Hugo Boss Touch review

More and more fashion brands are entering the smartwatch space to offer a more techy alternative to traditional watch lines, and Hugo Boss is one of the latest getting in on the action.

Having previously launched hybrid smartwatches, this is the first time the company has embraced a full-blown smartwatch design with a touchscreen display and all of the features you’d expect from a Wear OS smartwatch.

Originally launching with Android Wear 2.0 software, the Hugo Boss Touch now comes toting Wear OS from Google, plus there's a high-end design that's based around the Hugo Boss design ethos.

But does the Hugo Boss Touch live up to the brand’s name and combine it with top tech?

Hugo Boss Touch price and release date 

• Originally cost $400 / £300, but the price has now dropped a bit
• Went on sale in the middle of 2017

Announced at Baselworld in early 2017, the Hugo Boss Touch is one of the more affordable fashion-led watches you can buy right now.

In the US you’ll be spending $325, but the RRP was originally set at almost $400 so it has dropped down quite a bit. It’s a similar affair in the UK, with the price being set at £300, but we’ve seen it drop down to £240 and it may go even lower.

Considering you’re buying a product with Hugo Boss branding all over it, that’s quite an affordable price. It’s not the cheapest smartwatch on the market, by far, but it’s also not the most expensive, with options like the Tag Heuer Connected Modular 45 costing over five times what the Hugo Boss Touch does.

Design and display

• Premium feel stainless steel design with Hugo Boss logo on the crown
• Choice of either leather or a silicone strap
• Large, bright and clear screen

If you like the design ethos of Hugo Boss products, you’re almost certainly going to like the Hugo Boss Touch.

It’s a large smartwatch, but isn’t too heavy. It sits large on your wrist with a metal body that's made of stainless steel and is 12mm thick.

It feels premium, and you've got the choice of a stainless steel color (the one you’ll see throughout this review) or a black model, which we’ve yet to test.

On the right hand side of the watch there's a single button, which is disguised as a crown. One lovely touch here is that the word 'Boss' is engraved into the tiny head of the crown and you'll feel it with your finger when you run it over the top.

You have the choice of either leather or silicone straps, but we've only tested the former so far. We found it to be comfortable in terms of everyday wear, and it adds a certain level of style to the design of the watch.

After a week or so we found the leather would start to become more malleable, but if you’re not a fan of the look or don’t like leather you can opt for a silicone strap instead.

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These are easy enough to switch out too, so if you want to have both and only wear the leather for special occasions it wouldn't take too much effort to switch them.

The body of the watch is also water resistant up to 50 meters, and while we wouldn’t recommend taking this swimming it does seem to handle the odd rain shower or a mistaken trip into the shower.

That said, we wouldn't recommend getting the leather strap wet.

The screen has a 46mm diameter, so it’s a lot larger than many smartwatches. It's a round design, and you don't need to worry about a flat tire here as it's properly circular.

The screen is set inside the body of the watch, so there’s a big gap between the metal and where the screen begins. This isn’t a criticism though – we think it will make it harder to scratch the watch face.

At full brightness, the Hugo Boss Touch has a particularly captivating display that jumps out at you. There’s an always-on option as well, which will drain the battery life quicker but allows you to see the time without having to wake the watch.

The resolution of the display hasn't been revealed by Hugo Boss, but it looks similar to what we've seen on a lot of other smartwatches and we found it to be clear enough.

As with almost all smartwatches, you’ll struggle to be able to do much on the watch display, but we found this as easy to navigate as any other watch that’s running Google’s Wear OS software.

The Hugo Boss Touch also comes with exclusive watch faces designed specifically for it. You have three choices of look, but you can then further customize these by changing the colors, adding complications to the watch face and more.

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You won't get these watch faces on any other watch, so if you like the designs you can see throughout this review and just above you'll have to buy this watch to be able to display them on your wrist.