While most smartwatches have barely tried appealing to women, the Omate Lutetia is going all-in.
The Lutetia sports a more feminine look, thanks to its beaded watchband and stainless steel body, which comes in silver, rose or gold. As Engadget reports, Omate had a team of women lead the design and engineering efforts, which may explain why these watches look nothing like the male-centric hardware from LG, Samsung and others.
Still, Omate is dealing with the same technological limitations as everyone else. At 40 mm wide, the Lutetia is on the larger end of women’s watch sizes, and it’s also rather thick at 12 mm.
As for functionality, Omate is promising week-long battery life, running on MediaTek’s Aster MT2502 system-on-chip. The watch can pair with either an Android phone or an iPhone to provide notifications, music controls, voice commands, the local forecast and basic watch functions.
Omate will start taking pre-orders on its website tomorrow, Engadget reports. The Lutetia will cost $169 and is expected to ship around the end of the year. The company’s more male-centric Omate X is coming at the end of November, priced at $149 for the metal-and-leather model.
Why this matters: The current lack of female-friendly smartwatches partly comes down to size constraints with current technology, but it could also be a matter of tech companies’ trying to appeal to the mythical—and probably male—early adopter. But with so many similar-looking smartwatches hitting the market, the Lutetia has the advantage of standing out from the pack. Let’s hope Omate’s software is good enough to keep up.