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Performance
- Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset
- 8GB of storage
- 1GB of RAM
The Montblanc Summit 2 is the first smartwatch on the market to run the Snapdragon Wear 3100 chipset, and boy, it shows. Backed with 1GB of RAM, this smartwatch was extremely responsive, and didn’t leave us waiting for anything.
Even when we were first setting up this smartwatch, running an iPhone XS Max, mind you, it was done before we even noticed. The watch was up and running, fully updated within a matter of minutes.
There’s also plenty of storage, and even after loading some music and apps, we didn’t run into any problems. This smartwatch packs a whopping 8GB of storage, which might not sound like a lot, but many smartwatches on the market only feature half that amount.
You should be able to load up a couple of playlists, along with any apps that you need in your day-to-day life.
Speaking of which, using this watch day-to-day was a dream, and it felt totally responsive, never making us feel like we were waiting for the watch to get done doing something. We input a command, and it was done, just like that.
You are still limited to the Wear OS app on iOS, which means that you won’t get all the awesome fitness and health features that iOS offers, but this really isn’t a fitness watch anyways, so that’s not such a huge deal.
Fitness
- Heart rate sensor and GPS work well
- Weight of smartwatch not great for working out
- No access to Health app on iOS
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t work out with the Montblanc Summit 2. It does feature GPS and a heart rate tracker, so it can totally track your workouts, and it does so well. We took it to the gym, and it kept up admirably – that Snapdragon Wear 3100 surely helped out a bit.
However, because the build of this watch is so robust, being made of resin, sapphire glass and stainless steel – not to mention the leather strap – it’s not the most comfortable watch to wear in a gym environment. It’s just a bit heavy. The way we look at it, the best fitness watches are the ones that you forget you’re wearing.
The Summit 2, on the other hand, kind of threw off our equilibrium a bit. Not enough to completely ruin our day, but definitely enough to be noticeable. We still prefer the Apple Watch when it comes to fitness.
The Montblanc Summit 2 will work as a fitness tracker in a pinch, but we imagine that users with enough cash to splurge on this smartwatch will have no issues picking up a separate Fitbit or Apple Watch for their fitness needs – and we’d advise the same.
Battery
- All day battery life
- Time-only mode is a blessing
One of the biggest bugbears we have with smartwatches in 2018 is the need to charge them every day, even if we only need a watch.
Luckily, the Montblanc Summit 2 features a Time-Only mode that can last up to a week. This means that even if you forget to charge your watch, you won’t have to worry about your smartwatch ceasing to function as a watch when the battery dies.
Even when not using this feature, the battery life is pretty robust here. We turned on the ‘always on’ display, because, well, we’re shallow, and we didn’t have a problem making the battery last all day.
When turning off this feature, as most people probably should, you can probably stretch an extra half-day out of the battery, no problem. And, when it runs out of juice, you should be able to charge it back up within an hour or so.
