If you’re anything like me you probably can’t walk past a watch shop window without looking longingly at the immaculate time pieces in the window. There is something about their elegant, simplistic look which makes them timeless (no pun intended) and they work so well when worn with your every day work wear or when going out on the town.
Of course, times move on and people now have different priorities and want their watch to provide alarms, notifications and fitness tracking. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a fitness tracker that looked like a watch? Unsurprisingly manufacturers have now caught on to this trend and are starting to produce what are known as hybrid smartwatches. They combine the classic look of a classic analog watch and pair it with bluetooth connected smart watch technology that tracks your daily activity.
The idea is that you should not be able to tell that your device is a fitness tracker. It should give you access to all the latest technology whilst still looking like a traditional analogue watch. There are different ways of achieving this goal including providing discreet screens as part of the watch face or via an app. You have to decide if you would be more comfortable with an all out smart watch or happy to make the compromise between style and technology in a hybrid smartwatch. If it is the latter we have compiled a list of
Fitness trackers that look like watches
1. Garmin Vivomove HR
The Garmin Vívomove HR is a stylish hybrid watch. It comes with a touch screen but when not in use all you can see is the traditional hands so it looks like your average watch. The touch screen is used to show you messages and text. The hands are displayed all the time and they are set at the right time via the app. If you do need to read some text they helpfully move out of the way. Although some people report that they do struggle to see the screen in certain light due to reflections With the hands and the screen you are typically looking at around a week of battery life before a charge is needed.
As you would expect with a Garmin watch the fitness tracking capabilities are good. Unusually for a hybrid watch it has V02 Max to monitor your stress level. In addition you get notification support, a heart rate monitor, silent alarms, auto activity tracking and the ability to take it swimming
is a stylish hybrid watch. It comes with a touch screen but when not in use all you can see is the traditional hands so it looks like your average watch. The touch screen is used to show you messages and text. The hands are displayed all the time and they are set at the right time via the app. If you do need to read some text they helpfully move out of the way. Although some people report that they do struggle to see the screen in certain light due to reflections With the hands and the screen you are typically looking at around a week of battery life before a charge is needed.
As you would expect with a Garmin watch the fitness tracking capabilities are good. Unusually for a hybrid watch it has V02 Max to monitor your stress level. In addition you get notification support, a heart rate monitor, silent alarms, auto activity tracking and the ability to take it swimming
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2. Garmin Vivomove 3
The s in 3s stands for smaller so the Garmin Vivomove 3s is a little smaller than other watches in this category and a bit lighter too. That doesn’t mean you lost out on functionality. A hidden touchscreen turns on based on your movements to display a traditional clock face. If you desire you can turn the device into watch mode only where it just displays the hands which gives an extra week of battery life. If not, you can take advantage of smart watch features such as body battery, stress tracking, smart phone notifications and pulse OX It can further be customised with a large range of colour and band choices
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3. Withings Steel HR
Not as fully featured as a smart watch the Steel HR is great at what it does. It couples good lucks with good fitness tracking credentials. It tries to do a limited amount and do it well and keeps the functionality tight. You have the ability to monitor heart rate, sleep, calories burnt, steps and calorie burn. The small dial will show you percentage completion to your daily step target In addition you get something known as a smart wake up alarm. The idea being it wakes you up at an optimal time whilst you are in your lightest sleep based on its tracking data. It comes with a very easy read to display, decent battery life and a good app in the shape of Nokia Health Mate which will also allow you to hook up some Nokia Body+ scales. The strap it comes with out of the box probably isn’t too everyone’s taste and can be changed to a more classical magnetic steel one. The other notable downside is the lack of customisation possible to the alarms.
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4. Kate Spade New York Holland Hybrid Smartwatch
Available in numerous watch faces the stylish and good looking New York Holland may look like a watch but is a fitness tracker in disguise. Powered by a CR2142 battery the lack of screen helps to provide 6 months of life before it needs changing. It can track sleep, steps and countdown events with the 0 to 100 scale at the top of the watch face showing progress towards your step target. It lacks a heart rate monitor and is water resistant to 30 metres.
To work at its best you will need to use the watch with the app and that is thought to be confusing but also enables you to hook your watch up to other useful functionality such as the ability to take pictures and control music playback on your phone.
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6. Timex IQ+ Move
The IQ+ Move has a traditional looking watch face and comes with the ability to change the straps to suit your taste. Lurking behind the analogue design however is a fitness tracker. It will monitor steps, calories burned, distance and sleep metrics such as time awake and deep and light sleep phases.. Water resistant to 50 metres a traditional watch battery provides long battery life should last a few months before needing replacing. The face itself has a secondary dial in the bottom right which shows your progress towards your daily activity goal. This will only get you so far. More advanced features are provided by a Bluetooth connection to the Timex Connected App (works on IOS and Android) which also set the time and date on the watch. As apps go the reputation isn’t great and general reviews seem to state it is prone to error. However, you might get more accurate step tracking by hooking the watch to your phones GPS to increase the accuracy of distance tracking.
The main method of interacting with the watch is by using the 3 buttons on the right hand side of the watch face. The middle button enables the Indiglo feature which illuminates the dial so you can read it in the dark for approximately 5 seconds. If held for longer it also initiates synching from the watch to the app. The other buttons depend on settings in the app but the general premise is they make the hands of the watch move to show the date or the time in another time zone or number of steps taken.
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7. Fossil Collider HR
The Fossil Collider HR is part watch part smartwatch. Rocking an impressive 2+ weeks of battery life it has heart rate monitoring and smart phone notifications.
The watch is stylish and has an always on display so you can see your stats at a glance. It also allows you to assign custom functions to buttons and control music directly from the device
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Conclusion
Hybrid smart watches are a relatively new category of fitness tracker. As such, some ideas are still finding their feet in how to implement them as well as the current innovative solutions. In our view, a hybrid smart watch would suit somebody who loves traditional watches but still wants to have a good idea of their daily activity.
Last update on 2023-01-22 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
