The Withings Steel HR Sport is a stylish Multi-sport Hybrid Smartwatch. It is a stylish and rugged alternative to the Fitbit Ionic and Garmin Vivomove HR.
Outstanding features include:
- Multi-sport watch - capable of automatic activity detection
- Heart rate monitoring
- Connected GPS
- Fitness level assessment via VO2 Max estimation
- Smartphone notifications
- Battery lasts up to 25 days
- Water resistance up to 50m
- Sleep monitoring
- Interchangeable quick-release bands / straps
- Apple Health / Google Fit integration
Where the Withings Steel HR Sport excels is its exceptional 25 day battery life and superior style.
However, the greatest advantage the Withings Steel HR Sport has over the Fitbit Ionic is the integration with the Withings Health Mate app and ecosystem which integrates with Apple Health and Google Fit. Whereas when using a Fitbit, you are confined to the Fitbit ecosystem.
I bought the Steel HR Sport so that I could determine when high heart rate occurrences were happening during the night whilst I was supposedly asleep that were highlighted by 48 hour Holter Monitoring. My doctor was suggesting that I should be prescribed with a Beta Blocker drug to prevent this. Having had adverse reactions to this type of drug I was reluctant to agree, particularly since I suspected that this was happening when I awoke during the night. The sleep monitoring capability of the Steel HR enabled me to demonstrate that in fact, the high heart rate sessions were in fact happening whilst I was waking up during the night and in fact was perfectly normal. Thus I was able to argue the case for trialling a very low dose of the Beta Blocker drug to see if this caused any adverse reactions, So far, it hasn’t. So, all good! The heart rate measurements are accurate and are within 2 bpm of the Kardia Mobile ECG unit that I use to check for Atrial Fibrillation. The HR Steel could only be improved by a) Making the watch hands more visible and by b) Developing Irregular Heart Rate Notifications, which I presume could be done by firmware re- design?