Withings Scanwatch 42mm

I'm still wearing a smart watch with fitness tracking, so not got back to wearing different watches each day (but considering restarting the trend).

Previously I blogged about the 38mm Withings Scanwatch, but after many years of wearing day and night the back came off and the insides got damaged so I needed something new. As I had been using the Withings system for a while, I changed to the 42mm version of the Scanwatch. The 42mm has a thicker case and wider bezel than the 38mm version, but retains the same functionality (steps/height counter, oxygen saturation, pulse, ECG, and breathing exercise). This time I went for the black version, with the same style of oled screen and steps tracking dial. This model has a two hand dial, but this time with luminescent hands for telling time at night without needing to use the (very bright) oled screen

Withings Scanwatch 38mm

It's been quite a while since my last post, mainly due to other commitments, but also because I started wearing smart watches.

But, I just saw my blog had hit 1 million total pageviews, and thought it would be nice to get back to blogging sometimes again (and I still have a lot of cool watches to come) .

My first watch back is the Withings Scanwatch which I've been wearing a lot over the last couple of years. This version is the 38mm model in white and silver (model number HWA09). 

The watch is a hybris smartwatch with an electronic 2 hand dial, round oled screen, and small activity dial. The activity dial shows the percentage of your daily target (set through the Withings Health Mate app), while the Oled screen shows the other functions.

The oled screen is triggered by pressing the crown, which displays time and date, and rotating the crown allows you to scroll through the various functions. As you would expect, the watch has pulse rate, step counter, and distance/floors measurement, but this watch goes further with a medical grade ECG and oxygen saturation (SpO2) reading from the sensors on the back. These can be used in conjunction with the sleep tracking to provide estimes of breathing disturbances in the night. 

The watch is charged through a USB adapter, and I usually get around 2 weeks of use before recharging (but this drops if the monitoring features are used very frequently). 

The watch is on the map at the moment with an rrp of around $280

Casio JP-200W Exercise Pulse Monitor

It's retro gadget watch time again!
One of my most popular watches on the blog is my Casio BP-120 Blood Pressure Monitor watch, and today's watch is a forerunner to that one.

The watch is the Casio Exercise Pulse Monitor, and has a model number of JP-200W. It looks like a normal LCD watch with two lines of numbers, apart from the green blob on the right side. This is the pulse monitor's sensor. You start the pulse monitor with the left middle button, which starts by showing the word pulse flashing on the top line, followed by timer. Holding your finger lightly on the sensor starts he reading, with the pulses animated along a pink line of LCD between the two lines of numbers, and the beats per minute (bpm) are shown at the bottom. Above the pulse animation is a line which shows your bpm in relation to the aerobic zone (which I guess can be reset), so you can monitor how long and how far you are in the zone. The main problem with this type of sensor is that you need to hold your finger quite steady, so getting your pulse during exercise is rather hard.

Normally, the LCD display shows day and date on the top line (which can have up to 6 digits), with the time on the bottom line (6 digits with smaller seconds) The watch has other modes - alarm, timer, stopwatch, and exercise data recall.

Module-wise, the watch uses a 1009 module, and this model was made in Malaysia. It came out in 1992 as a sequel to Casio first pulse watch (the JP-100), and originally cost around $50.