Earlier this year, we leaked the info that Withings, leader in connected health, was working on a “dandy” series of wearable technologies. The news is now official: Withings released yesterday its new product “Activité”, a luxury smart watch that will reconcile top geeks with fashionistas/os.
Activité uses state-of-the-art technology developed by Withings: it can track your movements (while walking, swimming or running), your fat burn, your sleep, and can act as a soft alarm in the morning. The watch can be connected to IOS devices via Bluetooth Low Energy – the battery lasts for a year.
Usually, smart watches that have a “beautiful” design have, in reality, a “techy” design: you rather have something around your wrist that looks like a mini-phone, or a podometer, or a James-Bond-gadget, but not a beautiful watch. Activité looks like a luxury watch. It comes with a black or brown leather bracelet (made in France!) and sleek Swiss design and materials, like an unbreakable touch screen made of cristal saphir glass.
Activité will be available this fall for a price of €390 ($530) at withings.com and Withings partner retailers.
The maturity of wearables’ market has been questioned a lot throughout the past months. A recent study revealed by FNAC at the Connected Conference showed that smart watches were the most “wanted” products among connected devices. Yet, it should be noted that the profile of the respondent was “geek and early adopter”; plus Activité’s brand positioning clearly puts it in the luxury sphere, which won’t participate in the democratization of smart watches. Nevertheless, compared to other products made by Withings, like Pulse O2, the launching of Activité shows a real diversification of the offer in connected watches.