The humble smartwatch has been chugging along for several years now, but so have hybrid smartwatches. Some users have found that a smartwatch us just too over the top for them, but they want some of the health benefits one offers. That’s where watches like the Withings ScanWatch Nova come into play. The Withings ScanWatch Nova is a hybrid smartwatch that brings you some of the features of a smartwatch combined with the elegance of a traditional timepiece. For some of us, there is just no replacement for a traditional watch.
Estimated reading time: 15 minutes
I’ve used many hybrid watches in the past, from a few different brands. We’ve reviewed Withings watches on the site before. I really love my smartwatches, but I also really love what hybrid watches have to offer. So when the Withings ScanWatch Nova showed up for review, I was excited to take a hybrid watch for a spin. It has been a long time. So let’s get into the full review of the Withings ScanWatch Nova.
The Quick Take
It has been a minute since I’ve used a hybrid smartwatch. The last ones I used were made by Fossil. I have always loved hybrid watches because they combine the ability of a smartwatch with the traditional design of an old school watch. I really love the Withings ScanWatch Nova, while it has a ton of health features that are indeed useful, it’s the fact that this hybrid smartwatch is an honest to God timepiece. Here’s the final score and the bottom line.
Score and Bottom Line
Withings ScanWatch Nova
https://amzn.to/4hepCUy
Nailed it
- A real timepiece build quality
- Beautiful design that is timeless
- Fantastic build quality and materials
- Easy to setup and use
- Very nice simple display
- Fantastic battery life
- A ton of health and tracking options
Needs work
- The display can get washed out in sunlight
- The Super-LumiNova was not as bright as I would have liked
- Might be too pricey for some
The Withings ScanWatch Nova is a comfortable watch to wear and it looks fantastic. There is something to be said for a traditional timepiece look. Yes, you can get watch faces for smartwatches that mimic the look of a traditional watch, but it’s not the same.
The build quality is on par with the price point. I would compare this to a similarly priced Seiko or Citizen watch. The smartwatch portion is easy to set up and use, and the small display looks nice, though it can become difficult to see in direct sunlight. It gives you the info you need but doesn’t look improper. The Super-LumiNova hands were great, but they sometimes didn’t seem to last as long as I would have liked. The battery life is outstanding and the number of health features on this watch is crazy.
Overall, the only thing I think that might give some people reservations about this watch, is the price. Yes, it is pricey. But I do believe what you get is worth the price. The included rubber watch strap is fine, but this watch really looks best with the metal band.
Specifications
The Withings ScanWatch Nova has the following features and specifications:
- Weight & Dimensions
- Dimensions: 42mm
- Weight (without wristband): 63 g/2.22 oz
- Screen display
- High resolution grayscale OLED display
- 14504 px, 282 PPI, 0.63″
- Materials
- Stainless-steel case
- Ceramic and stainless steel rotating bezel
- Anti-reflective sapphire glass
- Stainless-steel crown
- Sensors
- TempTech24/7 Module
- High Dynamic Range Accelerometer
- Multi-wavelength PPG 16 channels
- Altimeter
- Water resistance
- Battery
- Up to 30-day battery life
- Charging time: 2 hours
- Docking station (USB-C compatible)
- Connectivity
- Withings App
- Available on: App Store (iOS), Google Play Store (Android)
- Apple Health, Google Health Connect & Google Fit compatible
- Withings App Web dashboard
- iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 15 and higher, or Android device with OS 9 and higher
- Cannot be set up from a computer
What’s In The Box
- Withings ScanWatch Nova
- Metal Link Wristband 20 mm Silver
- Premium Sport Fluoroelastomers Wristband 20mm Black & Silver
- Charging cradle and cable
- Watch band kit
- Manuals and Documentation
Design
The design of the Withings ScanWatch Nova is the first thing I noticed when opening the box up. We are bombarded with dozens of the same basic looking smartwatches from every angle. That black, lifeless face that turns on when you look at it but is off when not. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like today’s smartwatches, they just lack some of the life that a traditional watch has.
The Withings ScanWatch Nova brings that life back to your wrist. The design is very familiar, and yes, it’s not doing much different than other traditional watchmakers in the sense of design. But just the attention to detail and craftsmanship in the hardware is what makes this watch stand apart from an Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch.
So yes, the ScanWatch Nova has the look of a traditional diving watch, with a small OLED display to show you basic information. The watch hands and time indicators are coated with Super-LumiNova to help see the time in the dark. I found that these didn’t shine as bright as I would have liked and didn’t last as long as I wanted. This could be because I may have not let the hands soak up enough sunlight to work properly. But it is worth mentioning.
Unlike a traditional watch, there are sensors for on the back for the various health monitoring features. The band is metal and looks fantastic. It comes with a Fluoroelastomers watch band, and you can get a leather one as well. But this watch looks best with the metal band. The included watch band changing kit is a huge value add.
I usually don’t get along well with metal bands because many of them pull my arm hairs. I didn’t experience that with this watch, and I was even able to wear it to bed without it bothering me. That’s a huge deal to me because every smartwatch I have owned, I have been unable to use to track sleep.
The weight of the watch is typical for a watch of this style and materials. The ScanWatch Nova really has an ultra-premium build quality to it. Before it came, I was wondering why the price point was fairly strong. Well, not only do you have the vast array of health features at your fingertips, but holy cow, the ScanWatch Nova is a serious timepiece.
Overall, the design of the Withings ScanWatch Nova is fantastic. From the materials used to the fit and finish. This isn’t just a cheap hybrid watch. It’s a serious timepiece for the 21st century.
Setup/Ease of Use
Setting up the Withings ScanWatch Nova is simple. The first thing to do is to charge the watch to full. Once that is done, you can pair it to your smartphone using the Withings app. The app will detect the ScanWatch Nova and pair it up. You will go through a series of questions and the app will offer some best practices.
Once you have it setup, it’s simple to navigate the interface with the crown and the OLED display is easy to read. The display provides you some information that is useful, but you will get the majority of your information from the app itself. More on that in the sections to come.
Display
The display on the Withings ScanWatch Nova is small but mighty. It’s an OLED display, not color, but it doesn’t need to be. The display is used for basic information that comes from the Withings app. It’s also used to activate certain features and for showing measurements.
This is definitely not a display that is meant to give you everything, and that’s okay. It’s not a touch display, and it provides the most relevant information needed. If you need additional information, you can open the app for that. So if you’re expecting a full smartwatch display, well, this isn’t it.
The display looks great outdoors too. While direct sunlight can make it difficult to see the display, it looks just fine in bright conditions. Overall, the display is small but mighty, and it provides everything you need at a glance. This is what a hybrid watch is all about. The main feature is the time, not the display. Withings did a fantastic job of making a good display that offers all the features at a glance, but stays true to the traditional timepiece.
Software and Features
The software and features of the ScanWatch Nova are probably more than half of the reason many are curious about this hybrid smartwatch. Before we move on, it is important to note that the ScanWatch Nova shouldn’t replace visits with your doctor, nor is it a solution to health issues. It’s just another tool to use along with regular doctor visits and consultation with health professionals. Here are the key features that Withings offers inside this watch.
- May detect the onset of illness, with day and night body temperature fluctuations tracking: Discover baseline day and night temperature fluctuations, which may indicate the onset of an illness or other health condition, and boost your ability to manage performance and recovery via workout temperature variation zones.
- Perform a medical-grade electrocardiogram, to detect potential cardiac anomalies at any time: Thanks to the on-demand electrocardiogram*, ScanWatch users can check their cardiovascular health in just 30 seconds.
- Assess part of your respiratory system, by measuring blood oxygen levels: Gain peace of mind with on-demand blood oxygen, plus track overnight breathing disturbances as well as average blood oxygen during sleep.
- Achieve more restful sleep, by tracking sleep quality and receiving advice for improvement: Wake to your Sleep Quality Score and deep dive into your sleep metrics with info on how to improve them.
- Boost your activity, with advanced tracking of physical activity: Monitor every move with 40+ activities recognized, assess your performance with heart rate zones, Fitness Level via VO2 max estimation, and see progress towards goals right on the watch.
- Day & night temp tracking: For the first time, a health wearable offers your baseline day and night temperature fluctuations, which may indicate the onset of an illness or other health condition, and boost your ability to manage performance and recovery via workout temperature variation zones.
- ECG measurement and AFib detection: Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, an anomaly of the heart’s electrical activity. It is caused by a disorganized firing of electrical impulses in the right atrium near the sinoatrial node, the natural pacemaker of the heart.
- Blood Oxygen level: SpO2 stands for peripheral capillary oxygen saturation, an estimate of the amount of oxygen in the blood. More specifically, it is the percentage of oxygenated hemoglobin compared to the total amount of hemoglobin in the blood. It is often considered to be the fifth vital sign, along with pulse, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. Hemoglobin is a protein that carries oxygen in the blood to your organs. It is found inside red blood cells and gives them their red color. Once oxygen is in our organs, it acts as the fuel that allows our cells to work.
- Check the Withings Website for a full rundown and feature set
I thought about this section for a few days and how I wanted to handle this. As I mentioned already, the ScanWatch Nova is not a replacement for a doctor or a professional consultation. So I don’t want to be the one to encourage using this tool as anything more than a tool to assist in monitoring health. That’s what it is.
That said, I didn’t need all of these features, but many of the features the ScanWatch Nova has, I appreciated. The one feature I absolutely loved, was the sleep tracking. I have a hard time wearing watches to bed, but this one was actually very comfortable. I was able to gleen some useful information about my sleep cycle, again, not a replacement for a sleep study or anything, but useful.
The other features, from ECG and AFib to Blood O2 and body temp, are very interesting. I cannot say how accurate the information is, but one of the features of the app is the ability to share the information with your doctor. So it’s great that Withings isn’t solely telling the customer to rely on the information it gathers, but it allows for sharing to a professional.
Overall, the feature set of the ScanWatch Nova is massive, and these features are part of the value of this watch. Combine this feature set with the design of this watch, and you have a really amazing piece of tech on your wrist.
Performance
There’s not a lot to add to the performance of the Withings ScanWatch Nova. This isn’t a smartwatch, and the features here are less focused on visuals and more focused on health and software. As a timepiece, the ScanWatch Nova performs as any good timepiece should. So overall, I had no issues with performance. Everything worked as it should and the OLED display worked as it should. Battery life was fantastic, more on that in the next section.
Battery Life
The Withings ScanWatch Nova is said to have a blistering 30-day battery life. I have had this watch now, for just over 30 days, and my initial battery report is encouraging. I did not run this down to zero, but I did get it down to around 15% in about 22 days. I am a paranoid battery guy, so I slapped it on the charger to re-juice it.
But, I do think that 15% would have gone at least another four or five days, so I believe that you can get the 30 days of battery life that is advertised. Battery life is going to change from person to person. For me, 22 days of battery life is fantastic, and I am more than pleased.
Price/Value
The price tag of the Withings ScanWatch Nova might come as a bit of a shock to some, and I am sure there will be those who don’t find the value in it. But this is why I think the price point isn’t over the top and there is value here. I won’t deny that I would like a lower price point, but who doesn’t?
The ScanWatch Nova is a tribute to the classic diving watches. It manages to accomplish paying tribute to the classic timepiece in a premium way. There are plenty of other hybrid watches that you can buy for less money but don’t have this level of build quality and materials.
Add to that, the level of health features (which is a big selling point of this watch) and the value is here. That said, there are sales occasionally and taking advantage of those makes this even more worth it.
Wrap Up
The Withings ScanWatch Nova is a comfortable watch to wear and it looks fantastic. There is something to be said for a traditional timepiece look. Yes, you can get watch faces for smartwatches that mimic the look of a traditional watch, but it’s not the same.
The build quality is on par with the price point. I would compare this to a similarly priced Seiko or Citizen watch. The smartwatch portion is easy to set up and use, and the small display looks nice, though it can become difficult to see in direct sunlight. It gives you the info you need but doesn’t look improper. The Super-LumiNova hands were great, but they sometimes didn’t seem to last as long as I would have liked. The battery life is outstanding and the number of health features on this watch is crazy.
Overall, the only thing I think that might give some people reservations about this watch, is the price. Yes, it is pricey. But I do believe what you get is worth the price. The included rubber watch strap is fine, but this watch really looks best with the metal band.
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