Withings Scanwatch Nova Review: The perfect anti-Apple watch?

Design and screen

• Old-school analogue look and feel
• 0.65-inch secondary AMOLED display
• Surprisingly durable

At a glance from a few feet away, you might not even clock the Scanwatch Nova as a smartwatch at all. In fact, you’re more likely to confuse it for a high-end Swiss automatic watch than a smartwatch. Although a closer look will reveal that no, it’s not a Rolex or an Omega. 

Still, for anyone who wants smartwatch functionality but in an authentic-looking watch, it’s hard to find fault. It looks just about right, especially in the black variant. But there are other colours available for those who might want navy blue or British racing green vibes. 

It has analogue watch hands and a dark watch face with white, raised time indicators which, like the hands, will glow in the dark when light levels drop. It even has a grooved rotating indexed bezel around the lens, which you can rotate anti-clockwise like a proper diving watch. 

I had to look up why this function exists, and according to the internet, it’s so that you can line the ‘0’ marker, which in this case is a triangle, with the minute hand. Then, when you’re diving, you can see how many minutes you’ve been under. And the reason it only rotates one way is so that if it does get knocked, it’ll only ever increase that duration and not (dangerously) decrease it. 

It’s a design feature that’s carried over from those older days of mechanical diving watches, and one that helps add to that feeling of it being a traditional watch. 

As does the fact that it ships with a metal link bracelet to match the finish of the case. Somewhat coincidentally, it’s the exact right size for my wrist, so I didn’t have to use any of the old-school-looking tools it also ships with to add or remove links to adjust the size. 

It’s this presentation of extra traditional tools in a quite large, robust box that again elevates the watch’s authentic feel. 

It does come with a plain black silicon strap too, or you can order it with an extra strap of your choosing. I quite like the combination of the brown leather with contrasting white stitching, but there are other colours and materials available. Or you can go scour the internet for pretty much any 20mm quick-release watch strap. 

It’s got all the hallmarks of a premium smartwatch in terms of materials and build too. It’s waterproof to 10 ATM (100 metres), is built from stainless steel, has a ceramic bezel, and an anti-reflective sapphire crystal over the top. 

There are only two signs you’re working with a smartwatch here, and both are largely invisible most of the time. There’s the optical heart-rate sensor underneath the watch’s body, and a small, circular monochrome LCD screen punched into the sunray dial. 

Most of the time, you’ll look at the watch and the LCD display will be off, but you can wake it by pressing the crown on the right. If the hands are blocking the way when telling the time, they’ll automatically move to the 10 and 2 positions to leave your view unobstructed. 

Controlling the basic interface is really simple too. You simply scroll the crown up or down, and then press it in to select the item on screen. Some actions require a long press, like ending a workout or activity or going back in some menus. But once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature to a large extent. 

What’s really clever is that there are no externally visible charging points on the watch. And it’s not wirelessly charged either. Instead, the watch clips into a plastic cradle of sorts that plugs in via USB-C, and the electrical charge is delivered through the crown. 

There’s so much to love about that from a thoughtful design perspective. It does, however, mean that if you lose that cradle or clip in between charges (which are pretty infrequent), you’re a bit stuck until you can find a replacement. 

Smart features

• Support for notifications
• Syncs time with your phone

Like most connected watches with their own dedicated platforms, Withings is compatible with both Android and iOS. I’ve used it with both since unboxing it, and largely find the experience to be the same. 

You can have notifications scroll across the small cutout screen on the watch face, but if you’re after something that doesn’t pester you at all, you can switch those off completely. Or customise which apps are allowed to alert you on your wrist, so that it’s a sacred space where only important alerts come through. 

Otherwise, the smart features are limited. There’s no NFC for contactless card payments, and no support for any offline music or even music control from your wrist. You don’t even get a mic and speaker to use it for phone calls.

Apart from those notifications, and setting up the time initially based on your phone’s system time, there’s very little here to talk about beyond that. Except, of course, for the fitness and health tracking. 

Health and fitness tracking

• Basic health tracking
• HR sensor isn’t the most accurate around
• No built-in GPS

Where a lot of smartwatches track workouts as ring-closing activities, or go all-in on sports data, Withings’ platform is more about all-round physical health. You only need to look at the rest of the company’s products to see that. 

Among other devices that tie into the platform are the BeamO, an incredibly smart digital thermometer of sorts; the BodyScan scales, which not only measure weight but also body composition, plus heart and nerve health; and smart urine analysis devices that sit inside your toilet bowl. And before you ask, no, I will not be reviewing that one. You’re welcome. 

In short, though, the Scanwatch Nova is about as far from the dedicated sports watches as you can get. 

So instead of being just about going out and tracking your runs and gym sessions, it feeds all your data into a system which tries to analyse your whole-body health. 

Admittedly, a lot of this is based on sleep quality tracking and training intensity, but the way it’s presented is quite insightful, as long as you’re happy to pay the premium for Withings’ additional subscription, which includes the smart AI-powered Vitalité metric. And if you want a proper deep dive into your health, there’s also the premium of Withings’ other aforementioned devices. Altogether, going all in can cost you a pretty penny. 

Think of this as similar to Garmin’s training recovery or body battery features, or the training readiness you see on Fitbit, but with a different name. 

It’s an impressively presented system, and one that would be perfect if it weren’t for the fact that the watch’s heart rate sensor just isn’t very good. 

Let me caveat that by saying that, as well as the odd short run, I also do kettlebell workouts. These often mean lots of arm movement and an abrupt jump in my heart rate due to the workout’s intensity. Many times during those workouts, the watch would take 5-10 minutes to show the correct heart rate, and sometimes not at all, measuring low 60s to 90 bpm for large chunks of the session. 

For me, that’s the heart rate I’d expect to see when just strolling casually around the house, not swinging kettlebells around or doing HIIT workouts. It’s some way off being responsive or accurate enough to compete with the likes of the Apple Watch or modern Huawei or Garmin models. 

If you’re a runner, or don’t do extremely intense gym-based workouts with lots of arm movement, you’ll have no trouble with the sensor. But even that comes with a caveat: the watch doesn’t have built-in GPS for tracking your route or location. Instead, you have to take your connected phone with you, and it’ll use the GPS from that device to plot the route on a map. 

Sleep tracking is just about okay, but again, you can do better. In terms of measuring the correct sleep times, it was sometimes off, including the time I was sitting in bed playing Pokémon on my Switch 2 as sleep time. 

Withings places a lot of focus on heart health, so you get HRV (heart rate variability), SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation), and skin temperature readings to track and watch for signs of illness. 

Battery life

• Up to 35 days of use
• Around three weeks of battery with real-world use

Being a smartwatch with a largely non-existent display and limited smart features means that, for the most part, battery life is a non-issue. 

Withings says you can get up to 35 days from a full charge. That appears to be about the maximum you could hope for, but with my own typical usage with minimal notifications coming through and only 2-3 workouts a week, I’d at least expect three weeks before feeling the urge to plug it in. 

To be clear, I usually felt that urge when it dropped below 30%, which is almost certainly a trauma response from the years of using devices that only last a day. Because really, that 30% would still last at least another week. 

Should you buy it?