Review: Omate Lutetia smartwatch

We’ve reviewed a variety of smartwatches in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. One thing that’s been consistent across all of them, though—no matter what the shape or size—is that they look masculine. Some vendors—like Apple with the Apple Watch—offer a slightly smaller model as a more feminine version, but it just looks like a smaller masculine watch. The Omate Lutetia is a smartwatch that is designed from the ground up to offer a high-tech wrist-borne wearable gadget with true feminine style.

Design

The Omate Lutetia is a dramatic departure from the style of other smartwatches. From the moment you open the box it looks more like jewelry than a wearable gadget and it is definitely designed with women in mind.

Part of the initial luster is a function of the plastic cellophane wrapped around the band to protect the metal finish, but even once you take it off the Lutetia looks good. The review unit we received is gold, but the Lutetia is also offered in rose gold or silver.

The watch itself is circular—with a diameter of about 1.69 inches. Like the band it is stainless steel and coated with either gold, rose gold, or silver. It is relatively slim at just under half an inch thick.

There is only one button on the right side. There’s no exposed port for charging because it charges through contacts on the base when set on its charging base.

Features

The Omate Lutetia doesn’t try to be a standalone smartphone on your wrist like the Burg 12 or Burg 16. It pairs with iOS or Android smartphones like its sibling-the Omate X—to allow you to make and receive calls or make and receive text messages through the watch from the smartphone.

It has alarm, stopwatch, and timer functions and a pedometer capability built in. It runs on a proprietary Nucleus OS, but the Omate O Store enables you to install various apps when paired with Android. The pairing with iOS works fine for calls and alerts, but there is much more functionality and customization possible when paired with Android.

The default Lutetia watch face looks very elegant—a black background appointed with “diamonds”. The capacitive touchscreen display is transflective for better viewing in various lighting conditions, and always on. The display dims to conserve power, but does not completely go dark so you can still check the time without having to turn the watch on first.

You can replace the band if you like with other standard watch bands. The Lutetia comes with a spare black leather watch band in the box, so you can switch between the gold / rose gold / silver band and black leather as the occasion or your mood dictates.

The Verdict

Omate is one of the leaders in the smartwatch space and Omate Lutetia doesn’t disappoint. It’s not a jack-of-all-trades device that tries to do it all, but it does what a smartwatch should do to add value and make interacting with information more convenient.

In fairness to Omate and the Lutetia this is an early build of the watch. Omate is still developing new features and improving existing ones through updates. By the time the Omate Lutetia is available to the public it may have features and capabilities not mentioned here. We’ll try and update this review with relevant information if that happens.

The most notable feature of the Omate Lutetia is also the thing that makes it uniquely valuable—it is a smartwatch designed by women for women. It is a smartwatch that doesn’t sacrifice elegance or style for geek functionality.

It is not available yet, but the price is expected to be $169. It will be available in jewelry stores in the United States and United Kingdom beginning this summer through a partnership Omate has formed with Richline Group.