Movado and HP’s premium Bold Motion smartwatch is more watch than smart

HP may not be selling wearable gadgets under its own name yet, but the company has been partnering with watch makers to bring classic timepieces into the digital age.

Last year HP technology showed up in Michael Basian’s MB Chronowing watch. Now Swiss watch maker Movado is unveiling a new Movado Bold Motion watch which also uses HP smarts.

These watches don’t look like smartwatches. They have classic mechanical watch faces and premium designs. But under the hood they’ve got tech for tracking motion, pairing with a smartphone, and offering notifications for incoming messages.

Movado’s Bold Motion smartwatches work with iOS and Android phones and can offer notifications for phone calls, text messages, emails, social media updates or calendar appointments. The watch can also count your steps. The watch should get up to a week of battery life between charges.

It might not offer all of the features you’d get from a touchscreen device running a full-fledged smartwatch operating system like Android Wear or Tizen. But in addition to relatively long battery life, the Bold Motion has analog watch hands that are always visible, a water-resistant design, and classic watch style.

The smart parts arrive when you pair the watch with a smartphone via a Bluetooth connection. There are LED lights around the edge of the watch that can light up to let you know what type of message.

The Movado Bold Motion doesn’t come cheap: prices start at $695.

Movado is also launching a few other Motion watches with step counting and sleep tracking technology including the Movado Museum Sport and Movado Bellina. These models offer 2 years of battery life and have starting prices of $995.