completely customize it for every app I have on my phone, which means I don’t get Twitter or Instagram notifications because I don’t need to know about them immediately. I appreciate these type of LG Watch W7 features.

I can reply to texts from my watch

And the replies are pretty cool actually. When I receive a text notification and tap it to expand and read it, I have the option to reply to the text or call the person.

Generally I want to reply, and while I have access to a small keyboard, I generally hit the microphone to use voice to text to compose a reply. I’m impressed at the accuracy of the voice recognition.

I can also choose to reply with an automated reply based on what the software thinks is most appropriate, which means I can one tap reply. Or I can reply with an emoji, which if you know me is something I do frequently.

As far as the small keyboard goes, I tested this out a few times in place of the voice to text, and it works pretty well. While I sometimes was off by a little bit, (atea instead of area) I generally hit the right letter the first time. Considering how tiny the keyboard is, I’m impressed.

The watch offers my key reminders

When I swipe left to right, the watch provides a connection to my life. It greets me with the day and date, as well as the digital time.

If I scroll down, it provides me with key reminders like my trip to Spain with my daughter next month. Not only does it have my individual flights appear, but it offers to share the weather in each location with me.

You can customize this to have additional features shared, as well. My favorite is that the bottom that gives me a different inspirational quote each time I view it.

I can get directions from my watch

No joke! Swipe left to right and tap the microphone, then ask it to navigate to a destination. It pulls up the navigation on my watch once I installed Google Maps. You have to have your phone within range and with the Bluetooth turned on, but I love this feature.

The Google Assistant in its near entirety actually exists on your LG Watch W7, so you can do everything from make a phone call to send a text to set a timer to adding a reminder to do something all with just a tap on your phone.

The watch hands move out of the way

While I love the analog hands that make my smart watch look like a traditional watch, the designers came up with smart LG Watch W7 features to make them less obtrusive when needed. While they never disappear, I can move them to better see the screen.

When I want to read a text or see instructions that appear in the middle of the watch, I press the top bezel to make the hands move to the 9 and 3 position. This also moves the screen up slightly so I can better view the text underneath. It isn’t perfect, but I have yet to run into a situation where I can’t read something.

My watch finds my phone

This shouldn’t be my favorite of the LG Watch W7 features, but it just might be. I misplace my phone far too often. When I’m at home, I can use my smart device to find my phone, but if I’m out I run into challenges.

My watch calls my phone. Simply swipe down and press the icon that looks like a smart phone with the sound bars. Your watch will force your phone to ring, so you never waste time looking for it!

Use gestures to control your smart watch

Yes, it’s easy to move around with a tap, but the LG Watch W7 offers even more. In the settings, you can turn on various gestures.

I have them all turned on to maximize my efficiency using the phone. There are four main gestures outside the obvious tap the screen to wake it up.

Tilt in: To turn on the smart face, simply tilt your wrist towards yourself. This is a natural gesture when you want to check your watch regardless, and this opens the face for you to see if you have notifications or otherwise interact with your watch.

Tilt in within notifications: When you are in the screens and want to scroll up, tilt your wrist up again. This scrolls up one screen. If I have gloves on or my hand is full or dirty, this is a handy way to still utilize the LG Watch W7 features.

Tilt out within notifications: Like the previous tilt. this also scrolls. Tilt your wrist away from yourself and the screen scrolls down.

Shake your wrist: Once you finish a task, this makes it easy to return to the “home” screen. Simply shake your wrist to exit. I found a few screens where the exit wasn’t intuitive, so the shake works much more easily!

Other LG Watch W7 Features and Considerations

To use this smart watch, you need to download the Wear OS app, available in the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Without the app, you cannot pair it with your phone and utilize all the smart watch functions.

Like many smart watches, the LG Watch W7 is compatible with both iOS and Android phones. Both allow it to pair easily, which helps if you move from one platform to another.

You can set up a do not disturb time. If you wear the watch overnight or need downtime while studying or working, you can manually turn on do not disturb from the swipe top to bottom menu.

The battery is not fantastic. While the watch portion has a 100 day battery life, I can easily run the battery down in under a day. To maximize battery life, I turned the brightness down and removed email notifications from my LG Watch W7. This helped significantly.

The good news? The charging station that comes with the LG Watch W7 is easy to use and charges fast. I can go from near dead to fully charged in under an hour, which helps with the battery life issues.

You can customize your watch face. While I prefer “Maximize” for my screen, which is the default, you can choose the screen that best fits your personality and displays the information you want to view.

The bottom bezel opens up an entirely new set of menu options. From there you can access all sorts of neat functionality from a compass to a timer and more. I can’t wait to use some of these features when I travel.