Montblanc Summit guide: Luxury Android Wear smartwatch now available

Here's everything you need to know about Montblanc's first smartwatch
21896-original
Wareable is reader-powered. If you click through using links on the site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more

The Montblanc Summit was unveiled back in March and is now available to buy. The Summit adds to the ever-expanding pile of Android Wear smartwatches looking to give you your fashion fix, following the lead set by the Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45.

The Montblanc Summit is constructed from luxury materials and is squarely aimed at those people who don't fancy the traditional tech brands designing their wrist-wear.

Wareable verdict: Montblanc Summit review

You can find out if the Summit made a good first impression by clicking the link above, or read on to find out all the nitty gritty details about the latest luxury Android Wear timepiece.

Montblanc Summit: Design and screen

The style-stakes are high with the 46mm timepiece taking inspiration from the 1858 Summit collection. That means you can expect classic Summit watch faces in digital form. It's also constructed from stainless steel and titanium and features the first curved sapphire crystal seen on a smartwatch.

Essential reading: When will Android Wear 2.0 come to my device?

There are plenty of customisation options with the Summit: four different styles for the case (black PVD coated stainless steel, a bi-colour stainless steel case with a black PVD coated stainless steel bezel, stainless steel case with satinated finish and a grade 5 titanium case with a satinated finish); eight different straps (rubber in black, blue, green or red; black calfskin leather; brown or navy blue Sfumato calfskin leather). Along with those digital faces already mentioned, there's over 300 combos possible.

The Montblanc has been slapped with an IP68 water resistant certification so it doesn't boast the waterproof skills of the latest Tag Android Wear smartwatch. At 12.5mm it's not exactly svelte either, compared to traditional Montblanc watches but it's slimmer than the Tag's Modular 45 (13.75mm).

That curved sapphire glass display protects a 1.39-inch, 400 x 400, AMOLED touchscreen - with no annoying flat-tyre in sight. That's the same dimensions we've seen with the Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45 and the Asus ZenWatch 3. At 286ppi, it's not quite as sharp as the Huawei Watch 2 (326ppi).

Montblanc Summit: Android Wear 2.0

montblanc-music-1490183488-a0B9-full-width-inline

Android Wear 2.0 and a Qualcomm's Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip is running the show but there's the standard Android Wear 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage on board. There's both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in tow to cover the connectivity bases as well.

Read this: How to set up Android Wear 2.0

It will of course be compatible with Android and iOS devices and you'll be able to access new Wear features including Google Assistant, standalone apps and there's a bunch of apps already pre-installed including Uber, Foursquare and a voice activated translator. There's also a Worldtimer app that displays the world's 24 time zones and can be enabled as a complication for other watch faces. Disappointingly though, there's no NFC on board here so you can't make use of Android Pay.

Montblanc is offering up its own unique digital watch faces that it aims to regularly offer for free via download. To kick things off there's the TimeWalker Urban Speed, which features Automatic date and Chronograph complications.

Montblanc Summit: Hardware, fitness and battery life

montblanc-2-1490183418-ZmDg-full-width-inline

If you care about fitness, the Summit includes a heart rate monitor and motion sensors to track daily activity just like a standard fitness tracker. There's also a compass onboard, a barometer to indicate altitude but bizarrely no GPS. Montblanc has teamed up with Runtastic to offer a three month subscription to its premium service for free to help you track your data.


The Summit packs in a 300mAh capacity battery into its luxury body, which should be a good for a full day's use. An ambient light sensor that automatically adapts the brightness of your screen according to the lighting conditions should help with the stamina, but its simply not going to offer anything groundbreaking as far as battery life is concerned. When it's flat, charging is done via a magnetic dock, so you'll probably need to keep that close by at all times.

Montblanc Summit: Price and release date

The stainless steel models start at , coming with a standard leather strap. Prices then start to crawl up if you fancy a rubber or coloured navy band, while titanium models of the Summit start at and go up to .

Additional strap start at going up to for the alligator skin strap.

If you've got a spare €15,000 to hand, you can even have your own personalised dial made by Montblanc's creative director.

The Montblanc Summit is on sale now exclusively through Mr Porter. Montblanc is listing all models of the Summit, but you'll have visit a boutique to get one - it's not selling them online just yet.




Related stories