About two years into its existence, the smartwatch device category has struggled to gain mainstream acceptance and popularity. And for good reason: The first smartwatches were awkward, clunky and looked more like wrist computers than watches. Wearing one screamed, "Look at my wrist, I'm an early adopter!"

The second-generation Moto 360, Motorola has gone a long way in balancing style, functionality, and performance. It's still an early adopter device, for sure, but it's one of the best available right now, and it points towards a future where the smartwatch could become what the smartphone has turned into -- a widespread, familiar form of mobile computing and communication.

Let's dive into what it's like to wear the second-gen Moto 360 for a month.

Hands On with the Moto 360 (2015)

Design

This year's Moto 360 is Motorola's second try at the smartwatch, and the company has gotten a lot of things right this year.

First and foremost, the Moto 360 looks like a watch. Its round form factor and single button has a sleek minimalist look to it, and its metal construction and bezel around the watch face looks and feels "premium."

And with the customization options available through Motorola's site, you can make your Moto 360's look distinctive to your preferences. For my test device, Motorola allowed me to choose the size, bezel and watchband, so I went with the large Moto 360 (46mm) with a smooth gold accent and brown Horween leather strap.

Other options include silver and black bezels, along with the same three colors in a "micro knurl" textured bezel for $20 more -- which is the thatchwork pattern much like you would see on many (regular) watches.

The bands come in black or brown leather or the same three bezel colors are available in metal for $50 more. The watch straps are all easily interchangeable a thanks to two little notches on the underside where they connect to the device itself, so one could see a big third-party industry cropping up for extra watch bands. The watch comes with a wireless charging cradle that's incredibly convenient to use: Just pop the Moto 360 in the rounded recession, and it's snug and ready to refill its juice pack.

The Moto 360 looks good and feels good on the wrist. Even the large size doesn't feel too heavy, but at 11.4mm thick for both the 46mm and 42mm options, the Moto 360 still protrudes from your wrist noticeably more than a regular watch would.

Performance

The first Moto 360, like most first-generation smartwatches, disappointed users and critics with a slow interface and deficient battery life.

This year's Moto 360 will likely garner none of those complaints, as Motorola has upgraded the insides with a Snapdragon 400 system on a chip clocked at 1.2GHz, with an Adreno 305 GPU and half a gigabyte of RAM. And the company upped the battery capacity to 400mAh on the 46mm Moto 360.

Simply put, the Moto 360 was snappy through notifications and dismissals, voice searches, and the watch lasted all day. In fact, Motorola claims the 46mm Moto 360 can last up to two days with the always-ready ambient display off, though I always opted to hang the watch up overnight in its charging cradle.

With an every-night charge -- which is certainly not too much trouble -- I ended up turning on all of the Moto 360's battery-draining features, such as the ambient display, brightness boost (at top brightness all the time), and a smooth animated second hand. With all the bells and whistles turned on, it never ran out of charge by the end of the day, which is exactly what you'd want from any computing device.

There's only one compromise Motorola made that figures into the device's excellent battery life. The watch face is an LCD display, and you'll notice pixels on the display when you're looking at the time close up. In future devices the resolution will surely be improved without impacting battery life, but for now in 2015, this is one of the things that makes the Moto 360 still feel like an early adopter device.

Interface

Motorola is strictly an Android manufacturer, so naturally the Moto 360 runs Google's adaptation of Android for the small screen, Android Wear.

As previously noted, Android Wear is still evolving, and while there are still a lot of kinks to work out, the most recent version of the operating system gets most of the essentials right.

When you start up the Moto 360, you're instructed to download the Android Wear app on your Android smartphone or iPhone (though functionality is pretty limited so far). Once you pair the two devices through Bluetooth, the Moto 360 and Android Wear gets right to business, automatically setting up any apps already on your phone that are compatible with the smartwatch.

But there's a downside to the automatic setup. At first, you're going to have to spend a lot of time filtering out apps and notifications that you're never going to want or need. The first few days, especially, my wrist was popping off with Maps suggestions, email alerts, and notifications from apps I didn't know had a smartphone component. And some of which, like the Guardian's app, had Android Wear features that I could never imagine would be useful to anyone. Who needs to read the headline and first half of a sentence of every newly published article on their wrist?

After the culling process, though, the Moto 360 gradually ingratiated itself, and integrated pretty smoothly, into my daily routines. The Maps app came in handy when I was lost but didn't want to look down at my phone while driving. The Beyond Pod podcast controls were handy when I needed to pause what I was listening to, and music controls were great for skipping songs while driving or walking.

It wasn't a life-changing experience using the Moto 360, but it turns out there are times when it's nice not to have to take your smartphone out of your pocket or look at it while driving.

Fitness Tracking

That said, one of the new features built into the second-generation Moto 360 remains relatively useless, due to the limitations of the device, as well as its design and the Android Wear system: fitness tracking.

The new Moto 360 can read your heart rate and count your steps, and Motorola has apps that can keep track of your daily activity, with reminders, statistics, and encouraging messages that pop up occasionally.

But as a piece of workout equipment, the Moto 360 still feels too large and in the way to do much with it strapped on other than go for a jog. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable wearing it in a pickup basketball game or any other activity where damage paranoia would distract me. And even jogging isn't ideal with the Moto 360 because there are no plastic "sport" bands on offer so far; working up a sweat with a leather strap around your wrist is a bit of a yucky experience.

Conclusion

The Moto 360 is one of the best smartwatches on offer right now, since it looks like a watch, functions like a watch (glancing at your wrist, you'll never have to wait for the watch face to turn on), and lasts all day.

And there are lots of little nice perks to having a smartwatch, and especially the Moto 360. It's got IP67 dust and water resistance so it can technically be in up to three feet of water for up to 30 minutes without taking damage. I never tried that, but I did get used to not taking off the watch when I was washing dishes.

The Moto 360 also has interchangeable, customizable watch faces. It's nice to change up the look of your watch with the touch of a button, but the feature goes beyond daily aesthetic whims.

Some of the faces come with little dials that offer quick and useful information, like the weather and temperature, the day and date, and step counts. And these dials work as widgets. Press on one, and the Moto 360 will open up the app with more information. That's nice, and it's not something you'll get with a regular watch, or many of the Moto 360's rivals.

But with the visibly pixelated watch face resolution, Android Wear's swipe-heavy interface, and especially the thickness of the Moto 360, it's still a device that attracts attention when you wear it. And not in the "nice watch, oh wait, that's a smartwatch!" way but in the "you're one of those people" sort of way.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that, even about two years in, smartwatches are still not common to see or own. And the Moto 360 points the way towards a future where they are, but first smartwatches will have to get slimmer, smartwatch operating systems and apps will have to get easier to use and more intuitive, and the price will have to come down. Paying $350 for the chance to see texts on your wrist, and all the other convenient things the Moto 360 features, is still not something most people will do.

If the second-generation Moto 360 is any indication though, we'll eventually see smartwatches evolve into essential devices -- in time.