Many will think of this as the same as that offered by Withings the company taken over by Nokia last year, there are some changes but these are mostly on the cosmetic side such as different straps being options with the unit and wider availability of the 40mm option.
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This is an analogue watch but it also is a full featured health and fitness device that works in conjunctions with your Android or iOS device, so it can truly be called the best of both worlds a timepiece and even possibly a life saver. Anyone looking at the 36mm round face will see a conventional stylish analogue watch, as the name suggests it is stainless steel and has what looks like a conventional winder on the right side.
Look closely at the dial and you will see larger flashes every five seconds round the dial and smaller flashes for the other four. There are two smaller 1.2cm dials top and bottom of the display. The top one appears as an empty black area while the bottom one looks like it might have a sweep second hand it in fact is divided into ten sections and will move round the dial as you take your daily exercise and on a busy day will probably begin a second circuit. Up till now this looks exactly like a standard watch, however press the button on the right and…
Press it once and the top circular display shows the day and date and then the current time before blanking again, the time is useful at night as the analogue dial does not show up in the dark. Press the button twice and you get your current heart rate press it for two seconds and you get a continuous heart rate reading. Press three times for the number of steps walked that day, this can also be shown is a number of miles IE 3.42 miles. Press five times for the alarm state. Press six times to get the current battery percentage. Press again and you are back at the day and date. All these displays last for around 10-15 seconds plenty of time to focus especially if it’s the middle of the night.
One very special feature is that the watch battery lasts for around three weeks between charges which should then take only two to three hours from total exhaustion. The heart of everything is the free Nokia App downloadable from both the iOS and Android store.
Once downloaded the App needs to know which device you have and then the two are linked. Syncing is easy just make sure that when you have opened the App that the top display window is live on the watch and all data since the last sync is transferred. With my phone I found the best side for the watch - on or off the wrist - was to the left of the phone.
The Home screen shows timeline with Steps, Goal and Leader board, below this your last sleep and below that weekly Steps, weekly Sleep and scrolling down to get graphs for Daily Steps and Heart Rate. You can continue scrolling down for earlier day’s information which includes things like ‘Healthy Day’ badges.
You can click on any graph to enlarge the information. I always have issues with all the Apps about sleep and while it accurately shows the number of times you get up during the night and the time you went to bed and finally got up the rest is shown as light sleep or deep sleep. My own personal view is that light sleep is just laying still and deep sleep is probably light sleep, but as the old rarely sleep well that is perhaps my own cynical view.
The Nokia Steel HR is available from Amazon for £169.95 or the 40mm unit for £10 more.
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