Emporio Armani
announced the Emporio Armani Connected 2018. Is this finally a fashion
smartwatch without compromise? Wearing a stylish fashion branded smartwatch often led to compromise
with many popular features such as GPS, wrist-based heart rate monitoring and
NFC payments often missing in part or in their entirety.
The Emporio Armani Connected 2018
promises the perfect blend of features and style by offering:
- Google's WearOS 2.0
- GPS
- NFC for Google Pay (Alipay in China)
- Wrist-based Heart Rate Monitoring
- Waterproof up to 3 ATM
- 1-2 battery life
This enables the Emporio Armani
Connected 2018 to track your indoor and outdoor workout or directly navigate to
the local coffee shop from your wrist. Even if you have no intention of heading
off out for a run or to the gym with your fashion smartwatch, all day heart
rate monitoring is a welcome addition as it's one of the best indications of
health and fitness.
While on the subject of heart
rate monitoring, ours 'skipped a beat' when we saw that the Emporio Armani
Connected 2018 would still be powered by Qualcomm's aging Snapdragon Wear 2100
SoC. The Emporio Armani Connected 2018 features a 1.19" touchscreen
AMOLED display within a sleek stainless steel case measuring 43 x 49mm and is
available in a range of colors including silver, black and rose gold.
You can
choose from a variety of straps to complete your look, including single link
bracelets, leather, and mesh/Milanese loop. Google's Wear OS has Google
Assistant built-in, so you'll be able to shout questions directly on your wrist
if desired. While Emporio Armani pre-install a number of their unique watch
faces in addition to the plethora of watch faces that you can download.
With Emporio Armini being a
member of the Fossil Group, we expect many of their other brands to round out
their feature lists in the coming months. Speaking of which, the Fossil Group
confirmed the company is working on a new version of the Diesel On Full Guard
watch for launch later this year.
The new Emporio Armani will be
available to purchase before the end of this month with pre-orders available
imminently, with pricing set to start at US$ 295.