JOIN USFashionable way to track your steps
According to a study from IDC Health Insights on wearable fitness trackers, one in three users stop using the device within a year of purchasing it.
Behind the primary reason of just losing interest in tracking their activity, people also cited wearability and the device’s look and feel as turnoffs. Most wearable fitness trackers look like either nondescript wristbands without any apparent function or cheap digital watches.
Fashionable
One new fitness band, the Withings Activité, raises the sophistication bar to a more grown-up level. This smart watch is not the design of some Silicon Valley start-up, but of a Paris-based design team, whose style-conscious creation is engineered by people who know watches: the Swiss.
The Activité is a traditional timepiece in a contemporary, minimalist unisex design in a standard, one-size-fits-all 36.3 millimeter stainless steel case. The gadget-in-disguise has a black or white face with silver hands and weighs just 36 grams, or 1.3 ounces. The French
manufacturer Tanneries Haas, which also counts among its clients some of the world’s top luxury brands, including Chanel and Hermès, makes the watch’s calf leather strap. For active wearers who wish to test the watch’s waterproofing, the timepiece also comes with an inter-
changeable plastic strap to preserve the leather band against damage from sweat and swimming.
The watch face bears the all-important words “Swiss Made,” and timepiece
connoisseurs can rest assured that the sleek wrist wear will not betray their
obsession with digital fitness-tracking trends.
Functionality
Underneath its classic analogue exterior, the Activité records distance travelled for walking, running and swimming. The watch calculates calories burned as well as tracking the wearer’s sleep cycles. All of the collected data is logged into the Withings proprietary online application Health Mate, which can be used to design fitness plans and set goals to track and monitor statistics on five points of fitness: activity, weight, heart rate, sleep and environment.
The only hint that the Activité is a Bluetooth-loaded device with powers beyond telling time is a subdial that indicates the percentage of completed progress toward a particular metric goal set by the user through the app, such as steps taken while walking or the number of strokes made in a swimming session. Users can also open the accompanying app for live, detailed updates on their statistics.
Like other popular wearable devices, the Activité watch also monitors sleep patterns, and can even wake up the wearer with its silent, vibrating alarm clock. The watch’s sleep analysis builds detailed graphs to show a person’s sleep quality by breaking down cycles to indicate the length of time taken to fall asleep and the duration of light and deep sleep. The watch’s sensors automatically toggle to active mode, detecting when the wearer has started walking, running or swimming. The only tactile interaction wearers have with the watch is tapping the sapphire glass to check the preset alarm. The watch hands will slowly move to show the alarm time before moving back to the actual hour. The hands even adjust automatically when travelling between different time zones.
Compatibility
The Activité is limited in compatibility, as it connects only to Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and iPod touch. Withings is currently developing software updates to work with Android operating systems. The device runs on a standard watch battery with a life up to about 10 months.
At $450, the refinement of the Activité comes at a slightly higher price than basic wearable fitness devices. Standard trackers of other brands start around $50 and go up to about $199. The Withings Pulse, the brand’s more obvious digital fitness tracker, costs about $120.
Jon Wilde, an editor at GQ magazine and a technology writer, said the Activité timepiece offered a way to try out the fitness-tracking craze without fully joining the tech-manacled masses.
“What I like most about the Withings Activité is that it’s kind of a health-tracking gateway drug. It’s simple and stylish, like a daily-worn watch should be, and it sticks to the basics of counting steps and quantifying sleep,” Wilde said. “If after a few months you want more, you can graduate to something with more bells, whistles, and blinking LED lights.” He added, “And if you decide you’re bored with the whole idea of health tracking - which happens often - at least you’ve got a snazzy watch to wear instead of a dead gadget in the back of a drawer. In that way it’s basically a health tracker with a safety net.”