Withings Scanwatch – 6 months in, near total win
I realized the other day I don’t think about my health tracker, the Withings Scanwatch. This is big for me as the entire time I was using the Fitbit Sense it was a series of “why is this thing waking up so often,” “why is my battery dead,” “why did this cable that literally does not move break,” “why does it think I’ve walked 3000 steps by the time I get to my office,” “what is going to be wrong with this today?”
I don’t think about the Withings Scanwatch because it’s pretty darn close to what I expect, I charge it once a freaking month. I want to know what time it is I look at the thing. It has hands. I don’t have to tap to turn on a screen. I want to know my progress on whatever goal I’ve set for the day it has the progress hand. Bam.
The Health Mate app integrates with Fit, the web page for Withings doesn’t ask me to install Flash and then have next to useless customer support telling me I need to install something that is no longer supported, or even distributed.
I won’t say it’s perfect. There are two glaring issues with the Withings healthmate for those who track blood pressure with it that I’ve attempted to get fixed and can’t seem to get through to them what the issue is, but I wasn’t talked down to and told to install Adobe Flash. Just not understood.
The main thing I’ve noticed with this is even when I forget to go into a workout it does pretty good at figuring out what’s happened with me. This is a feature on all fitness watches it seems, but I have to say my previous Sense adventures tended to not really track well.
There are three things I’d like this watch to do. I realize the issues facing of one of them and that I have no solution, but here’s what this needs to just knock it out of the ballpark:
- Blood pressure monitoring. It’s doable with the little green LED lights now (accurately). I don’t know if the Scanwatch can be retro’d into it or if it’s new product time, but man that would be nice.
- Definable SpO2 measuring intervals – as it stands it only measures when you tell it to. I want something to alert me when it detects my O2 is low for some period of time.
- ECG without the need to manually start it. You think you’re at risk for AFIB? You need to know. Problem here, and I know it, is that you have to create a circuit to measure. My heart starts skipping a beat by the time I’m ECGing it’s done. I mean, I’m probably not AFIB I think I know what it is but from heart skip to start of ECG is 10+ seconds for me.
But yeah, I dig this freaking watch.
You can grab one on Amazon, various prices in various sizes. Grab some more options on the Withings site.
You can also make an offer to buy Paul’s old Fitbit Sense. It’s been sitting sadly on its charger the last month and a half.
