The original Moto 360 helped put Android Wear on the map along w/ making smartwatches w/ round displays a thing. So much that Samsung, Huawei, and LG have followed suit and no one is really making square-ish watches anymore save for ASUS & Apple.
Design
Like pretty much most of the new Moto 360, all of the changes are incremental at best. At first glance, the 1st few things you'll notice is the addition of traditional watch lugs w/ quick release pins to swap out the bands like a normal watch. As well as the physical button has moved from the 3 o' clock position to the 2 o'clock stance. You still have the 'flat tire' so those of you wishing Motorola would ditch it, will have to get over it. This is a way for Moto to keep the actual watch thin rather than being thick like the Huawei Watch. Moto made the watch IP67, making it dust & water resistant.
Display
I went for the smaller 42mm size which is same size as the new women's - don't ask why. Whatever the case, it has a 1.37inch LCD display w/ a 360 x 325 resolution + 263ppi. As opposed to the 1.65inch display w/ 320 x 290 resolution + 205ppi on the original watch.
Performance/Battery Life
Thank God Motorola stopped using those TI OMAP CPUs for their devices and went w/ Qualcomm. Inside of the new 360 is a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU which makes for an overall improved experience using it regularly. You get a lot less lag & hiccups as you get a more smoother navigation w/ it.
The 42mm model has a 300 mAh battery inside of this thing and it is a much better battery experience than last year's model. Utilizing the Ambient mode, I was still able to get about 24 hours on a single charge. I can go to sleep w/ it on and charge it in the late morning/early afternoon before heading to work w/o it completely dying. With the previous model, it would have died before going to sleep. If not definitely, dead before waking up.
Software
But I do love the Live Widgets Motorola watchfaces. Its to the point, where I preferred not to really dig for a cooler looking face so I could utilize that. One tap and you get a 4-day weather forecast w/ highs & lows, one tap for events for the day in calendar, and more. Many of these software features have made its way to the older 360 but performs much better on the newer model.
Motorola did an amazing job w/ the hardware, but Google needs to step up Android Wear.
TG 2 Cents
Smartwatches are in a weird place right now. There's an abundance of them out there on the market right now as they still don't have a real purpose. This applies to all of them out there -even the Apple Watch. Similar to when tablets 1st arrived on the scene.
To Buy Or Not To Buy