THE BRITISH TECH NETWORK

Withings HR

30 Jan 17

First impressions. Review to follow when I've lived with it for a bit.

First and foremost this is an activity tracker. It tracks your heartbeat, walking, running, swimming and tracks your sleep. The watch comes with a white or black face and 36 or 40 mm steel case. The Withings looks like a traditional watch which will please the fashion conscious. The watch come fitted with a plastic strap that is comfortable to wear. After market straps are available but looking at Withings site £70 for a leather strap makes apple straps look good value. I have seen a Withings Milanese stainless steel loop black or silver for £7.00 on amazon which might be worth a punt. First off this is not a direct replacement for the apple watch, there are not a wide range of apps that run with the Withing HR but it does play nicely with all the major running apps and with apples heath app. The watch was simple to setup, in fact you set and sync the time via the phone app ( Android/IOS ). You can set targets for walking and alarms within the app in fact the watch wont work without the app period.

There are limited notifications, the watch vibrates when you get a phone call, text message or calendar alerts all of which are displayed on the tiny amoled display. The amoled display can show you date and time, heartrate, steps walked, distance and alarms as well. The watch is very intelligent and knows when your doing different tasks you don't have to tell it... but if you want to start an intensive workout you long press the button and the watch will monitor your heart rate more closely. Having done some research the firmware will be updated shortly with an intelligent sleep alarm similar to the Microsoft Band i.e. wakes you up before the alarm time but within your natural sleep rhythm. Used it for a few days and I think the sleep function works very well... not only measuring the quality of sleep but your heart rate during sleep. There is also going to be wider support for notifications for example WhatsApp and other social media. Below the amoled display there is a circle with a hand that indicated how many steps you have done at a glance.

Now battery, this thing will run for 25 days of normal use followed by another 20 days with heart rate monitor off. So you could go 6 weeks between charge. I have only charged it once because out of the box it was charged to 70% and so after two days it was down to 68% so whilst I was showering I put it on charge.... it charged to 100% in around 15 minutes.

The watch is comfortable to wear and light. I liked the Microsoft Band but that was uncomfortable and had to be taken off every now and then. The Withings HR if you want a nice simple activity tracker might just be up your street.... I will review it again at a later date as might Mrbatwench who also has one.. 40mm £179 at the moment...

More information here

Review Subscribe

Withings HR

Author

Comments

Sharing