This Two-Sided Watch Band Is a Bad Idea From the Bottom Up

CES 2026 NEWS – There’s no polite way to say this. The Smartlet is a bad idea.

A Paris-based startup is announcing a $418 stainless steel watch band at CES 2026 that lets you wear a mechanical watch on top of your wrist and hide a smartwatch underneath. Both devices. Same wrist. Stacked. The pitch is that you no longer have to choose between your Rolex and your Apple Watch each morning. The reality is that you’re strapping a scratch magnet to the underside of your arm and asking it to coexist peacefully with a luxury timepiece. That’s not harmony. That’s negligence with a machining budget.

The system will add 9 to 12 millimeters of bulk under your wrist. Every desk edge, café table, laptop corner, and armrest becomes an abrasion test for your hidden Apple Watch. You won’t see the damage accumulating because the screen faces your skin. You’ll feel it later, when you flip the thing over and discover what daily contact does to exposed glass.

This Looks Worse Than Double Wristing

Double wristing already exists. One wrist says you appreciate craftsmanship. The other says you want notifications. It’s not elegant, but it’s honest. Smartlet collapses that honesty into a single wrist and charges $418 for the privilege of pretending you made no choice at all.

An Apple Watch hidden under a Rolex doesn’t read as balance. It reads as panic. It suggests someone who couldn’t commit to either taste or utility, so they stacked both and hoped nobody would notice. Everyone notices. The wrist lump is visible. The bulk is obvious. The contradiction is worn in metal.

The branding leans into “modern gentleman” and “boardroom to weekend.” Translation: this is for affluent men who want their investment piece visible and their step count hidden. Whether that target audience actually wants to strap a touchscreen face down against the sweatiest part of their arm for 16 hours a day is a question the product doesn’t appear to have asked.

Why This Exists

Founder David Ohayon says he was tired of choosing between his Apple Watch and his analog collection every morning. That frustration is real. The solution isn’t. Smartlet is a stainless steel monument to decision avoidance, engineered with enough precision to suggest someone took the underlying anxiety very seriously without ever questioning whether it deserved engineering at all.

For $418, you’re not buying watches. You’re buying the philosophical framework of refusing to choose. For that money, you could get a perfectly good fitness band for your other wrist and still have hundreds left for something that doesn’t require explaining to everyone who notices the bulk under your shirt cuff.

Who Should Skip This

Anyone who values their Apple Watch screen. The underside placement guarantees scratches you can’t see happening.

Anyone who dislikes bulk. Adding nearly a centimeter of height to your wrist changes how your arm interacts with everything. Sleeves fit differently. Typing feels different. Resting your wrist on a table becomes an act of positioning.

Anyone comfortable making choices. The entire premise assumes that picking one watch each morning is an unacceptable sacrifice. For most people, it’s just Tuesday.

Anyone who values honesty in how they present themselves. You’re not harmonizing two styles. You’re wearing one and hiding the other, hoping nobody asks why your arm looks like it has a secret.

The Bottom Line

Smartlet isn’t clever. It isn’t elegant. It’s a bulky, overengineered compromise that manages to disrespect both watches at the same time. If the goal was to make wearing two watches look more ridiculous than actually wearing two watches, mission accomplished.

This is a product for people who’d rather pay $418 than spend five seconds each morning making a decision. That’s not a problem worth solving. That’s a problem worth sitting with until it stops feeling like a problem.