Hublot Big Bang e is a Wear OS smartwatch you can't even afford

There are always expensive smartwatches but there also very expensive smartwatches. Unlike Apple's wearables that have a more or less consistent price tag, Wear OS smartwatches run the gamut of tiers, styles, and prices. That variety has been even more apparent when fashion marques and luxury watch brands practically took over but Hublot's latest timepiece makes a very poor case for an already uncertain smartwatch segment.

There will always be people whose purchasing decisions are based mostly on brand recognition, which is why luxury items are still a huge business. The big names in the watch-making industry have been trying to leave their imprint on the smartwatch world via the more open Wear OS platform and some seem to presume combining the two will be enough to sell these products.

To be fair, the Hublot Big Bang e definitely has the looks of a Swiss design watch and sports the basics of a Wear OS smartwatch. It at least runs on the current Qualcomm Snapdragon 3100 chip and boasts of a 390x390 screen on a 42mm body. There's 1 GB of RAM inside and 8 GB of storage and both Bluetooth and WLAN are supported.

What's not supported, however, is GPS, which is mostly a staple on activity-focused wearables. As a luxury watch, the Big Bang e doesn't seem to be intended for that kind of environment even if it's water-resistant for up to 30 m. It at least has an NFC chip so you can wireless pay in style.

That said, given the $5,800 price tag for the Hublot Big Bang e Black Ceramic version, you'd expect it to have everything including the kitchen sink and GPS. Even the $5,200 Titanium model is way above the average price point of a Wear OS watch. Given global conditions today, you'd really need to be an ardent fan of Hublot to not only find that figure acceptable but also affordable.