What truly matters. This is how Vector promotes its new smartwatch. A strong announcement for a new player in the highly competitive watch market. Designed and built in only 6 months with a very ambitious team and ready to conquer the world.

So far I need to admit that I am quite clueless when it comes to smartwatches. I am not really a techy guy, never was, and I buy things usually for their looks and not the convenience. So I thought it could be interesting to attend Vector’s presentation during Basel World and see what the hype is really all about.

The first and most important thing: Luckily the watches look like watches. This may sound very banal, but this was my biggest concern after having seen some models from the competition. You may call me old-fashioned but I have a hard time adapting to all the new technology. Life as it is, is already way too fast, and having a PC stuck to your body won’t reduce the amount of information hammered into our brains. And I want my watch to look like a nice piece of handcrafted jewellery and not like something that was brought to humanity by a green man in an ufo.

Sadly enough I am old enough to know that evolution can’t be stopped and eventually the smartwatches will take over soon. A change of paradigm will happened like it did in all other technical areas and sooner or later the historical, manufacturers in Switzerland will launch their first smartwatches and apps. Who thought that Porsche would ever be water-cooled and hybrid? Or a turbo-charged Ferrari? Unthinkable, and yet there they are.

So let’s look forward, be flexible and see what this new watch has to offer:

• The most important feature? A 30 day battery life. This is the promise and if you think how many times a day you are probably charging your smart phone, a very helpful feature.
• According to their designer Steve Jarvis (ex-Nike) the emphasis lay on the design when creating the watch. It should do one important thing – tell time. Everything else was built around this idea.
• The watch completes your daily experience with your smart phone and shall not replace it. Therefore you won’t be reading or sending e-mails with your phone, but it will just notify you that you have new messages in your inbox. Of course you can connect the watch to services like SMS, twitter, FB, etc. but it is not a must and most of the technically complicated questions were solved very straight forward, which is something I liked.
• Most of the features can be easily managed via app.
• There are two models so far. the rectangular Meridian and the round Luna. With prices starting at 149$ for the Meridian and 349$ for the Luna they are quite competitive.
• So far you can only pre-order the watches online. Market launch will be in July.

Conclusion:

I admit that I went with quite a negative feeling regarding smartwatches, and after the presentation and talking to the masterminds behind the project, I came home with a totally different view. The Vector watch is still a classic watch just with some techy features that supports your phone but doesn’t try to replace it. And there are 2 or 3 styles that I like a lot, so much that I could even see myself wearing one of them – and THIS is most probably the best compliment I can make.