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The Emporio Armani Smartwatch 3 is classy, but costs as much as an Apple Watch

IFA 2024
This story is part of our coverage of IFA Berlin 2024

Emporio Armani is back with a new smartwatch dubbed the Emporio Armani Smartwatch 3. It’s hardly a catchy name, but it joins several new Wear OS smartwatches in bringing features such as a speaker, an updated processor, and a new style.

Despite a thick body — coming in at 12mm — the Emporio Armani Smartwatch 3 has a minimalist design with some colorful visual flair. The black 44mm, stainless steel case is flanked with lugs that add a pop of color, including yellow, blue, and silver. There are also a few different band choices, but it’s interchangeable too so you can swap in any 22mm strap. On the right edge of the case are three buttons.

Unsurprisingly, this watch is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 3100, which is found in most other Wear OS smartwatches from the past year, along with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. The extra storage allows for more music to be downloaded to the watch. There’s also an NFC chip for contactless payments through Google Pay.

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The watch may not be billed as a fitness-focused device, but it still offers some fitness tracking features. Notably, there’s a heart rate monitor, as well as sensors like built-in GPS to help it track metrics like steps taken and distance traveled. It’s also swim-proof, with a 3 ATM water resistance rating. All of this is viewed on a 1.28-inch AMOLED screen, which is packed with 328 pixels-per-inch.

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Along with the newly-announced Diesel On Axial watch, the Emporio Armani Smartwatch 3 comes with a speaker for the ability to answer phone calls from your wrist. Not only that, but the company said the device can take and make calls from both Android and iOS phones.

Just like the fifth-generation Fossil watch that released in August, this smartwatch also comes with an extended battery mode that keeps the lights on for days, while restricting features of the watch.

Because it’s running Google’s Wear OS smartwatch platform, the Emporio Armani watch can access services like Google Assistant, meaning you can use it control smart home devices, find out information from the web, and more. Assistant’s responses can be heard thanks to the built-in speaker.

The Emporio Armani Smartwatch 3 arrives in October and will set you back $395.

Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…
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