When Apple launched the Apple Watch, they made an enormous hoopla out of instructing its customers how excited it was about having a “digital crown” and “complications”. To the watch lovers amongst us, that was a head-scratcher — in fact a watch has all of these issues.

At the time, Apple was falling sufferer to its heritage as a computing firm. In brief — it wasn’t making a smartwatch — it was making a tiny iPhone you carry round in your wrist, whereas desperately attempting to persuade everyone that “yes, this is a wristwatch, we promise!”

Withings’ Health Mate app is outstanding, particularly if you happen to use greater than one of many Withings well being merchandise. It integrates with Google Fit and Apple Health Kit so you may port the information into your most popular ecosystem. Image Credits: Haje Kamps for TechCrunch

I’ve seen the parallel within the automotive world as nicely: A number of the normal automotive producers scratched their heads and thought, “How can we cram a truckload of batteries and an electric drive train into one of our cars,” whereas some automotive producers — Tesla particularly — primarily took the problem in a different way. Tesla’s strategy was, “What if we could take an iPhone, which just gets better with time as more software updates become available — and build a car around it.” The consequence, for Tesla, is a automotive that appears and feels spectacularly completely different than a lot of the different automobiles. Whether or not you like the inside and possession expertise of a Tesla or the most recent technology of Mercedes electrical automotive boils all the way down to plenty of issues, however in my thoughts, it’s a couple of basic philosophy and strategy to design and performance.

All of which brings us to the ScanWatch. Withings has all the time taken a distinct strategy than Apple. With its comparatively minimalist watches that truly appear and feel like timepieces, it got here on the similar drawback Apple was attempting to resolve, however the way in which a watchmaker would do it. How do you construct an awesome, purposeful watch that appears and appears like a watch, however provides a dollop of good options? Its Steel HR confirmed what was to come back, and the Withings ScanWatch is a pure and extra bold step up the ladder from there.

The upshot of the completely different design philosophy is that you would be able to’t use the Withings ScanWatch as a distant management to take images along with your cellphone. You can’t discuss to it or use it to ship texts. You can’t use it to learn emails or play music or document voice memos. And if these issues are necessary to you, nicely, the Withings ScanWatch merely isn’t for you — you’re not in search of a wise wristwatch, you’re in search of a microscopic supercomputer.

The general construct high quality and a focus to element of the ScanWatch is extraordinary. This feels extra like a premium watch than a miniature laptop. Image Credits: Haje Kamps for TechCrunch

Having spent a short while with Withing’s top-of-the-line good wristwatch, I discovered myself being delighted time and time once more, each for all of the issues it’s, however — most significantly — for all of the issues it’s not. I finished carrying an Apple watch as a result of I disliked the design (it’s a soulless black sq. — very similar to a smartphone) and I hated the truth that it stored buzzing and notifying me of messages and tweets and emails. Yes, you may flip these issues off, however if you happen to flip off all of the smartphone-extension options of the Apple Watch, you finally find yourself with little or no that makes the watch price carrying round, particularly when you must cost it day by day.

The Withings ScanWatch is available in two sizes, with a 38 mm and 42 mm watch face. Image Credits: Withings

Withings’ ScanWatch is the precise reverse. For one, it seems like a easy, minimalist wristwatch. If the little PMOLED show is off, you’d be forgiven for considering it was a high-end, understated timepiece from one of many many high-end watch producers. The show isn’t a flowery retina show, however the trade-off is that you just stand up to a month of battery life. The watch appears like a wristwatch, too — heavier than you’d suppose, however in a approach that feels reassuring to me. You know that it’s there, and if you happen to’re used to carrying high-quality timepieces, that’s not a foul factor.

The ScanWatch additionally brings a ton of extraordinarily high-end tech to a wristwatch, focusing totally on well being and wellness options — they’re an extension of its health tracker roots, slightly than extending the performance of your cellphone.

Withings’ ScanWatch brings a ton of medical-grade trackers to your wrist. The EKG performance is the crown jewel of the watch/app combo. Image Credits: Haje Kamps for TechCrunch

The watch has been accessible in Europe for some time, and the explanation for the delay for its U.S. launch additional illustrates how completely different this system is from its opponents. To launch, it wanted clearance from the FDA. Its built-in EKG is high-quality sufficient, the corporate claims, to have the ability to detect atrial fibrillation (afib), some of the frequent cardiac arrhythmias — and a number one explanation for stroke, coronary heart failure and different coronary heart points.

To supply that knowledge to you as a shopper, the corporate claims you want a prescription, and for the primary EKG measurement to be analyzed by a medical skilled — it isn’t solely clear how different smartwatch producers with comparable EKG performance get round this, or whether or not Withings is doing one thing essentially completely different.

Activating the EKG approval course of is free, and you’ll not be charged whether or not you’re authorised or not for continued EKG use. In the meantime, the corporate is working to make the EKG performance absolutely accessible to customers with no prescription or further prices, presumably by mirroring what Apple, Samsung and the others are doing to get their FDA geese in a row.

If that each one sounds a little bit excessive, nicely, you wouldn’t be the primary to make that statement. The firm went on the defensive earlier than the watch was even launched, and ended up publishing a FAQ especially addressing the EKG functionality.

In my thoughts, it serves to spotlight the corporate’s ambitions to be a health-first system. It suits in very nicely with the remainder of the corporate’s gadgets — it sells smart sleep trackers, blood pressure cuffs, good thermometers and body-fat-measuring scales, for instance — and the wonderful Withings Health Mate app that powers all of Withings’ gadgets is vying on your consideration because the central hub as your bodily well being.

Withings’ ScanWatch is available in two sizes. This is the 38 mm model, which feels about right-sized on my “do you even lift, bro?”-sized wrists. Image Credits: Haje Kamps for TechCrunch

The sum of all of it is a actually distinctive (time)piece of expertise. The watch crams coronary heart charge monitoring, blood oxygen monitoring, the EKG performance, step, exercise and exercise trackers, linked GPS, an altimeter, sleep trackers, good wake-up alarms and way more, all into an attractive, easy-to-forget system that lives in your wrist.

As a tech reviewer, I don’t have the medical experience to find out whether or not all of those options are nearly as good as the corporate claims they’re. From conversations I’ve had with medical professionals, the overall consensus appears to be that it isn’t nearly as good because the multi-thousand-dollar industrial medical gear that lives in your physician’s workplace. Frankly, that will be unreasonable in a $300 consumer-grade merchandise you carry round in your arm.

If you’re a well being and fitness-forward one who cares about type, it’s exhausting to go improper with the Withings ScanWatch. It’s an unbelievable leap ahead in wrist-carriable expertise and a breath of recent, well-oxygenated blood right into a class that was beginning to get a little bit hypoxic.

For what it’s price, whereas I used to be glad to see the again of my Apple Watch after I put it on eBay a number of years in the past, I’ll purchase a ScanWatch with my very own cash as soon as this evaluation unit goes again to Withings; excessive reward from somebody who approaches plenty of devices with a backpack filled with skepticism as of late.