Here’s our first detailed look at the Hewlett-Packard “luxury” smartwatch teased a few months ago. It’s designed to look like a fancy metal rich-guy watch, but at $US350, you won’t need to be a rich guy to buy it.
Called the MB Chronowing, the watch is designed by Michael Bastian. It’s a 44mm stainless steel affair, with sapphire glass and a monochrome LCD display that’s got some red accents. It pairs with both iOS and Android phones and will do a host of typical smartwatch things: You’ll be able to read emails and texts, see the weather, control your music, “and more.” The functionality is only described as “with the touch of a button,” but it seems like it will be a minimal interface like what we saw on the Pebble Steel:
The Chronowing also claims to be water resistant to 5ATM, and have up to a week of battery life.
The watch will be available exclusively from Gilt when it goes on sale 7 November. The retailer tells you a lot about the target consumer: Somebody who smartwatch that doesn’t look like a dang computer. At $US350, it’s not cheap, but it’s well within the range of what smartwatches cost, and indeed, what nice watches cost. We can’t say much about the tech because we don’t know much. As for the design: It looks like the steel wristable it’s trying to imitate. [Gilt via WSJ]