Motorola is adding more muscle to its smartwatch lineup. Unveiled at CES 2026, the $150 Moto Watch combines a polished design with Polar-backed health tracking, bringing the insights of a sports watch to to a smartwatch that looks just as much at home in the gym as it does at the office.

Instead of going all-in on a rugged sports-watch look, the Moto Watch is designed to feel like a jack of all trades, with advanced features like dual-band GPS and a battery life that lasts over a week, putting other flagships to shame.

But the Moto Watch isn’t exactly trying to go head to head with Android smartwatches either.  Like recent Motorola watches, the Moto Watch doesn’t run Google’s Wear OS. Instead it relies on Motorola’s own software, with support limited to Android phones. That puts it closer in spirit to brands like Amazfit or Withings, carving out its own lane between fitness-focused wearables and full-fledged smartwatches.

The Polar partnership brings health clout 

One of the biggest curveballs to come from the announcement is Motorola’s partnership with Polar, a veteran in the fitness world. Polar is known for its highly accurate heart-rate chest straps used by professional and serious athletes, as well as dedicated sports watches that compete more directly with Garmin than mainstream smartwatches.

By teaming up with Polar, Motorola is making it clear that it’s serious about health tracking and the partnership instantly brings credibility and expertise from a trusted name in the space. Motorola says the watch supports more nuanced fitness insights such as heart-rate variability, sleep stages and recovery. It’ll also support dual-frequency GPS for more accurate location tracking, a feature typically reserved for dedicated sport watches or higher-end models like the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the Pixel Watch 4 and newer Galaxy Watches.

Easy on the eyes, heavy on the battery life 

The Moto Watch looks like a blend of rugged sportwatch and polished analogue, and that’s no accident. Motorola designed it to be sleek yet tough, built to transition seamlessly from sweaty gym sessions to formal evening wear.

It has an aluminum frame, stainless steel crown and a 47mm (1.43-inch) round OLED display covered in Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. The watchbands are meant to be interchangeable, with a stainless steel, silicone and leather-like options. It’s also compatible with third-party watchbands. The watch has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, which means it can be submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes.

Battery life is another major selling point for Motorola. The company says the Moto Watch can last up to 13 days on a charge in raise-to-wake mode, or up to seven days with the always-on display enabled. If those claims hold up, the Moto Watch would leave most Android smartwatches from Samsung and Google trailing behind with their typical two-day battery life. Motorola also says the Moto Watch supports fast charging, adding roughly a day’s worth of charge in just 5 minutes.

Part of a broader Motorola ecosystem

Rather than positioning the Moto Watch as a standalone product, Motorola repeatedly framed it as part of its expanding Moto Things ecosystem. The watch integrates with Smart Connect, Motorola’s app for managing experiences across phones, tablets, and accessories.

Motorola also teased future alignment with its upcoming Qira AI platform, designed to work across Lenovo PCs, Motorola phones, tablets, and wearables. While there was no mention of any watch-specific AI features, Motorola says future updates could allow notifications, reminders and tasks to flow more seamlessly between devices.

Too soon to reach a verdict

Time will tell how the Moto Watch holds up in real-world testing. The watch will be available for preorders starting January 22 through Motorola’s website, and will officially go on sale on January 28.

For now, the Moto Watch offers a glimpse of Motorola’s vision for wearables, aiming to build an ecosystem of products that work seamlessly together. It’s not trying to pick up where it left off with its Moto 360 smartwatch (discontinued in 2019), but rather carve out a new lifestyle-focused niche backed by credible fitness tracking and long battery life.

For more announcements and first looks ahead of CES 2026, check out CNET’s full CES coverage.

Researchers working at KU Leuven University in Belgium are warning people who use Bluetooth audio products that their devices may be at risk due to vulnerabilities in Google’s Fast Pair technology, a feature that makes it quicker and easier to connect Bluetooth devices.

Google says it has addressed issues that could allow hackers to hijack audio devices and track their location. But the researchers say the vulnerabilities, which it collectively refers to as WhisperPair, still affect products from device makers including Sony, Harman and Google itself. In their tests, the researchers found these products could be hacked from as far as about 46 feet away.

A Google representative told CNET that it has updated the software for some of its own audio products, including its Pixel Buds Pro, and that some of the vulnerabilities stemmed from other companies not properly following Fast Pair specifications. Google said it had informed companies about this in September.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

«We appreciate collaborating with security researchers through our Vulnerability Rewards Program, which helps keep our users safe. We worked with these researchers to fix these vulnerabilities, and we have not seen evidence of any exploitation outside of this report’s lab setting,» Google said in a statement provided to CNET. «As a best security practice, we recommend users check their headphones for the latest firmware updates. We are constantly evaluating and enhancing Fast Pair and Find Hub security.»

In response to specific concerns about device tracking, Google added, «We rolled out a fix on our end to prevent Find Hub network provisioning in this scenario, which completely addresses the potential location tracking issue across all devices.»

Google has issued two security updates this month, one for Wear OS and one for Google Pixel devices. Each contains information about the company’s security patches.

The WhisperPair research group said it’s working on an academic paper detailing its findings. On its website, the researcher group said, «Our findings show how a small usability ‘add-on’ can introduce large-scale security and privacy risks for hundreds of millions of users.»

The research group released a YouTube video discussing problems with Fast Pair, a Google technology introduced in 2017 that connects Bluetooth devices with one tap across Android and Chrome OS.

The group said that it worked with Google after reporting its findings and was awarded a $15,000 bounty. The researchers said they agreed to a 150-day disclosure window in which Google would release security patches. However, the website points out that users of Bluetooth devices like earbuds may not be aware of security updates that could protect them.

The website includes a page where users can look up which audio products are vulnerable, with details on how to get them updated. Google doesn’t have detailed information about these vulnerabilities on its Fast Pair Known Issues page.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle has a very intriguing blue group. You’ll notice some band names, but can you locate what they have in common? Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Worn on heads.

Green group hint: Nighty-night.

Blue group hint: Bands with something alphabet-related in common.

Purple group hint: Like great.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Kinds of hats.

Green group: Components of a kid’s bedtime routine.

Blue group: Musical acts with «A» as the only vowel.

Purple group: Grand ____.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is kinds of hats. The four answers are derby, fedora, Panama and porkpie.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is components of a kid’s bedtime routine.  The four answers are bath, brushing, pajamas and story.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is musical acts with «A» as the only vowel. The four answers are Alabama, Bananarama, Kansas and Santana.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is grand ____.  The four answers are Bahama, Canyon, piano and slam.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Quick tips for Connections

#1: Say the clue words out loud, pausing before and after each. That helps you hear the words in the context of a phrase. The Connections editors love to group words together that are used in similar phrasing, like ____ Up.

#2: Don’t go for the obvious grouping. These editors are smart. Once, they offered SPONGE, BOB, SQUARE and PANTS in the same puzzle. None of those words were in the same category. If you like, hit the «shuffle» button to give yourself a different perspective on the words.

#3: Break down any compound words and look for similarities. «Rushmore» was once in a puzzle where the connection was that each word started with the name of a rock band.

.