Motorola's surprise launch will make your ears very pretty

Motorola didn't just announce new Razr and Edge phones this week, the company also had a couple of surprises up its sleeve with a return to smartwatches and some Swarovski-encrusted crystal earbuds.

Starting with the latter, the Motorola Buds Loop are open-ear headphones made from what the company described as flexible memory metal that offers a weightless design – we can confirm they are very light. Surprisingly light, in fact. They are designed to clip on around half way up your ear, allowing you to hear your music or call, whilst also still being able to hear what is going on around you.

There are two colours available, Trekking Green that is the more subtle option, or French Oak that is adorned with Swarovski crystals on the arms. Both models have two single "ironless" 12mm drivers, along with two microphones and what Motorola calls CrystalTalk AI. We see what it has done there.

The sound has been tuned by Bose and the battery life is claimed to be 8 hours of playtime from the earbuds themselves, or 37 hours of playtime including the battery life from the charging case and Motorola has said the case will charge in 60 minutes.

What does Motorola's return to smartwatches look like?

The Watch Fit meanwhile, is Motorola's first step back into smartwatches for quite some time. The Moto 360 really was a superb smartwatch but this a more budget-friendly approach, with a design that moves away from circular to what looks (and feels) very much like a cheap Apple Watch.

There's a 1.9-inch OLED display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and the smartwatch features all the usual sensor suspects, from built-in GPS and an accelerometer, to a gyroscope and PPG sensor. There is no microphone or speakers, so no calls will be happening on this speaker, but there is 5ATM water resistance and IP68 underwater protection.

The aluminium frame measures 44.46 x 37.9 x 9.5mm, features a plastic back and it weighs just 25g without a band. There's proprietary software on board so sadly no Wear OS here, though Motorola said it will connect to any Android phone and the battery life is touted as an impressive 16 days.

As with the Motorola Razr 60 and Razr 60 Ultra, and the Edge 60 and Edge 60 Pro, no pricing or availability information has been revealed as yet so it's currently unclear how much it will cost for crystal earbuds or a Motorola-style Apple Watch but we will keep you updated.