Review: Withings ScanWatch 2

I loved the original Withings ScanWatch (8/10, WIRED recommends). It was a refined, elegant, health- and fitness-focused hybrid smartwatch with impressive stamina. The ScanWatch 2 retains everything that made the original so compelling and adds some subtle improvements, most notably temperature tracking, but this comes with an unpalatable price hike.

Unlike your average smartwatch, the Withings ScanWatch 2 makes do with a tiny screen; offers limited notifications; and quietly tracks your activity, health, and sleep. It can pass for a regular watch, with real hands, and it lasts up to a month between charges. It has been an easy and comfortable companion for the past couple of months.

Withings has added value with the temperature tracking and a redesigned charger, but the promised overnight heart rate variability (HRV) tracking is not available yet, and I can’t test the new menstrual cycle tracking. The companion Health Mate app has gone through several changes recently, largely to accommodate an optional subscription, but I don’t think it’s worth your time.

Photograph: Withings

The classy design of the Withings ScanWatch 2 is one of its main selling points. This hybrid smartwatch combines physical hands and a traditional watch face with chiseled or beveled lugs. The single rotating crown doubles as a button to bring the tiny OLED screen to life. Sapphire glass and stainless steel ensure durability, and the water resistance is 5ATM, so you can wear the ScanWatch 2 in the shower or pool.

I tested the larger 42-mm version with the black face and a black fluoroelastomer wrist band. You can opt for a white face and leather or metal link band, if you prefer. The smaller 38-mm model comes in more varieties, including dark blue or beige with a gold-tinted casing. The fluoroelastomer band is very comfortable, and the ScanWatch 2 is lighter than the original, so I have been wearing it 24/7. It took me a couple of days to get used to wearing it overnight.

The circle on the top half of the watch face houses the tiny grayscale OLED display, which is just over half an inch and always appears sharp and legible. You can turn it on by pressing the crown or toggle the raise-to-wake setting in the companion app. It displays the time and date by default, but you can turn the crown to cycle through heart rate, skin temperature, steps taken, and distance covered, or to record workouts, take an ECG or SpO2 measurement, trigger a breathing exercise, or dip into settings.

When you get notifications from your phone, they come through ticker tape style, so it can take quite a while to read a long message, but it is enough to decide whether you need to slip the phone from your pocket. There is no support for apps, payments, calls, music controls, or any other features you’ll typically find in smartwatches.

The new headline feature is the TempTech24/7 module. It can track your baseline body temperature and alert you to changes. Unusual spikes in temperature could indicate impending illness, and warnings about your temperature getting too high can help you avoid heat exhaustion if you live in a hotter climate. Temperature variation could potentially enhance the accuracy of sleep and activity tracking too.

I was excited to try the temperature tracking and particularly interested in the idea of preemptive warnings about illness. It has warned me about elevated temperature twice and suggested I check for symptoms, but both times I was already feeling unwell. Once you have been wearing it for a while, the ScanWatch 2 establishes your baseline, and you can see your temperature variance above and below on a chart. Compared with the Ultrahuman Ring Air (7/10, WIRED Recommends), the ScanWatch 2 consistently measures my temperature as slightly higher.

Another area where the ScanWatch 2 offers a step up over its predecessor is with sleep tracking. It measures your breathing and sleep quality, gives you an overall sleep score for each night, and displays data on stages, duration, interruptions, and regularity. It doesn’t quite match the best sleep trackers, but it showed slumber data broadly similar to the Ultrahuman Ring Air. Where the ScanWatch 2 tripped up was accurately identifying when I was lying in bed awake versus lightly sleeping.

The updated PPG (photoplethysmogram) sensor in the ScanWatch 2 also measures your respiratory rate, but the rest of the features are available with the original ScanWatch. That includes heart health notifications, atrial fibrillation detection (for which it has FDA approval), and blood oxygen levels. To take ECG or SpO2 measurements, you must sit perfectly still with your opposite hand resting on the watch case.

Photograph: Withings

The ScanWatch 2 offers workout tracking for almost 50 activities, but you usually have to trigger the tracking manually. That means pressing the crown, turning to reach workout, pressing again, turning to choose the correct workout type, and pressing again to start. It’s a cumbersome procedure, and at the end of a workout you must long-press to pause, then turn to stop, and long-press again.

Automatic tracking sometimes kicks in, but only for certain activities (walking, running, cycling, swimming). I found it flaky, and it sometimes suggests the wrong activity, which means you have to go in and edit the records. I was annoyed that it often created two identical records for one workout. Another minor annoyance was that I kept accidentally pausing the ScanWatch 2 by unintentionally pushing the crown. Even after I adjusted the watch to sit further up my arm, a push up or yoga pose that required flexing my wrists often paused the workout, which never happens with my Apple Watch.

As for the workout data, it records your heart rate and breaks it into zones (light, moderate, and intense), and it does the same with body temperature. It measures your recovery and estimates your fitness level based on VO2 max, but the info is collated behind the scenes and presented as a simple fitness score. The ScanWatch 2 also records steps, calories burned, and active minutes. While it seems broadly correct, it lands on the pessimistic side compared to the Apple Watch Series 9 (7/10, WIRED recommends) and Ultrahuman Ring Air.

Runners may be annoyed that the ScanWatch 2 does not offer onboard GPS. You must be connected to your phone via Bluetooth for outdoor activities if you want it to track your route and distance.

If you shell out for the Withings+ subscription from $10 a month, you get a health improvement score that weighs up your activity, body, heart, sleep, and menstrual health (where applicable). You can also set health goals and enroll in training programs that include advice on diet and health and workout videos. I tested it when it launched with the Body Comp Scale (5/10, WIRED Review), and though it has improved slightly since then, it still feels half-baked and is not worth the money compared to the best fitness apps and services.

Beyond the annoyance of yet another subscription, I can’t help feeling that Withings has taken a step back with the app in trying to accommodate it. I have encountered more glitches syncing the ScanWatch 2 data than I ever did with the original. For example, if I dip into my fitness score, it always defaults to my first-ever score from three years ago. When I tap on the body temperature category, it shows several days with no data, yet if I visit those days in the section that combines data, my body temperature measurements are there.

Photograph: Withings

What the ScanWatch 2 offers is simplified compared to most fitness trackers, giving you a shallow overview rather than a deep dive, but that will suit some people just fine. It is also limited as a smartwatch, with no app support and only basic notifications, but again, that will be fine for some people.

One of the major benefits is the battery life. You can expect up to 30 days with light use. Mine made it to 22 days before needing a charge. After I adjusted some settings—so the screen stays on during workouts and turns on when I raise my wrist and the ScanWatch 2 monitors oxygen saturation during sleep—it has been draining faster, but is still on course to go beyond two weeks.

Withings redesigned the proprietary charger, so the original ScanWatch charger is not compatible. You get a USB-C to USB-A cable in the box, but you have to provide your own power adapter. The fresh clamp design is fiddly but ensures you can’t put your ScanWatch 2 in the wrong way, and there is no danger it will be knocked off the charger during the night, which was a little too easy to do with the old design. It takes around two hours to fully charge the ScanWatch 2.

If you want wrist-based apps and calls, our Best Smartwatches guide should be your first stop. If you are in training, the Best Fitness Trackers guide is for you. The hybrid niche that the Withings ScanWatch 2 occupies is sparse. Its main competitor is the original Withings ScanWatch ($300), and if you already have one, I don’t think the ScanWatch 2 does enough to justify the expense of an upgrade. There’s also the smaller, stripped-back ScanWatch Light ($250), which loses the ECG, irregular heart rate warnings, and blood oxygen and temperature tracking but costs $100 less.

Ultimately, the Withings ScanWatch 2 is a nice compromise for folks who want that classic look and don’t want to add even more screen time to their lives. The discreet health, fitness, and sleep tracking data is enough to help you stay in shape, and maybe that’s all you need.