Philips Health Watch - Review 2022

The $249.99 Philips Wellness Watch could be a very good fitness tracker if information technology weren't for so many hindrances in its design and user interface. The watch-style tracker is part of a suite of health devices, including a smart bath scale and blood pressure level cuff, that all sync to the same app to give you lot a bigger flick of your health than only the number of steps yous walk in a day. But it's clunky to use and non very attractive to clothing. If you lot're remotely interested in the Philips Health Picket, yous should instead consider the Editors' Choice Fitbit Accuse 2, a closely comparable but amend executed product.

Design, Display, and Interface

The all-black Philips Health Watch mimics the await of a classic scout with a round face. A digital clock is the de facto display, and it stays on 24/vii. The date appears as two digits at the three o'clock position, and a modest lock icon shows upwards at six o'clock. To navigate menus and different views on the watch, yous have to tap below the lock icon three times and then press a small square with rounded edges at the very top of the device. It'due south not at all intuitive, simply relatively easy to call up once you lot learn it.

An optical heart rate monitor is on the contrary side, and it flashes greenish when engaged. You'll too find two small-scale copper discs on the back where a USB charger, included, magnetically attaches. One full accuse lasts most four days, which is so-and then for a tracker with continuous heart charge per unit monitoring.

Material quality is mixed. The casing is stainless steel with a matte black coating, giving the lookout man a sturdy feel. Durable, scratch-proof Gorilla Drinking glass covers the eye part of the brandish. Then at that place is the pressure-sensitive "touch ring" around the edge, which I'll depict in more detail in a moment. For at present, just know that yous tin can feel a slight gradient where the normal glass stops and the impact ring starts. A silicone strap and monochrome, pixelated LCD bring downwardly the overall quality, but at least you tin swap out the strap.

The Wellness Watch is splash resistant with a rating of 1ATM. Y'all shouldn't swim with it or submerge it in water for any length of time, but you don't need to worry if it gets wet from rain, washing your easily, or sweat.

The size and weight (1.8 ounces) are reasonable, even for smaller individuals. An extra strap ships with the watch to conform different sizes. The minor band fits wrists with a circumference of five.iv to 7.4 inches, while the large band fits wrists 6.half-dozen to 8.eight inches. Swapping the straps couldn't be easier.

Of all the design choices Philips fabricated with this lookout, the impact ring pains me the most. It creates an awkward interaction. Only the edge of the lookout man is touch enabled, and navigating menus and otherwise interacting with it feels clumsy. Against all previous experiences you've had with touch devices, taps and swipes must happen on the periphery, rather than the center of the screen, or they don't work. You tap next to icons rather than on them. And because the face is round, gestures need to exist e'er-so-slightly swooping rather than direct.

That foursquare-with-rounded-edges icon I mentioned earlier acts as a back and home button. It'south not different the domicile push on an iPhone or iPad. Every fourth dimension I look at it, I think it should be at the bottom of the sentry rather than the top, because as it is, information technology looks like the watch is upside downward.

What Tin Information technology Do?

What's odd about the Philips Health Watch is it bucks a few conventions seen in other fettle trackers, only non in a way that's innovative. For example, it covers the basics by tracking steps, distance, calories burned, sleep, and heart rate. Running, walking, and bicycling are tracked automatically, and those are all up-to-date functions and features. However, you can't record other activities, like yoga, dancing, or weight training, which is backside the times. There'south a stopwatch, just what expert is it if you tin can't tag whatever it is you're timing? You can set an alarm and an idle alert (standard), simply y'all can't become push notifications from your phone, and for the toll, you should.

Philips Health Watch app

Two unconventional features include Respiratory Rate and Calories Consumed. I don't have a problem with those metrics, but respiratory rate is an odd option because few people know what it is, and calorie counting commonly happens in a fettle tracker's app rather than on the watch itself. With Philips Health Watch, you can count calories from either the app or the spotter. From the watch, you can just enter either the number of calories you think you ate, or a repast type and size (such every bit medium dejeuner). From the app, you go a full food database so that you can tape exactly what you lot ate, and that method is superior because you become a more accurate estimation and all the nutritional information.

A few other metrics don't appear on the watch at all but show up in the companion Philips HealthSuite app (for Android, iOS, and Spider web), such every bit Resting Respiration Charge per unit and Centre Rate Recovery. The latter only appears after you've done plenty intense exercise sessions of more than than 10 minutes to compute an average.

More than whatever other metric, sleep really confused me. If you lot don't turn on the sleep monitor before y'all get to bed, the lookout man reports aught hours of slumber. But look in the app and a menu called Your Sleep contains data regardless: sleep duration as well as a timeline of sleep stages including awake time, REM sleep, light slumber, and deep sleep. Even more baffling, there'due south a submenu called Slumber Efficiency, which only shows data for nights when y'all manually turned the sleep monitor on and off. An informational page explains that sleep efficiency takes into consideration how long y'all intended to sleep, and thus you need the manual sleep monitor data because it records the time yous got into bed rather than when y'all fell comatose. But wouldn't information technology make more sense for the app to simply enquire you for your typical bedtime and wake time and apply those as a default, or better yet, let you enter the times manually the side by side forenoon?

The app can create a more than complete picture of your health if y'all add stats such every bit your weight and blood pressure manually or through another connected Philips wellness device, such every bit the company'southward Trunk Analysis Scale or blood pressure gage. Philips isn't the only company to offering a range of products for a personal home wellness suite, though. Withings does a slap-up chore of it, and Fitbit has a few products that work together, too.

Accuracy

Philips Health Watch I wore the Philips Health Sentinel simultaneously with the Misfit Ray for bones data, and I put on a Polar H7 to compare centre rate. The Polar H7 is considered a gold standard among consumer chest straps.

The step counts were different, with the Philips Health Watch reporting nigh 1,000 more steps, regardless of Misfit's number. In other words, it wasn't consistently, say, 20 percentage higher than Misfit's counts, but always effectually 1,000 steps higher. That's not terrible, but it'southward odd, especially considering I merely remove my Ray to shower, but I took off the Wellness Lookout man sometimes to type, pregnant the Ray had more than opportunity to record false steps, but didn't.

Heart rate accuracy was better than expected, but not without a few hiccups. During activeness, the readings tended to exist very close. With nigh optical heart rate monitors, there is some lag fourth dimension in detecting heart rate change, and it'south most noticeable during rapid center rate change, like when you abruptly end an intense action. A poorly performing optical centre charge per unit monitor will exist a few seconds behind a breast strap in reporting changes. The Philips Health Watch was never more i second behind, so that's very skillful. Additionally, the readings were often, but not ever, identical both at remainder and during activity.

On a few occasions, I navigated to the screen on the lookout showing heart charge per unit, and it showed a number as much as 10 beats per minute higher than the H7. The number immediately started dropping until the readings were either the same or within 2bpm of each other.

Conclusions and Recommendations

My primeval impression of the Philips Health Watch was that it might be right for someone who is less attuned to technology. I threw that thought out the window when I realized how unintuitive information technology is for people whose primary interaction with applied science is an iPhone or iPad. It's also really frustrating to figure out what statistics are only available in the app versus what'southward on the scout, and finding them in the app isn't a peachy experience either. The fact that the Health Sentinel has a very expert optical heart rate monitor doesn't make upwardly for its other shortcomings, especially considering the price.

Save yourself a little money and consider the Fitbit Accuse 2 instead. Or if the look of a round watch is what you detect appealing, read upward on the Withings Steel HR. It's not perfect, but like the Philips Health Spotter, it'south role of a larger suite of home health devices. It'south likewise a heck of a lot more fashionable.