The LG Watch W7 is a smartwatch with classic mechanical hands

Does a smartwatch have to be a timepiece without mechanical hands?

LG is addressing this notion head-on with the hybrid Watch W7 (just announced alongside the V40 ThinQ). Yes, it does have a screen, but there are also a pair of hands that stick out to tell time classically.

The LG Watch W7 launch on Oct. 14 for $449. Pre-orders start Oct. 7, exclusively at BestBuy in the U.S.

The Watch W7 runs Google’s Wear OS. An LCD panel, minute and hour hands, and then a layer of glass make up the face. Holding all of that together is a stainless steel frame that comes in cloud silver. It has a round 1.2-inch LCD 360 x 360 display with a hole in the center so the two hands can pass through.

Those analog hands are an issue, however: at any moment, they could be blocking something on the screen.

LG and Google worked together to solve this problem. Wear OS can automatically and intelligently move the watch hands to either midnight or to 9 and 3 (so they createa a flat line) so they don’t interfere with the display as much. You can also manually move the hands via the main crown on the side.

It’s not the most elegant solution, but remember this is a 1.0 device. LG may figure out better solutions in future versions.

On top of working with Google, LG tapped Soprod SA — a Swiss company — for help with the mechanical hands and gearbox. With the inclusion of a gearbox, LG had to make room for it inside. As a result, this is not the most feature-filled smartwatch with no heart rate sensor or cellular connectivity. (The Apple Watch Series 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch have both.)

The Watch W7 has WiFi and Bluetooth onboard. It will need a direct connection with a smartphone that supports Wear OS for it to fully work. Water and dust resistance means you can bring the W7 with you on various adventures. There are a bunch of other sensors on the inside, including an accelerometer, barometer, altimeter, and gyroscope.

In plain “watch” mode, the W7 becomes a purely classic timepiece. In this mode it has multi-day battery life, which sounds like a plus… until you remember that watches that only tell time have been around for decades, and they tend to have batteries that last months if not years. Acting as a smartwatch, the Watch W7 is rated for two days of battery life.

Oddly enough, powering the Watch W7 is last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 2100 chip (APQ8009w, specifically), not the recently announced and more efficient 3100 platform.

For now, interested consumers who want the look for a classic watch with smart features finally have an answer with the LG Watch W7. Just know what you’re settling for: a watch that lacks some sensors, packs last year’s processor, doesn’t have LTE support, and is relatively expensive.