Reviews have been mixed and pre-orders are backed up to June, but the Apple Watch's impending launch has given a boost to the smartwatch market. To ride the waves roused by the Apple Watch, Motorola and several retailers are selling Android Wear watches at half the price of the base model of the Apple Watch.
Over at Amazon, shoppers can save $70 on the Moto 360 or LG G Watch and qualify for free shipping. The normal price for the Moto 360, with a a leather band, is $249, while the square-faced G Watch's base price is $229.
For a Moto 360 with a metal band, the price is $219 after an $81 discount. The round-faced version of LG's smartwatch, the G Watch R, didn't receive a price cut on Amazon.
Best Buy has discounted the Moto 360 as much as Amazon has, but the brick-and-mortar retailer's ship-to-store option could see shoppers picking up their new wrist-worn computers the same day they order them.
The $179 price for the Moto 360 with a leather strap, normally priced at $250, is selling at half the price of the $350 Apple Watch Sport Edition. The Standard edition of the Apple Watch ranges in cost from $550 to $1100 and the Edition version of the smartwatch ranges in price from $10,000 to $17,000.
The Apple Watch launches on April 24, but the majority of the smartwatch's customers won't receive their orders at least a month later. Those who pre-ordered the Apple Watch shortly after it went on sale at 12:01 a.m. on April 10 soon found out that their orders wouldn't be fulfilled for four to six weeks, with fulfillment backing up into May and even spilling into June.
Early reviews of the Apple Watch have been mixed, with some reviewers buying into Apple's "long game" and others asserting that more capable Android Wear watches are available now at lower prices than the Apple's upcoming smartwatch.
A reviewer from The Verge complained that the Apple Watch was "slow" and is nowhere near being a powerful communications tool. The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo is already claiming that Apple Watch is a life changer.
"If Google brought all of the world's digital information to our computers, and the iPhone brought it to us everywhere, the Watch builds the digital world directly into your skin," states Manjoo. "It takes some time getting used to, but once it clicks, this is a power you can't live without."
