Louis Vuitton is striding into the smartwatch world with its first connected timepiece, the Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon.
Running on Android Wear 2.0, the Tambour Horizon is a thick, beautiful smartwatch with three variants and two purposes. First, wants to be your companion when you’re jetting around the world (probably in first class) and, second, it comes with plenty of customizable options to match it up with the rest of your gorgeous Louis Vuitton accessories. You have those, right?
First look: Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon review
So whether you’re simply curious or you’re planning on splashing the cash on Louis Vuitton’s smartwatch, here’s a guide to everything you need to know about the Tambour Horizon.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon: Design
The trio of 42mm watches are 12.5mm thick and are all based on Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Moon watch design. In fact, they look identical except for that digital screen. There are three variations: Graphite, Monogram and Black.
The Graphite and Monogram come with brushed stainless steel cases while the more expensive Black model has a polished case. The bezel has a unique time display, with 24-hour clock numbers encircling the 1.2-inch 390 x 390 resolution AMOLED display.
That bezel also utilizes a concave design, giving the outside of the Tambour Horizon a smooth groove that adds a bit of a unique flair. You’ve got a crown on the side, but it’s only a button; it doesn’t twist.
There are also 60 interchangeable straps for the Tambour Horizon. 30 of them are for men, while the other 30 are for women. Louis Vuitton wants you to be able to swap out your bands to match them with your other LV accessories, like bags and suitcases. And yes, you’ll be able to purchase straps with those famous initials on them.
Charging the Tambour Horizon is also quite unique. It’s a disc-shaped cradle that magnetically attaches to the back of the watch. There’s also a monogram-style case. If you’re traveling and need a new plug, you can just walk into a Louis Vuitton store and they’ll give you one – free of charge.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon: Features
We should talk about what the Tambour Horizon doesn’t do. You’re not going to find GPS here, or a heart rate sensor, or anything to make your fitness goals easier to attain. LV’s not interested in that. It wants to be peak luxury.
Instead, you’ll get two special apps: LV Guide and My Flight. LV Guide is there to, well, guide you to places you should visit in different cities around the world. It also gives you actions you can take to go do those things. For instance, if it points you to a restaurant you can make a reservation or give you directions (this requires Google Maps to be installed). Guide will launch in seven countries at first, including New York, London and Beijing.
My Flight, on the other hand, is all about getting you to where you need to go. It’ll collect your flight times, gates and terminals and put them all in one place. It’ll also count down to when you need to get to your gate, so you know when to stop shopping and start getting ready to board.
There are also plenty of watch faces, which were both familiar and easy to set up in our hands-on demo of the Tambour Horizon. Most of the watch faces are digital recreations of the watch faces in LV’s like of analog watches. For instance, there’s a watch faced based on the Escale watch range, which features a face with 24 time zones. You’ll also get to add in some complications, like steps and such things.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon: Hardware and battery life
The Tambour Horizon uses a Snapdragon 2100 and 512MB of RAM to power that AMOLED display and Android Wear 2.0. There’s also 4GB of storage space, should you need to store music or apps or what have you.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both on board, but – again – you’re not going to see GPS or heart rate here. It’s water resistant up to 30 meters and there’s sapphire glass on the back. There is a 300mAh battery powering the whole thing, and Louis Vuitton says it’ll get you about a day of use before you have to pop it onto that charger.
Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon: Price and release date
The Graphite and Monogram editions are priced at $2,450 while the Black is a more expensive $2,900.
New watch straps will set you back $235 while new chargers will cost you $140. It’s certainly an expensive watch, and you can splash the cash for it right now.
