An overpriced activity tracking device
The Withings French house decided to make a useful wearable activity tracker. Activité, as they called it, has a classic watch shape and form. Build with variant tracking sensors on it, this watch can monitor your everyday life. But how far can this product go? It’s not a smartwatch, it’s only a tracking device. If you need something minimal, well, it’s a really good choice! But let see its bad side.
1. Overpriced
Is it an Apple Watch rival? Is it even a smartwatch?! No, I can’t tell precisely. With a price of $450, it needs to be something more than or even near the Apple Watch that started at a lower price of $349 when it was first launched in April of 2015. But, it’s not! Please Withings, it’s only a wearable tracking device..
2. Without any OS
There is not any notifications, user interface or anything else. It’s just a watch. An activity tracker device that comes and synchronizes with Withings Health Mate app on your smartphone. This is the only way to view your personal tracking data out of the box.
3. Elevation tracking doesn’t work
The step tracking is done through an accelerometer in it that can gauge the distance covered, elevation climbed and the calories burned by your activity. Nevertheless, there is a number of owners said that the elevation tracking doesn’t work. Activité always displayed elevation climbed as zero in the Withings Health Mate app. The device does not include a barometer so it will not be able to track elevation at all!
4. Sleep tracking interruptions
As it seems, there are some problems with sleep being registered. In a test, as described “One night tracking didn’t kick in until 3am, and the next night an hour was randomly unassigned in the middle of tester’s sleep. It wasn’t classed as awake or asleep, just a blank white hole”. In general, testing sleep recordings were inaccurate.
5. Limited functionality
It can only track some of the daily data of your activity. There are smartwatches or even better tracking devices that can do more. Also, it’s good to note that the Withings Health Mate app is compatible only with iOS and Android. So, If you have other operating system in your smartphone, like Windows Phone for example, just forget it.