Hybrid smartwatches really feel like a dying race, making the Withings ScanWatch 2 a uncommon breed. Fossil is not within the sport after exiting the smartwatch market in 2024. Except for Garmin’s extra sporty hybrids, Withings stays the one firm value taking a look at within the hybrid area for traditional model.
Each Wearables lead Michael Hicks and I (Derrek Lee, Android Central’s managing editor) acquired ScanWatch 2 items months in the past, pairing with our respective Withings sensible scales. However a busy 2024 filled with extra thrilling smartwatch and ring tech made the delicate ScanWatch fall to the wayside.
As followers of Withings merchandise, although, we wished to present the ScanWatch 2 a good shake, so we lastly made a degree of testing the watch all through December and early January.
Does the Withings ScanWatch 2 have what it takes to maintain hybrid smartwatches related, or will shoppers transfer on to sensible rings for much more delicate well being monitoring? Based mostly on our time testing the ScanWatch 2, your impression of it should really come down as to whether you care extra about model or substance.
Withings ScanWatch 2: Worth, availability, & fashions
The Withings ScanWatch 2 is available in 38mm and 42mm case sizes. Each ship in Black or Pearl White, whereas solely the 38mm has Blue and Sand coloration choices. All of them ship with a fluoroelastomer band; Withings sells different Leather-based, Premium Sport, and Steel choices that value anyplace from $39 to $89 every.
All Withings ScanWatch 2 fashions value $349.95. It comes with a three-month subscription to Withings Plus, which reveals a Well being Enchancment Rating, Cardio Verify-Up, and distinctive recipes and exercises. After the free trial, it prices $9.95/month or $99.95/yr.
Withings has additionally launched the ScanWatch Sensible and ScanWatch Nova for $599; each are primarily classier siblings of the ScanWatch 2. They’ve the identical HealthSense Gen 3 sensor suite, stainless-steel 316L case, 0.63-inch OLED cutout show, extended battery life, and common well being, sleep, and exercise insights. The Nova has 10ATM resistance and a greater anti-reflective coating for water sports activities, whereas the Sensible has a Titanium bezel and particular metal arms.
Because you’re taking a look at a hybrid look ahead to model over smarts, chances are you’ll select the Sensible or Nova over the default ScanWatch 2, figuring out the expertise we define under would be the identical for you.
Class | Withings ScanWatch 2 |
---|---|
Dimensions | 38 x 38 x 10mm; 42 x 42 x 10mm |
Weight (w/out strap) | 38mm: 34.6g; 42mm: 52.6g |
Show | 0.63-inch grayscale OLED, 14504 px (282ppi) |
Supplies | Stainless-steel case/ crown |
Safety | 5ATM; sapphire glass |
Battery | As much as 30 days |
Sensors | Multi-wavelength PPG 16 channels, Excessive Dynamic Vary Accelerometer, TempTech24/7 Module, Altimeter |
Connectivity | BLE |
OS & apps | Android 9 / iOS 15; Apple Well being and Google Well being Join apps |
Key stats | Every day HR, excessive/low HR warnings; ECG readings (AFib); Sleep high quality/ phases/ period/ regularity; blood oxygen, respiratory fee; Cycle phases/ size, interval log, signs and movement developments |
Exercise stats | HR zones, VO2 Max estimate, lively minutes, steps, burned energy, elevation, related GPS |
Withings ScanWatch 2: What we preferred
Off the bat, this can be a beautiful watch. The round stainless-steel case and sapphire glass give the watch a timeless look, one which many smartwatches attempt to emulate with various success. In fact, an enormous a part of that is the truth that that is principally a regular watch with no contact display screen, bodily watch arms, and a rotating crown (extra on that later). Anybody trying on the ScanWatch 2 wouldn’t assume that this does something however inform time.
I’ve truly gotten fairly a couple of compliments on the watch, one thing that hardly ever occurs after I put on my admittedly very handsome Pixel Watch 3 or perhaps a Galaxy Watch. And when Michael confirmed non-techy members of the family over a dozen smartwatches over the vacations, practically all of them picked the ScanWatch 2 as their favourite, with some saying it is the one one they’d ever put on.
Not like a “regular” watch, the ScanWatch 2 has a small round cutout on the high for a fundamental, monocolor show. Given its small measurement, interactions are fairly restricted, however Withings does a reasonably good job of retaining issues concise sufficient to discern particular person settings.
Watch arms cowl up the show relying on the time, however since there is not any always-on show setting, it does not matter; the arms robotically transfer apart when you work together with the crown to scroll by the menu.
Maybe the very best half about utilizing the show is the haptic suggestions you get while you scroll to a different possibility. It’s fairly delicate, nevertheless it makes me take into consideration the haptics on the Pixel Watch 3 and jogs my memory simply how essential good haptics are.
Biking by the menu presents you with as much as 14 customizable choices, which might be modified within the app. This contains steps, physique temperature, ECG, SpO2, and extra. Given how small the show is, Withings makes it so that you simply don’t must work together with numerous ranges of submenus in every possibility, which works in its favor. In reality, only some choices have submenus, with most simply there to show information like steps or coronary heart fee with out you needing to do something.
You even have the choice to set a shortcut while you press and maintain the crown, which I wish to set to exercises because it’s about the one factor I do with the ScanWatch 2 apart from checking the time. Something particularly difficult is relegated to the app, with the additional display screen area and simpler controls.
This isn’t a health watch by any means. There are some exercise choices within the watch, which you too can customise within the app, however the Withings ScanWatch 2 is extra of a passive well being watch than something, with automated exercise detection for a couple of mainstream actions and handbook exercise begins within the app. And it requires your telephone available for related GPS.
After a run, Withings will present an attention-grabbing baseline of knowledge, together with distance, tempo, energy, elevation, coronary heart fee zones, physique temperature adjustments, and temp zones. The final two are particularly uncommon, outdoors of pricy physique temp sensors, supplying you with a novel take a look at your degree of effort.
There’s a whole lot of lacking information for athletes that we’ll focus on within the subsequent part, however on the very least, the guts fee common is pretty correct for regular exercises, coming inside 1 bpm of a coronary heart fee strap throughout a run. Throughout one other run, it randomly confirmed a coronary heart fee of 30 bpm above Michael’s precise fee for a few minutes at the beginning however then auto-corrected to the proper fee.
The ScanWatch 2’s most important operate — apart from well being monitoring and fundamental health — is to indicate telephone notifications. Withings permits you to customise which apps can buzz your wrist, which inserts with the hybrid smartwatch theme of limiting them to essential info. The show is activated by gesture and is adequately subtle that you will look as when you’re simply checking the time.
Notifications present a tiny app icon with the textual content flowing shortly beneath in a single-file line; the pace is essential so you are not caught standing there for too lengthy, ready for info that might all present immediately on a full-screen AMOLED. You possibly can see within the images above how the Slack notification “Derrek Lee: Certain factor, how’s this?” would require no less than three images to indicate all of the textual content. Fortunately, notifications scroll previous a number of occasions in case you miss something.
When you obtain a number of messages from the identical app, the ScanWatch 2 offers up and reveals the app icon and nothing else. When you may want for extra info, it is sort of an efficient method of telling the consumer they’ve already missed info and may pull out their telephone.
The Withings app expertise is about so simple as the watch itself. It makes use of the identical app as Withings’ different merchandise, which means you may handle all of your units in a single area, one thing that is useful. I like that I can view my steps and actions in the identical place as the load measurement information from my Withings Physique Cardio scale, giving me a extra complete view of my well being from throughout the identical household of units. Any clean spots might be stuffed by different units through Well being Join or particular person app connections to associate apps like Google Match, MyFitnessPal, Strava, and extra.
When you’re selecting up the ScanWatch 2, you then’ll love its battery life. Withings says the watch ought to last as long as 30 days on a single cost, which feels correct. I haven’t been in a position to attain that mark solely as a result of I observe a number of exercises per week whereas sporting the watch. Nonetheless, I common two or three weeks on a single cost, and I usually overlook that I even must cost the watch. Even when the battery reaches 0%, it’ll nonetheless have the ability to observe your sleep and steps for a while, which is fairly nice.
Withings ScanWatch 2: What we did not like
The Withings ScanWatch 2 is making an attempt to be as passive as doable, which is comprehensible given its small show. Different hybrid watches just like the Garmin Vivomove Development provide you with way more show area for clearer info but additionally are typically a lot shorter-lived. Withings prioritizes battery life and subtlety, nevertheless it does restrict the smarts.
Whereas the watch retains menus fundamental, navigation can nonetheless be a little bit of a ache, particularly when you’ve many of the menu choices enabled. I usually discover myself scrolling for longer than I wish to get to a particular menu possibility, and if you wish to exit out of a submenu, you’ll must scroll all the best way up and choose the again button, which simply feels cumbersome.
Moreover, when you’re in a submenu and go a brief interval with out interacting with the show, it’ll return to the clock face. You’ll want to make use of the app to chop some pointless choices and reduce scrolling.
When you’re at it, you may additionally wish to use this time to handle your notifications, because the ScanWatch 2 is fairly hit-or-miss in relation to displaying them. Typically, the watch misses them totally; different occasions, it solely reveals them after I’ve already opened the message on my telephone, which defeats the aim.
Whereas I really like the delicate crown haptics, Withings cranked up the vibration for notifications and telephone calls to a slightly surprising degree. It is frankly annoying, to the purpose that I usually depart the watch in Do Not Disturb. Put on OS and Apple Watches allow you to modify the vibration power, however Withings’ setting menu is a bit too barebones. A minimum of you by no means have to fret about sleeping by an alarm!
As I mentioned beforehand, the ScanWatch 2 isn’t actually a health watch, which is fairly evident by its design. So, when you’ll get some exercise choices to select from, some that I’d steadily use simply aren’t there, leaving me to have to decide on “Different” or “Health” after I’m doing one thing pretty frequent, like HIIT. There are nonetheless loads of exercise choices out there, however that one is an annoying omission for me.
As for the extra frequent exercise choices like working, you miss out on information that is frequent on different working watches like working kind, working energy, and coaching load. Its coronary heart fee information lacks subtlety, too, lumping most of your effort into both “average” or “intense.”
I additionally don’t like that there isn’t a strategy to export my particular person exercise information, no less than not in any method that’s apparent to me. Certain, I can edit exercise information like the kind, depth, and period, however as soon as it’s logged, the one method I can share it’s through a picture, which is basically a screenshot of the exercise abstract. Syncing the app with Strava additionally does not assist, because it solely shares the exercise kind and period, whereas my Garmin Venu 3 will present coronary heart fee information, location, and nearly all the things I’d wish to embrace in a exercise abstract.
The Withings ScanWatch 2 has a reasonably complete record of well being metrics that it tracks, from coronary heart well being and blood oxygen to menstrual cycle phases. It additionally has a couple of options — in a single day HRV, respiratory fee, and awake temperature zones — which are nonetheless “coming quickly,” though we delayed our overview for therefore lengthy.
Extra importantly, I’m not loopy concerning the sleep monitoring. To begin, the ScanWatch 2 is not the lightest watch on the block, with the 42mm measurement weighing practically as a lot as a Galaxy Watch Extremely. This makes it slightly uncomfortable to put on to mattress, one thing we discover with most smartwatches however is especially troublesome with the ScanWatch 2.
Typically, the watch can be fairly respectable, however oftentimes, it should omit giant parts of my sleep. I are likely to get up in the course of the night time, and I’ll stand up for a minute or two to make use of the restroom or seize a drink earlier than falling again asleep. Whereas my Oura Ring 4 will proceed to trace my sleep, the ScanWatch 2 will seemingly miss hours’ value of sleep monitoring, which puzzles me.
Moreover, the app seemingly prioritizes Well being Join sleep information over the ScanWatch information, which I discover odd. The plus aspect is that the info is from my Oura Ring 4, so no less than it’s logging the extra correct information, nevertheless it’s nonetheless attention-grabbing that Withings wouldn’t prioritize its personal gadget over outdoors information.
Talking of the app, Withings actually needs you to purchase into its Withings Plus subscription, which can present issues like a Well being enchancment rating, a library of exercises and recipes with beneficial each day missions, and well being insights that allow you to view your developments. Whereas I’m not totally towards subscriptions, Withings Plus simply doesn’t really feel fairly definitely worth the $9.95 month-to-month price ticket, particularly when Oura’s is just $5.99 per thirty days and different smartwatch OEMs don’t require a subscription in any respect for this information. Make it make sense, Withings!
It’s additionally factor the ScanWatch 2 has such an extended battery life as a result of the slightly cumbersome charger takes about two hours to completely recharge the watch.
Withings ScanWatch 2: Competitors
Selecting a hybrid watch comes all the way down to your private preferences on model and the way a lot well being data or health tech you need out of your watch.
When you actually solely want the fundamentals of well being information to go along with your notifications, the Withings ScanWatch Gentle will prevent $100 in comparison with the ScanWatch 2. In change, you lose ECGs, pores and skin temperature, elevation monitoring, and blood oxygen, whereas retaining an analogous metal design and reliable battery life.
Garmin makes in style hybrid or style fashions just like the Vivomove Development, Intuition Crossover, and Lily 2 that provide you with information like coronary heart fee, stress, and blood oxygen, together with related GPS and helpful coaching insights with no subscription. Solely the Vivomove collection is really “fashionable” in our books, and it has a lot shorter battery life than the ScanWatch 2, plus no ECG or pores and skin temperature; we do respect that its grayscale display screen is a bit of bigger, so it shows extra info. The Intuition Crossover will attraction to followers of rugged Casio-type watches, not basic watches.
Sadly, it is exhausting to search out any smarter hybrid watches with higher notifications or apps than Withings or Garmin. Fossil made respectable hybrid fashions just like the Gen 6 Hybrid Wellness Version, however Fossil has deserted the platform. Citizen nonetheless sells the CZ Sensible Hybrid with Put on OS 3, however we have not examined it for ourselves and it is unlikely Citizen will ever replace to the later variations.
Withings ScanWatch 2: Must you purchase it?
You should purchase this if…
- You need a classy-looking “smartwatch.”
- You need a “smartwatch” with minimal distractions.
- You need fundamental well being and health monitoring.
- You personal a Withings scale and love the app already.
You should not purchase this if…
- You need complete health monitoring.
- You are searching for a extra conventional smartwatch expertise with a touchscreen and full-screen interactions.
- You do not personal every other Withings merchandise.
There is not any doubt that the ScanWatch 2 is a stupendous piece of {hardware}. Whereas I just like the look of the Pixel Watch 3, the ScanWatch 2 has a basic but understated design that goes properly with most outfits. Plus, with such an extended battery life, it feels extra like an everyday watch with some sensible methods to maintain you on high of your well being and wellness.
Nonetheless, as a hybrid smartwatch, I am unsure the ScanWatch 2 fairly hits the mark, feeling extra “watch” than “sensible.” The minimal show retains issues slightly passive, which consumers might choose, however interacting with the watch might be cumbersome at worst and unreliable at greatest. Except you’re subscribed to Withings Plus or personal every other Withings units, the watch might depart you wanting extra out of your information, together with the kind of insights you will discover on different units for much less cash and even free.
If the ScanWatch 2 was priced about $50-$100 much less, I’d perhaps advocate getting one. However proper now, it does not actually do a lot to maneuver hybrid smartwatches ahead in any significant method, and you would be higher off spending your $349 on the most recent Pixel Watch or perhaps a sensible ring in order for you passive monitoring.
That mentioned, each Michael and I skew way more in the direction of the “tech” and “health” aspect of smartwatches, which skews our perspective on what we wish. In case your most important precedence is basic model, with well being monitoring and notifications as secondary issues, then the ScanWatch 2 is likely to be proper up your alley.
Model over substance
The Withings ScanWatch 2 (or its Nova and Sensible variants) provide you with a basic, fashionable design that masks some helpful well being insights, rudimentary health instruments, and handy notifications in an invisible OLED show. It has areas the place Withings may enhance, however the core app expertise (paired with a Withings scale) will maintain you centered in your well being and wellness.