Thoughts on the Withings Scanwatch 2
It’s the end of 2023 and eye contact is dead. In what is the height of rudeness, I now look at people’s wrists when I meet them. The most common sight in my terrible lower-arm based greeting system? An Apple Watch. I occasionally use it as a way to make small talk: ‘how many steps have you done?’ ‘Have you stood enough today?’ In such dystopian interactions, the repsonse that stopped me most in my tracks was ‘hold on, I’ve got an alert for arterial fibrillation’. Unfortunately, what I really want to say in these exchanges is: ‘it looks crap, doesn’t it?’ As Apple faces a patent dispute that has already forced the company to pause (albeit temporarily) sales of the Series 9 and Ultra versions of the Watch in the United States, I wonder if it’s time to reassess wrist-based tracking devices?
There’s no knocking the success of the Apple Watch. I’m not alone in having owned several over the years. While Apple doesn’t reveal sales figures for the Watch, one analyst in 2020 estimated that Apple had sold over one hundred and thirty million watches since its launch in 2015. It’s 2023 now so that figure will be much higher, naturally. It’s not just advertising spin that has contributed to the success of the Watch. The Watch is a serious fete of engineering and miniaturisation. Unfortunately, I cannot get over one of the main complaints from its launch in 2015: it doesn’t look very good. I understand that taste is subjective and based on myriad factors but it’s hard to deny that a classic automatic watch usually looks more appealing that a square mounted on a rubber band.
Enter Withings. Withings have been making hybrid watches for some time. These combine the aesthetics of a traditional analogue watch with the tracking features of a smart watch. Earlier this year, Withings introduced its Scanwatch 2, a relatively small update of its original health tracking wrist-worn device. I’ve been wearing one for a couple of months. Here are the main takeaways: nobody thinks I’m a cyborg or a prisoner on day-release while wearing it. Battery life is fantastic. And, while its tracking isn’t to Apple Watch standards, it offers a plethora of health information.
The design is akin to a classic analogue automatic watch that is on the dressier side. It has a number of highly-polished components that give the device a more premium feel. The dial is a flat black with twelve hour markers and minute indices in between. There is no second hand. It has a single input method: the large crown on the right-hand side. The strap that comes in the box is made of a soft rubber and feels pretty flimsy. Thankfully, you can use standard watch straps in its place or opt for a highly-priced alternative made by Withings.
The watch hides its smart-ish health features within this traditional aesthetic. The main dial contains two smaller circles: the lower one is a small dial that moves according to the progress you make towards your daily step goal. The second, at the top of the dial, is a small black and white display that can turn on when the crown is pressed or when you raise your wrist. The hour and minute hands move aside when the crown is pressed to reveal this screen. The small screen can show phone notifications (accompanied by a little vibration), but there is no way to respond to them on the device. Notifications run left to right across the small screen, the dial allowing you to move through them at your own pace. This fundamentally changes how you use the watch as it doesn’t demand your attention.
The Scanwatch 2 includes several health sensors: a heart rate monitor, an blood oxygen sensor and a skin temperature sensor. The watch can take a basic ECG from your wrist (akin to the Apple Watch) while blood oxygen readings can be taken on demand or at intervals as you wear it. The blood oxygen sensor can be a bit finicky and the watch needs to be quite snug to the wrist to get consistent readings.
Unsurprisingly, one should not view this watch as a sports watch. It isn’t going to do my Coros running watch out of a job. There is no in-built GPS sensor, but the watch can be tethered to your phone’s GPS to track runs and the like. I’ve done this a few times and it’s perfectly workable and the stats are (usually) comparable to my Coros. Unfortunately, the screen is too small for those runners who want to watch their stats regularly during runs for, say, interval training or heartrate zones. Annoyingly, the Withings app logs runs from other devices and adds the distance to my daily stats, but it doesn’t sync steps taken during the run to the Scanwatch (I’ve asked Withings about this and they are yet to give me a proper answer). While previous technical reviews of the first Scanwatch showed that the health data was less accurate than the Apple Watch, the look and feel of these devices perhaps indicates that this isn’t a full-on sports watch.
As there is no large always-on OLED screen to power and the watch itself is pretty thick (presumably to accommodate a relatively large battery), the watch’s battery life is outstanding. Taking it on runs with its constant heart tracking can hit the battery but not excessively: one could take the watch on a work trip or holiday and not worry about taking the charger. Unlike an Apple Watch which promises sleep tracking but cannot deliver it within its power consumption envelope, the Scanwatch 2 can stay on my wrist at night, track any sleep disturbances and watch my breathing, while waking me up with a little vibration. I must say that the vibration alarm is weird: I assume it works because I get up at the defined time each day but I can barely remember the vibration once I’m up and about the house. Is the vibration that subtle? Am I that sleep-addled in the morning? The answer is yes.
This is a very rosy picture, but I want to pause to add a note of caution. There have been some complaints about Withings and their customer service online. My experience hasn’t been stellar in this regard either as I’m still waiting for an answer to my query. However, the device build quality has been very good and it has held up remarkably well to my relatively active lifestyle. The saphire-coating on the screen has prevented scratches and dings. However, it is worth keeping these concerns about customer service in mind if you want to buy, so consider looking for discounts on Amazon so you have the peace of mind of their returns policy in case things go wrong.
The watch one wears should be a choice, rather than a stamp of uniformity. And while the Scanwatch does not (and cannot) hold the cultural cache of a premium automatic timepiece, it manages to stand out in a world of waves, handshakes and abusive gestures while driving (!) accompanied by an Apple Watch.
