Withings Scanwatch 2 reviewed: classic yet costly

The smartwatch can sure be helpful, but its battery life leaves much to be desired. If you’re not a fan of taking your watch off, the Withings ScanWatch 2 measures its battery in weeks.

What looks like a classic analogue watch, yet beats the heart of a digital health-focus smartwatch and body tracker? The answer is the latest wearable from French gadget maker Withings, which has long been invested in the field of health tech.

We’ve already seen what the company has in store for folks, building what is basically a sci-fi medical tricorder and scanner coming in the strangely named BeamO, but that’s not the only gadget Withings offers to try and help you get on top of your health.

There’s also an excellent scale in the Body Comp, a clever connected blood pressure monitor in the BPM Core, a neato Sleep Analyser that listens to your lungs to work out whether you’re at risk for sleep apnoea, and an upcoming urine analysis gadget for your toilet to understand your urinary health.

No, we’re not kidding about that last one.

Withings has already proven itself with health tech, and has some clever solutions for folks looking for something capable, yet different, which is where its smartwatches seem firmly pegged.

Built to look more like a proper watch, they include a screen, but one that is much, much smaller than the whole-screen concept every other smartwatch and wearable seemingly arrives with.

And that’s where its latest wearable is aimed, too, offering something a little more old school that beats the heart of something modern.

Design and features

Designed more like a traditional watch than your standard touchscreen smartwatch, the Withings ScanWatch 2 looks like a typical analogue timepiece you might wear if you hadn’t succumbed to the world of screens on your arm.

It’s a classic look, that of a proper clock face, clock hands, and moving parts, and the ScanWatch definitely follows it, as does Withings’ other smartwatches. The whole wearable line-up for the brand definitely follows this style, and the ScanWatch 2 is no different.

You’ll get either a 38mm or 42mm watch — we tested the 38mm model — a Digital Crown to help you control the menu by pressing in and scrolling up and down, and a simple watch band that you can replace. It looks like a standard band, so you could probably pop off down to your local locksmith, chemist, or department store and buy a new strap should you want to.

Inside, it’s pretty clear the ScanWatch 2 isn’t your classic analogue timepiece.

Aside for a digitally-controlled timepiece which relies on your phone to set the time, Withings includes step counting, distance tracking, elevation, sleep tracking, a blood oxygen sensor (SpO2) with respiratory rate, an electrocardiograph (ECG), a heart rate tracker, a temperature sensor working 24/7, menstrual tracking, plus mode for tracking workouts and moments where you just want to breathe.

It all comes under a piece of sapphire glass and inside a stainless steel case, with a tiny monochromatic screen embedded inside the analogue timepiece style, and a water resistance down to 5 metres.

In short, it’s an analogue timepiece that beats the heart of a digital health-focused wearable.

In-use

Between an app and a digital crown, using the Withings ScanWatch 2 is easy as, simply because you’re either scrolling through and clicking into features, or using the app to check more specific stats.

The watch itself is a cinch: press the crown to light up the screen and time, which in turn will move the clock hands if they’re in the way. You’ll always get a view of the time, and other screens, too, which you can scroll between, dialling them in using the crown.

These can be managed with the Withings app, and you’ll find heart rate, temperature tracking, step counting, distance travelled, floors ascended, and then features you can trigger, including a workout, running an ECG, SpO2 blood oxygen check, and even taking a moment for yourself to simply breathe.

It couldn’t be any easier, and it makes health tracking a breeze, largely because it happens in the background. You can proactively use it, or you can just let the ScanWatch 2 do its thing.

Performance

Which it will, typically without fail.

For the most part, the watch is good at all times, whether you need to check the time or check a health stat, with the hardware doing its thing. There are occasional moments of lag as you scroll through the features on the tiny screen, but they are few and far between.

It probably helps that it is primarily a watch, and looks like one, too, so you don’t need a processor to work that screen all that much. You just need a watch that tells you the time and a little bit more, which this definitely does.

Battery

The battery is one area that makes the ScanWatch 2 just absolutely astounding, doing what virtually no other breed of smartwatch can do, except for maybe the models the company makes.

Withings talks up around 30 days maximum, and we’d say that is probably possible if you switched off all notifications and let the watch just check you occasionally throughout the day, covering sleep, heart rate, blood oxygen, and such.

We switched on quite a few more features, including ECG and automatic respiratory scanning, auto-brightness, and tried to get notifications going, and the battery life was more like 16-20 days, which isn’t far from the 30 day suggestion at all.

To put that into perspective, Samsung’s latest Galaxy Watch hits at most two days, while the Apple Watch Ultra 2 can hit the fabled two day mark but more often matches the nightly charge requirements of its Apple Watch S9 and Apple Watch SE peers. And meanwhile, there’s the Google Pixel Watch 2, which needs a charge at the end of the day, but may not even make that. It’s better than the first-gen, but like all these options, the battery life is also under a week.

It’s a stark comparison when the Withings ScanWatch 2 can beat pretty much everyone in battery life, aside for Withings’ own wearables, which from prior experience have also offered excellent battery life.

Value

Armed with a lovely classic design, excellent health-focused feature set, and a battery life that won’t quit, the Withings ScanWatch 2 seems impossibly perfect, but there is one failing: the price.

Yeesh, that price.

Available in Australia for $699, the ScanWatch 2 is not inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination, even if what it does it does brilliantly. We’re not even talking about the more premium casing of the ScanWatch Nova, which is ostensibly the same watch in a diver-style with a chain link band.

No, at just a hair under $700, the ScanWatch 2 feels expensive for what it is.

What needs work?

There’s a genuinely great watch and health tracker in the ScanWatch 2, but that price is frustrating, as are some of the quirks.

Take the small dial above the six, which is stuck to your step target goal and can’t be shifted to anything else. You can’t use it for your battery or even another clock, even though mapping your watch to your settings should be important.

The screen could be a little brighter outside, with the Australian sun not always friendly to seeing your stats. Fortunately, you can easily cover your watch with your hand and see the screen, but it’s still worth noting.

We also have a problem with the notifications from our phone, which performed fine on Android, but never worked on iOS. We couldn’t get them to fire on an iPhone, even when all the settings were right, but testing the ScanWatch 2 on Android as well, we found it was fine on that operating system.

It could easily be something Withings fixes in a software or firmware update, as the case often is, but it was still frustrating all the same.

ScanWatch 2 vs the competition

The price is difficult to argue for by itself, but it becomes more of an issue when you see what’s out there. Namely when you realise Withings’ other excellent smartwatch models are still in the market for much, much less.

At the time this review was published, the standard ScanWatch from a few years ago had dropped from $499 to $299, both of which come in well under the $699 price of the ScanWatch 2 and yet offer a similar feature set and battery life. Frankly, we’re not sure the price of new model is justified remarkably.

Even the ScanWatch Horizon is less expensive, which is basically the premium first-gen ScanWatch released for $699 initially, yet found for $399 if you look.

Both first-gen models are similar, save for temperature tracking and overnight heart-rate tracking, which the ScanWatch 2 offers and the original does not. Honestly, we’re not sure those features are necessarily worth $200 to $400 more.

That’s before you take into account the other smartwatches out there, such as the $549 Samsung Galaxy Watch, the $549 Google Pixel Watch 2, and the $399 Apple Watch SE. Neither of these can match the battery life of the ScanWatch 2, but the feature set is there, and a full colour screen means you get a choice of watch faces, not just one like on the ScanWatch 2.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

The problem facing Withings’ latest wearable is just that its price seems too difficult to justify, especially with the older models still around. If you wanted a ScanWatch 2 after reading this review, we’d suggest checking out our first-gen ScanWatch review and seeing whether that model matches your needs, too. The pricing is just so much more compelling for what you get.

As good as the ScanWatch 2 is, the price puts the wearable in a difficult place. It’s classic yet costly.

If Withings were to drop the price, the buying the ScanWatch 2 would be a whole lot more compelling, especially while the old models are still available. Frankly, if the price were closer to $499, the Withings ScanWatch 2 would be a whole lot easier to recommend.