Lytt Labs is a young watch brand boasting modern designs and a slick, urban marketing appeal – all very SevenFriday. Its debut watch is the Inception, and we spent a couple of weeks with it to see what we thought. 

By Chris Hall

First impressions:
Our very first impression precedes the arrival of the watch in the office by a few days, but is nevertheless an important one: Lytt Labs is not a particularly great name. Think about it – you’ll forever be explaining “It’s a Lytt Labs… no, L-Y-T-T… no, I’ve no idea what it means”. Inception is not a fantastic name for a product but that’s less important – everything has to be called something after all.  According to the company, the name is meant to evoke both “light” and “lit” (and be pronounced more like the latter). That’s to do with the play of light on the watch’s face, apparently – but also to do with ideas of technology, the future, and “being connected to emerging generations culture”. It’s still a hard one to understand. 

When the watch does arrive, we are prepared not to hold the name against it. The packaging feels pretty high quality – a snug black box lined with an Alcantara-esque suede. The Inception certainly looks different – in a good way, I think. If you’re beginning to get bored with the stream of revival designs, you may warm to this, with ...