The $249.95 Withings ScanWatch Light looks like an ordinary watch but packs in key wellness-oriented features generally reserved for techy-looking smartwatches or fitness trackers. It features real ticking hands along with a tiny round OLED inset on the watch face that lets you monitor your real-time activity, heart rate, respiration, and sleep, as well as track your menstrual cycle and log symptoms. The Garmin Lily 2 ($249.99) is easier to navigate thanks to its touch-screen controls and offers more information about your fitness on the watch itself, remaining our Editors' Choice for fashionable female-focused fitness trackers, but the Withings ScanWatch Light is a strong alternative for its superior battery life and analog aesthetic.
Price and Design
ScanWatch Light vs. ScanWatch 2 vs. Fitbit and Garmin
Priced at $249.95, the ScanWatch Light is the most affordable option in Withings' lineup of fitness wearables. The more advanced ScanWatch 2 ($349.95) adds a built-in GPS along with blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), body temperature, and electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements, plus atrial fibrillation (AFib) detection.
Outside of Withings, you have many alternatives for fitness tracking, of course. The Fitbit Charge 6 ($159.95) is an outstanding value option with an integrated GPS, skin temperature and SpO2 sensors, a color display, and Google lifestyle apps like Maps, Wallet, and YouTube Music. The aesthetically minded Garmin Lily 2 also offers more functionality than the ScanWatch Light, with support for energy reserve tracking, on-demand SpO2 readings, and mobile payments.
One Size Fits All
The ScanWatch Light is designed to be unisex, but its small 37mm size and dainty build make it ideal for women or those with smaller wrists. As a petite woman, I greatly appreciate the lightweight feel, compact size, and super slim and sleek build of the ScanWatch Light, but I can imagine that it might feel too small for men or those with larger wrists. In comparison, the ScanWatch 2 comes in 38mm and 42mm size options.
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Appearance
The ScanWatch Light features a polished stainless steel case, a more premium material than the Lily 2's aluminum casing, in either a silver or rose gold tone. For the rose gold model, you can pick from a blue or a sand color watch face, while the silver version is available with a green, white, or black face. For this review, Withings sent the silver and white model.
I find the simple watch face aesthetically pleasing, but the thin, silver analog hands make it difficult to read the time in certain lighting conditions. For example, if you want to see the time at night or in a dim room, you might find yourself squinting or needing an accessory light to make out the position of the hands. As a workaround, I discovered that you can set the watch to digitally display the time on the OLED screen whenever you turn your wrist toward your body.
Small Screen
One downside of the ScanWatch Light’s miniaturized and minimalist design is that all of your fitness metrics and notifications are crammed into the 0.63-inch round colorless OLED just under the 12 o'clock position on the face. If you have trouble seeing small text or want to quickly be able to check your heart rate during a workout, you likely won't be satisfied by the display.
The tiny display automatically scrolls through your health information, or you can use the crown/side button to control navigation, but it’s certainly not broadcast across the full screen as with the Apple Watch, Garmin, and Fitbit wearables, or many of the other top fitness trackers and smartwatches. The more expensive ScanWatch 2 has the same small OLED, along with a second circular inset on the watch face featuring a single-arm analog dial that shows your progress toward your daily step goal.
Simple Controls
Unlike most fitness trackers and smartwatches these days, the ScanWatch Light doesn’t have any touch-screen capabilities; everything must be controlled using the dial on the side, as is also the case with the ScanWatch 2. As a competitive runner, I'm accustomed to touch screens on my fitness wearables at this point, so it took a little bit of time to adjust to this setup. However, after a couple of days, I got the hang of it, and it was perfectly easy to navigate through the different fields to check my heart rate or set an alarm.
Health and Fitness Tracking
The ScanWatch Light blends the elegant and simplistic appearance of a fashionable analog wristwatch with the technology to support limited health and fitness tracking. It’s important to keep in mind that this is a relatively simple watch, so you don't get the robust metrics that are measured on some premium sports watches, but the basics are covered.
Basic Health Metrics
On the watch itself, you can see your breathing (respiration) rate, heart rate, sleep stats, and step count. The Withings Health Mate app (available for Android and iOS) offers a more detailed analysis of your health and fitness metrics, including trend charts that are not viewable on the watch itself.
The ScanWatch Light also supports high and low heart rate alerts, with custom threshold values. From the watch and the app, you can track your menstruation and log symptoms such as acne, back pain, bloating, and cramps to predict and analyze your cycle.
Workout Tracking
The ScanWatch Light conveniently supports both automatic and manual workout tracking. For example, it will detect your activity after one minute and automatically begin tracking it. At the end of the workout, your stats will be saved in the app and filed as a Running activity. In addition to running, the automatic tracking works for swimming and walking.
To manually start tracking a workout, navigate to the Workout screen on the watch, then use the crown/side button to scroll through the list of around 30 supported activities (including boxing, ice hockey, rowing, skiing, volleyball, and yoga), and press the button to select the one you want. You can also optionally set a custom Shortcut in the app to start the measurement of your choice when you press and hold the button. I set it to launch the Workout screen, which allows for quick activity tracking. To stop tracking a workout, press and hold the button.
After the workout is over, your metrics will appear on the tiny watch display. You can scroll through them with the crown, but I generally just opened the app so that I could see everything more clearly on one screen.
Accurate Heart Rate Recordings
To evaluate the accuracy of its heart rate metrics, I wore the ScanWatch Light and a Fitbit Charge 5 on my right wrist, along with a Garmin Forerunner 265 running watch ($449.99) and a Polar OH1 heart rate monitor ($59.95) on my left arm for several runs. Admittedly, I felt kind of silly wearing all of these trackers at the same time, and I don't expect this fashion statement to sweep the nation, but it allowed me to compare my metrics across devices.
I was quite impressed with the ScanWatch Light's accuracy and the overall consistency among the devices. Though there were small differences in their measurements, the ScanWatch Light's heart rate data was quite close to the Garmin and Polar numbers. Several times, it was spot on with the much more expensive Garmin, giving me confidence in the accuracy of its heart rate technology. The Fitbit turned out to be the outlier, but that isn't too surprising given that it's a couple of years old and has been replaced by the newer Charge 6 ($159.95).
No Onboard GPS
Unlike the original Withings ScanWatch or the ScanWatch 2, the ScanWatch Light does not have an onboard GPS to track your distance, pace, and route during outdoor workouts. However, you can use the ScanWatch Light with its companion app to allow for GPS tracking during outdoor workouts such as biking, canoeing, running, and walking. The Garmin Lily 2 similarly lacks an integrated GPS but allows for connected GPS functionality via your phone.
As an athlete, I generally prefer fitness trackers with built-in GPS, such as Fitbit Charge and Garmin Forerunner models. However, if you don't mind toting your phone during outdoor workouts, or you simply aren't looking for tons of workout data, the ScanWatch Light will suit you just fine.
Excellent Sleep Tracking
Overnight, the ScanWatch Light tracks the depth, duration, and phases of your sleep, as well as any interruptions. In the morning, it provides a Sleep Quality Score out of 100 to help you quickly understand your rest, as well as a graph of your sleep stages (awake, light, and deep/REM). Note that its sleep tracking does not work for naps, a feature that some other fitness wearables like the Garmin Vivoactive 5 support. The ScanWatch Light requires at least three hours of sleep to track data.
I had no problem wearing the ScanWatch Light to bed at night; it's so slim and lightweight that I didn't even notice it. It doesn’t get caught on your blankets or feel like a suffocating piece of plastic surrounding your wrist. For sleep tracking, the ScanWatch Light is much more comfortable than my usual Forerunner 265, which is saying a lot because that's one of the smaller Garmin running watches.
The Withings Health Mate App
In addition to watches, Withings makes a variety of health and fitness tools such as smart scales like the Body Scan. All of its smart devices sync to the free Withings Health Mate companion mobile app, so if you have more than one device from the company, such as a watch and a scale, you’ll be able to see all of your health data in one place.
Setup and Ease of Use
If you're new to the Withings brand, you'll need to download the HealthMate app and create an account, which is required to set up the ScanWatch Light. The app also lets you customize how the watch works and enable smartphone notifications and other features. In testing, I found the Health Mate app easy to navigate and had no problem setting up the watch.
After you set up and personalize the watch to your liking, you don't have to continue using the Health Mate app if you don't want to. Even so, I highly recommend continuing to use the app as the primary method of accessing your health metrics. It’s much easier to see this information on your phone's larger display than on the watch, and the app offers more detailed data and graphs.
You can also opt to have all of your data automatically sync with Apple Health and Google Fit if you prefer to use those apps as the central hub for your health data.
Free and Paid Features
The free version of the Health Mate app offers all of the basic health data captured by the ScanWatch Light. One of the best features is its trend data, which includes useful graphs showing your health and fitness metrics over time. For example, you can see how your step count is trending and whether you're getting more or less than you did weeks ago right from the graphs on the homepage.
The app also includes helpful videos about using the watch and getting the most out of your experience, as well as some general information about health and fitness, which is a nice perk.
However, the app has a subscription tier, and some features are only available to paid members, including a Health Improvement Score metric for progress tracking, daily guidance, and a library of wellness content, including recipes and workouts. If you buy the watch directly from the Withings website, you get one free month of Withings+, the premium version of the app. After the one-month free trial, you will have to pay for a Withings+ subscription priced at $9.99 per month for continued access to the premium features.
Battery Life and Charging
Up to a Month Between Charges
A major selling point of the ScanWatch Light is its long battery life. Product listings promise up to 30 days of battery life on a charge, and the ScanWatch Light delivered on this spec in testing. The battery life of my Fitbit and Garmin devices pale in comparison with the ScanWatch Light, even when I'm not using their onboard GPS functionality, which rapidly drains battery for any wearable.
I really appreciate the reliability and endurance of the battery on this watch, not only because I tend to be forgetful about charging but also because I have a lot of devices taking up power outlet space.
Flimsy Proprietary Charger
On the downside, the ScanWatch Light's charger is a flimsy plastic cradle. You must lay the watch inside, making sure to align the button on the watch with a slot inside the charger. If you tip the charger, the watch falls right out, so you'll want to set it up on a flat surface, ideally where nothing will disturb it.
The charger worked perfectly fine when I used the included USB-C cable, but it strangely did not always work with other cables I had on hand. When using third-party cables, the watch sometimes wouldn't charge. I don’t know if this was just a fluke with my own cables, but I would highly recommend keeping close tabs on the charger and cable that come with the device in case you experience a similar problem.
Fast Charging
The ScanWatch Light charges quite quickly. I found that it went from completely drained to fully charged in under two hours.
Verdict: Analog Aesthetic, Modern Health Tracking
The Withings ScanWatch Light is a unique wearable that bridges the gap between classic analog minimalism and modern fitness tracking functionality. With a chic look and the ability to monitor basic health metrics like your heart rate, menstrual cycle, respiration, steps, sleep, and workouts, the ScanWatch Light can work well for people wanting a fitness tracker that balances fashion and function. The Garmin Lily 2 costs about the same and has a bigger screen, touch controls, and more health tracking and lifestyle features, so it remains our Editors' Choice, while the more affordable and capable Fitbit Charge 6 is our top budget pick. That said, neither can match the exceptional 30-day battery life of the ScanWatch Light, so if you want a stylish fitness tracker you rarely have to charge, it's worth checking out.
The Withings ScanWatch Light is an attractive analog-style smartwatch with modern health and fitness tracking features and a standout battery life.
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About Amber Sayer, MS, CPT
