I’ve been using an Apple Watch since it was first released and whilst the battery has gotten better, it still needs to be charged every night which makes a lot of the health features such as sleep tracking almost pointless, without having to charge before going to bed.
If I had one huge positive out of the gate for the Withings ScanWatch, it’s the fact that it has a 30 day battery life, which was a major game-changer for me out of the box. At the time of writing this review, after wearing the ScanWatch for over three weeks, I still haven’t had to charge it, which is the highest praise that I can give the watch.
Firstly, it looks a little different to that of the Apple Watch going after a more traditional circular look. It comes in black and white, the white being the classier look between the two in my opinion. I had a huge amount of compliments whilst wearing the watch, followed by absolute shock that it was a smart watch.
The watch is able to achieve a 30 day battery life because it’s 80% a regular traditional looking analogue watch with a smaller black and white screen that is just about giving you the basic facts that you need such as digital time, date and things like your step count and a bunch of other health related data that we’ll get into shortly.
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There’s also a secondary analogue looking dial that gives counts toward 100% of your step goal for the day, which is a really nice way to present that information in a non-techy kind of way. The main screen is black, which does take away a little from the white watch face, but it doesn’t look too out of place.
I have to say, it was really refreshing to wear this watch over the last month. Being able to wear it 24/7, without fearing that it’ll die, and also being able to disconnect from my Apple Watch buzzing every three seconds was a nice feeling.
It was also just a really nice change up of looks to go back to a more traditional analogue looking watch and move away from the Apple Watch look that everyone seems to be going after these days. It’s available in 38mm and 42mm, I opted for the 38mm as I have quite a small wrist, and it felt perfectly sized.
Now, there’s a few downsides to the watch going for a longer battery life. The first being that a lot of the “smart watch” type of features that you’ll be used to a turned off by default.
Smart notifications can be used so that you’re alerted to any notifications coming from your phone (this can be customised by application), but naturally this will change your battery. You’re also able to have the screen activate with every wrist raise, to show things such as digital time/date, but this will also kill the battery faster.
The watch can also measure blood oxygen, but this is done on demand rather than at sporadic times throughout the day. You can turn it on to check it every night, but again this will drain the battery. What it does do cleverly is measure whilst you’re sleeping, and uses this measurement to dictate when to scan next and how often to scan, so that if it does detect an issue, it’ll keep monitoring it.
The watch can also perform an ECG by holding your hand over the dial, although I’d argue it’s maybe just a little bit more awkward than performing the same action on Apple Watch, and it also takes longer.
Things such as your heart rate (as well as checking for AFib) are done consistently throughout the day by default, so the fact that this is done whilst achieving a 30 day battery life is impressive. As is the sleep monitoring, which is handled and displayed a lot better than Apple currently does, and it’s so refreshing just to be able to leave the watch on and know that it’s measuring rather than have to worry about charging it.
The sleep data is really useful and easy to understand. You’re presented with a sleep score out of 100 each night that is based on how long you slept, the breakdown of light to deep sleep, how long it took to get to sleep and how many times you were woken up. You can also set a smart wake-up to go off when you’re in a lighter sleep so that you wake up feeling more refreshed.
I also really liked the fitness portion of the watch. It’s constantly counting steps, so you can see each one marked instantly rather than it only being updated at intervals. It’s also super easy to launch a workout and there’s also GPS tracking (through your phone) to track your routes as well.
All-in-all, the Withings ScanWatch was a really good reminder that other fantastic smart watches exist that offer up some real benefits over the Apple Watch.
