Today Withings, an early player in the connected health space, is releasing a gorgeous fitness tracker. It’s at once a sartorial throwback, and a step forward for wearables. Photo: Withings
Today Withings, an early player in the connected health space, is releasing a gorgeous fitness tracker. It’s at once a sartorial throwback, and a step forward for wearables.
Photo: Withings
The Activité is a Swiss-made watch with a display that masks an accelerometer instead of cogs, to track the wearer’s steps taken and hours slept. Photo: Withings
The Activité is a Swiss-made watch with a display that masks an accelerometer instead of cogs, to track the wearer’s steps taken and hours slept.
Photo: Withings
A secondary dial on the face has a hand that ticks from 0 to 100, to mark daily fitness progress. How that progress gets defined is up to the user, and controlled through the accompanying app. Photo: Withings
A secondary dial on the face has a hand that ticks from 0 to 100, to mark daily fitness progress. How that progress gets defined is up to the user, and controlled through the accompanying app.
Photo: Withings
Convincing people to wear a new piece of technology—all day—is a big ask. When a consumer buys and wears something on their body, they’re laying bare a small slice of their identity. Photo: Withings
Convincing people to wear a new piece of technology—all day—is a big ask. When a consumer buys and wears something on their body, they’re laying bare a small slice of their identity.
Photo: Withings
The Activité's design smartly piggybacks on a traditional look that users already know and like. Photo: Withings
The Activité's design smartly piggybacks on a traditional look that users already know and like.
Photo: Withings
Up until now, the marketplace for wrist wearables has been largely comprised of sporty-looking bracelets with a silicone finish. But today Withings, a French product company and early player in the connected health space, is releasing a fitness tracker worth coveting. It’s at once a sartorial throwback, and a step forward for wearables.
The Activité is a watch—and a handsome one at that. But its dials appear analog, not digital, and it was made in Switzerland. Unlike a traditional luxury timepiece, the display masks an accelerometer instead of cogs, to track the wearer’s steps taken and hours slept. Settings provided by the user help calculate calories burned, and all of that data is streamed back to the Withings Health Mate app. The only giveaway that the Activité can do more than the average watch is a smaller, secondary dial: over the course of a day, a hand ticks from 0 to 100, showing your progress. How that progress gets defined (Did you walk at least four miles? Burn off 1,000 calories?) is up to the user, and controlled through the accompanying app.
“Our mission is to have an impact on health,” Julien De Preaumont, CMO at Withings, tells WIRED. “That requires devices that we’ll use in the long term.” The Activité is so pared down, the design borders on obvious: “Let’s use the design of a classic watch that we know people like,” De Preaumont says. Besides the sapphire glass screen and leather strap, De Preaumont says that users will have the luxury of not needing to charge their gadgets all the time. The Activité stays charged up to a year, because it’s powered with standard, long-lasting watch batteries. “It wasn’t convenient enough,” he says. “The technology has been too confident thinking that you could rely on people, so we are taking a much humbler approach.”
The app offers many of the capabilities seen in the Jawbone Up, but with the added benefit of being connectable to the Withings Scale. Withings
We have yet to see the iPhone of wearables, and it’s possible we never will. Convincing people to wear a new piece of technology—all day—is a big ask. As every fashion magazine and clothing retailer knows, when a consumer buys and wears something on their body, they’re laying bare a small slice of their identity. And because we all have highly nuanced ideas about who we are, the fashion industry has to cater to an infinite number of wants.
Likewise, in his article on wearable technology, WIRED senior editor Bill Wasik points out that, “tech companies will be competing in product categories—wristwatches, glasses, other fashionable accessories—where even the least fashion-conscious consumers demand a great degree of uniqueness and variety.” The promise of wearable technology won’t be fulfilled until its packaged in enough ways that anyone can find one that feels “like them.” With is either a daunting or exciting premise for upstart entrepreneurs, makers, and fashion designers.
Withings Activité will come in black or silver, and has a plastic band that can used for cardio workouts or for swimming. It will be available this fall, for $390.
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