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Battery life
- One full of day of use with always-on display activated
- Up to two days from a single charge without always-on display
The Mont Blanc Summit comes with a 300mAh battery, and we found this comfortably gave us a full day of use from a single charge.
That day included having the always-on display activated, which gives you a simplified black and white watch face when the Summit is idle. Even heavy watch users can expect the Summit to last a day before requiring a top up.
Turn off the always-on display and it’s possible to squeeze up to two days out of the battery.
If you like to play games on your smartwatch (although with a screen this size we wouldn’t recommend it), or are constantly checking emails and WhatsApp messages, the battery will take a hit.
The watch comes with a charging cradle, and there are two pogo pins on the rear of the watch that line up with the charger. It’s easy enough to engage and the Summit recharges quickly, with a full charge usually taking around an hour.
You do have to line up the connectors on the watch and dock, so it’s not quite as seamless as charging the Moto 360 or LG Watch Style, for example, but it’s not going to worry you day to day.
What's it like to use?
- Same on-screen as any other Android Wear watch
- Delay in motion detection jars when checking the time
There’s 4GB of internal storage, giving you enough space for a variety of apps, and room for some songs if you fancy downloading them to the watch, pairing a set of Bluetooth headphones, and leaving your phone at home as you venture outside for some exercise.
The thing with Android Wear smartwatches is that when you’ve got past the design, everything is pretty much identical.
Sure, the Mont Blanc Summit comes with three custom watch faces made by the firm, but beyond that it’s the exactly same interface and experience you’d get with any other wearable running the software.
That makes the price a little harder to justify, as you’re getting the same on-screen action as you would from a watch a third of the Summit’s price.
The Summit does run the latest version of Google’s wearable platform – Android Wear 2.0, with improved navigation, menu screens and a few new features sprinkled in – which at least keeps it relevant.
However, without the inclusion of NFC and GPS, the Mont Blanc Summit feels like it's missing some core functionality, which is harder to take here when you consider the price tag.
NFC isn’t as common a feature as we’d like in smartwatches; this allows you to pay contactlessly in stores with Android, as you would with your phone or contactless bank card, and it’s a feature well suited to wearables, so it’s a disappointing omission here.
For those who like to keep themselves fit, the lack of GPS is another potential negative, as it means the watch can't independently track your runs/cycles/walks – you’ll have to take your phone with you if you want location tracking.
There is a heart rate sensor on the underside of the watch though, and it only protrudes very slightly from the body, which means the Summit still sits comfortably on wrist.
Something we did find annoying was the delay in the motion detection when we tried to check the time.
If you haven’t got the always-on display activated the Mont Blanc Summit will detect the movement your wrist makes when you raise it to check the time, and will wake the screen, but it takes a little too long to light up the screen each time.
It’s only a second or less delay, but it’s just long enough to make you feel a bit silly that you’re staring at a dark screen before it springs to life.
There’s only 512MB of RAM in the Summit, which is the same as you’ll find in the LG Watch Style, but less than the 768MB in the Huawei Watch 2 and LG Watch Sport, which may go some way to explaining the slightly subpar performance.
That is paired with the Snapdragon 2100 chipset though – the brain of choice for pretty much every new Android smartwatch at the moment, apart from the Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45.
It keeps the general performance of the watch in line with its rivals, and with access to the Play Store directly on the device you can download apps straight to the watch without having to download them to your phone first.
The number of apps available for Android Wear is steadily increasing, but it still feels like it lags behind the options you get on the Apple Watch, although big names such as Spotify, Runtastic, Foursquare and Uber are all present here.
