Montblanc Summit 2: the star misses his entrance
30.4.2019
Translation: machine translated
Co-author: Stephanie Tresch
With the Summit 2 connected watch, the designers at Montblanc are setting out to conquer the peaks. After a month's testing, the results have been pretty disappointing.
Optimising your training, looking at the time and monitoring your physical indicators: connected watches promise a lot and are more often than not unsightly. Montblanc, the German brand synonymous with beautiful things, aims with the Montblanc Summit 2 not only to provide all these functions, but also to offer a design object. The brand has succeeded in its gamble at least when it comes to design, as the watch is elegant.
Our video producer Stephanie Tresch was quick to get her hands on it just minutes after the elegant black box arrived on the editorial desk. Begins for her an odyssey marked by frustration and bruised wrists.
A chic... and shocking watch
Stephanie is not particularly tall. Her wrists are therefore relatively small. She does, however, like to wear large watches.
"I don't see the point of small watches. If I wear a watch, I want to be able to see clearly what time it is," she says, fastening the Summit. The size seems right. "Why else would you put something like that on your wrist?"
For five minutes, Stephanie moves, works and gets used to her new accessory. The verdict was not long in coming: comfort was not there. A few days later, she even noticed bruising on her wrist. "I don't even know how such a thing is possible, but I managed to injure myself wearing a watch."
The crown on the side has bothered her to the point of causing haematomas where the skin comes into contact with the dial. Still, Stephanie is not a small-minded person. After all, a test has to be thorough.
A mixed bag of results
"I understand why a design specialist like Montblanc wouldn't want to deal with the programming of a connected watch," Stephanie sighs during her lunch break. The object is certainly pretty, but it's not the easiest to use. On the software side, the Montblanc Summit 2 relies entirely on WearOS from Google. This free software offers developers and manufacturers everything they need to make a connected watch work: user interfaces, software interfaces and functions.
The main problem with WearOS lies precisely there: it is designed as a universal solution for all wearables, not just connected watches. Numerous functions, APIs, etc. need to coexist without conflicting with other solutions or blocking the operation of other products. Stephanie sums up the situation this way: "it's half fig and half raisin."
About the app (Android and Apple iOS), Stephanie doesn't mince her words: "It's been a long time since I've had to deal with such a complicated and stupid app."
She could live with the silly app if it still provided decent data. Stephanie trains five times a week, mixing martial arts and Crossfit. To make progress, she wants to be able to view and analyse all the data captured on her wrist: heart rate, duration of workout, etc. All this is impossible. Wear OS is compatible with Google Fit, but data analysis is only possible with third-party apps such as MyFitnessPal. WearOS provides the technology interface, Fit logs and this allows you to view basic data. However, no reports or analysis.
A battery like in 2015
Every night Stephanie hangs her watch on the charger, rubs her wrist from bruising and wonders why the Summit 2, which weighs 62 grams, doesn't have a bigger battery. The battery life is just under a day. "More or less 12 hours. My 2014 Fitbit did better." Note, however, that the watch continues to display the time even when the connected functions stop because the battery is empty. Other watches switch off altogether and then become useless accessories.
There is one function that Stephanie, who is always on the move, can't live without. "There's a function for finding your phone," she explains. With just a few gestures, the watch activates the ringtone of the phone on the other side of the desk.
"It's great! I'm really going to miss it at the end of the test!"
The specialist portal welt.de calls the Montblanc Summit 2 "a watch for today's decision-makers", in other words a status symbol, rather than a useful object. If, like me, you take sport seriously, want to train by tracking your heart rate and want to analyse your performance, this watch is not for you. Even if the advertising tends to make you believe otherwise.
It's for those who, as well as reading their work emails and using WhatsApp, also want to pay for their meal with a luxury watch. The focus is on status and convenience, but not on performance and its analysis. A connected watch of this kind doesn't come cheap, and its looks have to be up to scratch. A small video producer with sporting ambitions is not the right target group.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
