We always love a good comeback story, and there isn’t a better one than with brand: Withings. After being purchased by tech. giant Nokia, a few unfortunate missteps meant that they failed to move the needle with their range of health-focused products. After a few lackluster years, the original co-founder miraculously bought the company back and has reinvigorated the brand and returned better than ever with their new Steel HR Hybrid smartwatch and Blood Pressure Monitor.
Smartwatches have always been a part of the Withings product line starting with one of their first offerings the Activite` steel which was not like other smartwatches on the market. It was sleek, modern, and sexy and will not foolishly read you minuscule emails or weather details or cost you an arm and a leg to get one. It looked like an elegant, expensive, and well-crafted Swiss watch but did so much more than that!
The Steel HR builds on this lineage by taking that stylish wristwatch design and offerings some welcome functional upgrades. The Steel HR is available in two sizes: 36mm and 40mm and boasts an impressive 25-day battery life, 5 ATM water resistance, and like its predecessors, the Steel HR features hand dials that show the time and a sub-dial that shows the percentage of personal daily activity goal achieved.
Withings have also included a very convenient dynamic digital screen at the top of the watch face that displays pertinent health data and smartphone notifications, and you even can choose the information you would like to be shown on the screen through a multifunction button on the side of the watch. This button allows users to navigate through data options including calories burned, daily steps, distance, sleep duration, and smart alarm, and to receive notifications for calls, new emails, texts, and event reminders.
One thing we love about the Steel HR is the ability to launch continuous heart rate monitoring with the click of a button (not many smartwatches offer this), this allows users to see real-time heart rate data at a glance and help optimize workout intensity and motivate the user to improve performance. Post-workout, users can then view their maximum heart rate, calories burned, and a “time in zone” graph directly within Withings’ free and quietly brilliant Health Mate App. The app itself provides users with a plethora of usable health metrics including heart rate summaries, a daily timeline, personalized advice, and advanced food logging capabilities.
Of note is also some powerful sleep tracking features, the watch will automatically monitor the user’s pulse while sleeping to provide the resting heart rate and this is thanks in part to Withings’ photoplethysmography (PPG) technology embedded within, which monitors heart rate using green LED lights to detect variation in the level of blood in the wrist.
Speaking of blood, their Core BPM (blood pressure monitor) aims to build on these metrics and provide users with the ability to effectively measure their blood pressure, take an ECG (electrocardiogram), and listen to your heart through its digital stethoscope.
The design is unique and features a smart cuff sleeve cuff to measure pressure and a steel tube that contains three electrodes to record a medical-grade ECG in the device, the other is a rounded sound sensor (the digital stethoscope) for detecting the sound frequencies of your heart is located on the side. BPM Core can detect potential disturbances based on this data (and a combination of many others) which can then indicate if there is a risk for the most common valvular heart diseases. You can even listen to the sound recording of your heart through the app after.
All of this at-home monitoring data from the Core is stored in the app, essentially creating a complex profile of your health when used in companion with the watch and they work together brilliantly. It may never be as accurate as a medical-grade one in a hospital, but it is an effective way to gauge your current heart health and changes that may occur.
To sum up, let us be the first to say Withings is back, and with these and many other health-centric products in the lineup, it does not get any better than this when it comes to determining your holistic health.
Get yours today at – https://www.withings.com/ca/en/
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