Wearing the Withings Watch

I have been wearing a Withings watch for 3 weeks (the Steel HR Sport model). There are some great features and some not-so-great features.

Great features:

Battery: It takes a week for the watch to drop to 80% battery life when I use it all day and have the route mapping function on for 45 minutes a day. I don’t wear it at night. At 80%, it charges to 100% in less than 15 minutes. I simply put it on the charger while I am in the shower.

Notifications: I don’t need to be connected 24/7 and can look at my phone when I want, so the notifications feature was not important to me when choosing the watch. When I set up the Health Mate app, I turned on the phone and text notification just to see how it worked. It works quite well. The vibration is subtle, but easy to detect and the display is easy to read. I found it helpful on occasion.

Button: The button on the watch is responsive. Light pressure activates it and holding it down gets an immediate response. I have never had the button activated by accident, due to hand or wrist movements such as typing, opening a jar, driving, etc. That was a common occurrence on several other sport watches I have worn, especially those with multiple small buttons. Any bending of the wrist would trigger the stopwatch or alarm on those watches.

Quick-release bands: The bands are simple to remove/install. That makes it easy to swap bands for different purposes and occasions. Wearing a single band all the time is like wearing the same underwear day after day, not hygienic.

Cover for crystal: I wanted to avoid getting scratches on the crystal, so I purchased a cover for the watch face. I was hoping that the cover would be “invisible” and would reduce the crystal’s reflectivity. The 40 mm size fit perfectly and was “invisible.” It was so invisible that it did not reduce the reflectivity at all. It is nice that it does not change the look of the watch, but does protect the crystal. It does not pick up lint or fingerprints.

The instructions that came with the cover suggested using a wet installation technique. I did not do that. I did the following just before bedtime. The next morning the cover was perfect (aligned, invisible, no bubbles).

• Washed my hands well
• Carefully cleaned the crystal with the cloth provided in the box of covers
• Peeled 1 cover off the sheet of 6 covers, being careful not to bend an edge of the cover or get put a fingerprint on the adhesive side of the cover
• Lined up the edge of the cover with the top curve of the watch face, putting it right up to the edge of the watch case
• Gently turned loose so that the cover dropped onto the crystal without slipping
• Lightly rubbed the cover for a few seconds (with the cloth provided in the box of covers) to smooth it out and warm the adhesive 
• Ignored the 2 or 3 bubbles that were still there
• Set it on the nightstand over night

Connected GPS: The route mapping feature works well. It is simple to start and stop. It provides nice summary data. If the GPS signal is not strong for a section of the route, it imputes the route with a dotted line and continues to calculate statistics.

Health Mate: The functions in the app cover my needs, especially in conjunction with the Oura app, so I was able to delete a half-dozen other apps from my phone (that I used to need to make the Apple Watch effective; e.g., Runtastic Pro, HealthFace, AutoSleep, etc.)

Not-so-great features:

Crystal: The crystal is extremely reflective, even with a cover on it. Indoors I have to turn my wrist "just so" to be able to read the analog dial. That takes some getting used to; I admit, it may be “operator error,” not a watch flaw. Outdoors, the brighter it is, the easier it is to read the analog dial with a glance.

Digital display: The digital display is very easy to read indoors and in most outdoor conditions, even with sunglasses. Shading it from the direct sun is required, and while that is easy enough, it does prevent reading it at a glance.

Bluetooth: Despite the fact that I get phone and text notifications (bluetooth working all day), when I open the Health Mate app, it often can not find the watch. It is annoying that I have to start and restart the app a couple of times to get it to sync.

Delays: It is also annoying that after the watch has downloaded data to the app, some data may not appear for 30 min to several hours. This is particularly true for heart rate data. It almost always says after a GPS connected hike that it “did not get enough heart rate data,” but several hours later, the route pace and heart rate maps are there.

Comfort: The Withings black leather band is nicely styled, but it is stiff, uncomfortable, even after wearing it most days over the last three weeks. The Withings black and gray perforated silicone band is very soft and flexible, but unusually long. It is the most attractive band of that style that I have seen. I experimented with different ways to wear the watch. For it to work consistently, the watch has to be tighter and higher up on my arm than I like. To be fair, I have always had trouble finding a watch/band that was comfortable; it could be operator error.

Comparisons among fitness trackers/apps:

I am using a ring because I want to monitor sleep/life balance parameters. I am using a watch because I want real-time feedback on steps and heart rate during the day. But at the end of the day, each provides a summary of the steps I walked, as does the Health app on my iPhone. After a few days of using all three, it was clear that they were not counting steps in the same way.

After a couple of weeks of wearing the watch, I was curious about how well the three devices matched on a well-defined course. I walked on a flat, hard surface. I used (1) a manual tally counter app on my iPhone that I clicked with each heel strike, (2) my iPhone accelerometer/Apple Health app, (3) the Withings watch digital display, and (4) the Oura ring app. I walked 100 steps using the tally counter to keep track of the count, then looked at the watch, the Health app, and the Oura app. I did this 6 times. The Health app averaged 100 steps, the ring occasionally over counted, and the watch consistently counted half the steps, as though it were counting strides, not steps.

I was also curious about how they counted a whole day’s activity. I wore the ring, wore the watch, and carried the iPhone in my pocket all day for a week. At the end of the week, I compared the daily step totals.

I have no way of measuring the actual steps walked, but it appears that the ring overcounted some days and the watch undercounted. On Day 7, the day with the largest discrepancy, I was driving a 10 ton truck in the mountains much of the day. The iPhone was sitting on the console. The watch did not register the arm movements as a workout, but the ring did. The ring, watch, and phone counts are closest when the day is largely sedentary, but includes a walk at the end of the day.

Because I am using the ring and watch for two different purposes, it does not really matter to me that they count differently. Each serves its purpose well.

The iPhone accelerometer/Apple Health app may count steps accurately, but the app is not user nor data-friendly. Moreover, it only works if the iPhone is constantly in my pocket. I use the phone throughout the day, but do not carry it with me every second and don't find the app useful for anything. I keep the app on my phone because it could coordinate data from a variety of health applications, should I decide to do so.

App development:

Both the Oura and Health Mate apps have been updated several times since I began using them.  The new features in each update were interesting and quite helpful. Developer support is always a good thing.