Withings has risen from the ashes of Nokia’s Digital Health business following its buyback earlier this year by one of the company’s original founders, with the introduction of its first new product under the original Withings brand: the Steel HR Sport. This new multi-sport hybrid smartwatch provides a focus on fitness, with heart rate monitoring, connected GPS tracking, and fitness level analytics through an estimation of VO2 max, while also providing a 25-day battery life and a considerably more traditional design than most smartwatches. Steel HR Sport builds on the company’s 2014 Activité, which broke new ground as the first analog watch with advanced activity tracking features, released well prior to the company’s acquisition by Nokia, and features the same elegant design, made from 316L stainless steel and available with either white or black faces and water resistant to 50 meters. The time is shown on a traditional analog watch face, with an analog sub-dial that shows the percentage of daily activity goals achieved, while a small OLED display provides health and sports metrics and notifications from the paired iPhone.
Steel HR Sport also provides support for tracking over 30 different activities, ranging from yoga and volleyball to rowing, boxing, skiing, and ice hockey; users simply need to select an activity on the display to start their workout, and Steel HR Sport will continually display heart rate and the duration of the workout, providing a summary afterward of heart rate zones and calories expended, and reporting this information to the Withings Health Mate app and Apple Health on the user’s iPhone. Steel HR Sport also introduces GPS connectivity, allowing users to track their pace, distance, elevation, and map their workouts when running, walking, or cycling, recording a map of the workout route in the Health Mate app. Fitness level measurements are also available, using VO2 max to measure the heart and muscles ability to convert oxygen into energy during physical exercise. Steel HR Sport can also be used as a sleep tracker to measure length and quality of sleep along with Smart Wake-up to wake users with vibration alarms at an optimal time during their sleep cycle. Steel HR Sport is available starting today for $199.95 directly from Withings.com, Amazon, and other select retailers. Both variants come with a grey silicon band, with additional bands available for purchase exclusively on Withings.com.
