The Withings Activite Steel is a great looking activity tracker, but it might make you cringe with its Rs. 17,999 price tag.
Withings, the French health-tech company recently acquired by Nokia, has launched its range of fitness, health trackers in India. Their India portfolio includes – a Wi-Fi body scale, a dedicated sleep monitor, a BP monitor, a baby monitor, and the Activite range of fitness watches.
The Withings Activite Steel is the company’s mid-ranged fitness watch, priced at Rs. 17,999. Others watches in the Activite series include – the Withings Activité Pop priced at Rs. 14,999, and the Withings Activité Sapphire priced at Rs. 34,999. While the Activite Steel is a fitness watch, it cannot be categorised as a smartwatch, given that its functionality is limited to step tracking, distance tracking, run tracking, swim tracking, sleep tracking and calorie counting. So don’t expect it to give you notification alerts or the ability to make and receive calls. What you can expect from the Activite Steel is really good looks and an extremely comprehensive companion fitness tracking app. So is the Withings Activite Steel worth your attention? Let’s find out.
Design & Build Quality
The Withings Activite Steel may be limited in its functionality as a smartwatch, but it sure is a looker. By far one of the best looking fitness trackers in the market, the Activite Steel sports a stainless-steel finish, with a subtle Black watch face. Keeping with its steel exterior, the hour and minute watch hands also come in a shiny metal look. There is an added, white hand for step tracking, which indicates the percentage of goals reached at a glance.
36.3mm in diameter and weighing in at 43 grams, the Activite Steel is a lightweight, compact watch, which is comfortable to wear all day long, and even while sleeping. It comes with black straps that compliment the watch face and are made of silicone. At this price point, one would expect leather straps, but nonetheless, they don’t look cheap. Although the watch looks premium, the size might not suit larger wrists and this could be a problem for the brand's male connoisseurs. Nevertheless, on a slender wrist, the watch looks pretty neat.
In my experience, the build quality of the watch is also admirable. The stainless-steel case is sturdy and the watch boasts of being waterproof up to 165 feet. So yes, not only can you keep it on while washing your hands or taking a bath, you can also take the watch for a swim. However, Withings advises users not to expose the watch to salt water, so be careful before taking a dip in the sea with this one. Although the watch case resists light scratches quite comfortably, it falls upon the user to not be too rough with the watch, in which case, it does show slight scratching at the back.
Activity Tracking & Performance
Activite Steel is your basic fitness tracker. As I mentioned before, it can track steps, distance, run, swim and calories. No, it does not have a heart rate sensor, although the companion Withings Health Mate App allows you to measure that data. The watch has no display and heavily depends on the accompanying app to show tracking results. The only piece of fitness information you can view on the watch face is the percentage of step goal reached in a day. By default, the daily step goal is 10,000 steps, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). But, the same can be increased or decreased from inside the app. Whenever one goes above their daily step goal, the activity hand goes back to 0% and starts moving toward the 100% mark again. For connectivity, the watch uses Bluetooth, but there is no significant button to press in order to activate the device's pairing mode. One has to use a tiny pin (similar to a SIM tray opener) to press the pairing button located at the back of the watch.
When it comes to reliance of the watch on its companion app, it should be noted that all of the watch’s controls lie within the app. You cannot even set the time from the watch itself. It syncs with the time on your phone (in my case, an iPhone). The convenient part about this though is that once you sync your smartphone’s time with your Activite Steel during the setup process, you need not care about it ever again. As in most smartwatches, the time automatically syncs even when you switch time zones or account for daylight savings.
The Withings Health Mate app is the companion app for the Activite Steel and this is where all the action truly happens. Although the app is extremely comprehensive, it is not very intuitive and user-friendly. One really needs to dig deep into the app to get to know all the features hidden inside it.
In Dashboard view, a cloverleaf at the top of the app divides it into 4 sections namely – Weight, Activity, Sleep & Heart. Each section is differently colour coded, and the colour intensity increases as you reach closer to your fitness goals. Tapping on each section brings up information about that section, with an option of adding other compatible apps, such as MyFitnessPal, to the mix.
The Timeline view gives you a look at your day’s activity in one place. Here you can see the number of steps taken and weight lost, which are 2 aspects that are monitored automatically. You also have an option of manually entering activity widgets, where you need to input the time spent walking, running, swimming, etc. As I said before, the app also has the ability to measure your heart rate, but for this it uses your smartphone’s camera, instead of the watch, since there is no heart rate sensor onboard the watch itself.
For iOS users, the app also has the ability to sync fitness data with the iPhone’s native Health app. Diet tracking is not built into Health Mate, but can easily be accessed by adding data through the MyFitnessPal app. Users can also add daily reminders for drinking water, remembering to eat fruits, going for a run, taking BP reading and more, on the Health Mate app. However, these have nothing to do with the watch. I would have liked the watch to at least vibrate with the reminders, but sadly, it does not do so.
The only haptic feedback you get from the watch is when you set an alarm. Here too, there are a bunch of issues. Firstly, finding the alarm setting option is a pain itself. For those of you constantly searching the ‘Reminders’ tab for the alarm option, know that you won’t find it there. Instead, alarms are hidden away in the ‘My Device’ section for some reason.
Another issue with the alarm is that when it’s time to wake up, one can barely feel the watch vibrate. A heavy dozer like me has no use for this at all. On the other hand, light sleepers can forget about snoozing the alarm, which makes the watch vibrate 8 times before going off automatically. Although, the company does say they are working on an update to change the same. Another, not-so-cool thing about the alarm is that you cannot set up multiple alarms. One alarm, with an option of repetition, is all you get. The only good/fun part about setting the alarm is that if you need to know what time you set it for, you can simply tap thrice on the watch to see the alarm time for a few seconds, before the arms go back to showing the current time.
Battery
Battery life is another plus for the Withings Activite Steel, atleast till now. The watch boasts of 8 months of battery life and it does not come with a charger. Instead, the device uses a standard CR2025 battery, which can be easily found with your local watchsmith or jewellery store. In my experience, it is such a relief not having to charge a watch every night. Although it must be said that to truly test the battery of this watch, we may have to wait a few months before seeing the first signs of it dying out. Maybe this is a learning other wearables manufacturers should adopt, especially if all they have to offer is a basic, run-of-the-mill fitness tracker.
Compatibility
To use the Withings Activite Steel, iOS users will need iOS 7 and higher to install and run the Withings Health Mate app. For Android devices, you would need version 4.3 and higher for the same.
Conclusion
The Withings Activite Steel is definitely a handsome watch, which also doubles up as a reliable yet basic fitness tracker. However, the companion app needs a lot of work, maybe even an overhaul, to make it more user friendly. What bothers me the most about the Activite Steel is its steep price for such limited functionality. As mentioned before, the watch costs 17,999 in India, which is a good 7K more than its price in the US, where it retails for $169 (Rs. 11, 328 approx). In my opinion, just for the fact that it is probably the best looking fitness tracker in the market, a price of about Rs. 10,000 would have sufficed for the ardent wearables user.
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Adamya Sharma
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