The next wave of smartwatch design for the past couple of years seems to be the analog look, with smartwatches that look like actual watches. We’ve seen classic brands get into the category and we’ve also seen new brands come up, focusing more on the health aspect of the wearable rather than connectivity. One brand is Withings, part-owned by former mobile giant Nokia, and their newest product is Steel HR, bringing a heart-rate monitor and a much better 25-day battery life to the market.
Steel HR brings classic French design to your wrist, with stainless steel casing, chrome hands, and modern silicon straps. Like other Withings wearables, it has a hand dials that will show the time and a sub-hand dial that will show you how far you’ve come when it comes to your activity goals, which you set through the Withings Health Mate app. The new smartwatch has a digital screen at the top of the watchface where you can see your health data ad your smart notifications from your connected device.
The new wearable also brings a more accurate and holistic approach to heart rate and fitness monitoring. While tracking steps is helpful, there is more to just doing that to monitor your health. The watch uses photoplethysmography (PPG) which looks at the variation in the level of blood in the wrist. The process allows you to see a visualization of the amount of time spent on various heart zones, so you’ll get a better picture of your activity output. Steel HR also has the best battery life for an activity tracker that has heart rate monitoring. You get 25 days and if you put it to power save mode after that, you get an additional 20 days.
The Steel HR will come in two sizes, a 36mm with an 18mm strap and in black or white colors, and a 40mm one with 20mm strap in black. They will be exclusively available at withings.com, with the 36mm retailing at $179.95 and the 40mm at $199.95.
SOURCE: Withings
