The Wellness Watch
Wellograph.com
rrp. USD$229
Whilst on the lookout for fitness tech, I stumbled across this watch. Its called the Wellness watch, and to be honest I hadn't really heard of it, and was intrigues to see what this watch could actually do. The website promised a watch, that tracked calories/steps, sleep patterns, heart rate, distance(when exercising), fitness levels and readiness for exercise. Sounds good, but what I really wanted to know - was it acurate?
The watch is available in 3 colours - Silver satin body with brown strap, white pearl body with white strap, and black chrome body with black strap. The default strap as provided is a quality leather strap, although compared to other watches this strap does feel a little flimsy in comparison to the rest of the watch. Replacement straps are available at a price of $49, including whats called a NATO strap, which seems more robust and appropriate for use if your going to exercise in it. The watch has a handy release system for the strap which allows you to interchange straps quickly and easily without the need for tools as can be seen below.
The watch comes with a 1.26" backlit LED screen with super tough sapphire glass making the watch tough enough to cope with the daily demands without fear of scratches. The case is made of stainless steel and aluminium giving the watch a feel of quality. It also doesn't look like your typical fitness tracker, looking smart enough to wear in the evening or at a function. A touch of the button activates the ligght making the screens easy to read as can be seen below.
Battery life is good with the watch lasting 6 days for me, rather than the advertised 7 days, although this could be due to me showing the watch off to every passer by attracted by its look. First question on everyones lips was "is that the iwatch" which surely is a testament to how good the watch looks.
Another positive in favour of the watch, is that it is waterproof, advertised upto 50m, however, I didnt want to test this from fear of ruining my leather strap. And data retention is also good, with the watch holding upto 4 months of data.
As can be seen from the size comparisons above in relation to my mid size G-Shock, the watch is not overly large weighing in at just 3.5oz, and sits nicely on the wrist due to the concave back on the watch, this is designed to aid the heart rate monitoring. For me the pulse monitoring was the big success story for the watch, giving accurate readings when used in conjuction with the mio link. Instant readings are available at the touch of a button. In my version of the watch, the pulse meter was accurate, however, I was too keen on how loose the strap was due to the limited holes, maybe a velcro adjustable exercise strap may be more appropriate or and adjustable link band to keep the watch closer to the wrist.
The watch monitors the pulse using a TRI-LED sensor on the rear of the watch as can be seen below and offers highly responsive readings.
Activity tracking is performed using a 9-axis accelerometer, the sensitivity of this can be adjusted to high and low. Both of which differed considerably to the step function on the iphone 6s, with low sensitivity reading on average 500-700 steps per day lower, and hogh setting reading upto 2000 steps more. Bearing in mind I am on my feet and active all day as Physical Education teacher, this can represent quite a lot of distance/steps. The watch also identified the number of cardio step in relation to general steps which was an interesting feature.
As the screens above show, the watch used a combination of heart rate/step tracking to calculate my activity and calorie use during the day, which could also be seen as a weekly graph showing how active I was on each day. The continuous tracking of the bpm gave a typical resting and max heart rate reading and with use a fitness level, this I found slightly confusing telling me I was in the 85 percentile for 47 year old, when in fact I would rather see how fit I was for my actual age of 40!
One function that really peaked my interest watch the sleep tracking. The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was check the sleep log. With the watch giving a graph showing the percentage quality of sleep for the night as well as where dreaming/light sleep/deep sleep were taking place. I was impressed with the accuracy of this function as I did snooze one evening between 7 and 8 pm, the watch recognised that I was actually asleep, this amazed me! Well done on this feature Wellograph.
Now the final comparison test was to test the stopwatch/distance run feature on the watch, I compared this with my Garmin forerunner 220 (in conjuction with the mio link HRM). The 2 watches were taken on a 5km run (tried/tested/measured route). The stopwatch/timing function worked perfectly well with no problems in actually timing the run. Now the Wellness watch does not come with integrated GPS tracking, therefore, used the 9axis sensor to track movement, without a calibration function, my fears were realised with this being the most innacurate tracking function on the watch. The Garmin reading 5.02 km, whereas the Wellness watch reading 4.47km. In fairness the watch isnt advertised as a run tracker, its a Wellness watch. Out on the run the pulse monitoring really impressed with both watches reading with 5bpm of each other.
A simple procedure of reading my heart rate, also gave a readiness for exercise scale. Although to be honest I never received a reading of needing to rest, despite an active week.
Charging takes place via a magnetic cradle which uses usb cable to charge. Charging is a quick proces and I found a 2hr charge would see the watch fully charged and ready to go. As a useful feature the watch displays the time landscape when charging.
Information is shared with the Wellograph app, which is available on all platforms. For testing I used the IOS app. Registering the watch was easy to do and a simple hold of one of the buttons on the watch, turned on the bluetooth function and connected the watch to my phone, I found this one button touch functionreally handy as it saved time in going to settings to turn bluetooth on and off, a great battery saving function.
The information in the app is really well presented and easy to read/use. Well done Wellograph a well designed app
Summary.
This is a wellness tracking watch not a smartwatch. It does as it says and gives you a reading of how active you are, how many calories you are using and how well you are sleeping. A useful fitness tracking idea, if a little on the pricey side - especially in the apple watch battle! When I first put on the watch I will admit I was a little disapointed, however, it really did win me over in the end. I see this as a watch for the general user interested in simple lifestyle tracking, not really for the person looking for a fully blown gps/run tracking watch.
Pros.
Good looking watch
Accurate pulse monitoring
Scratch resistant screen
Interchangable straps
Easy to use (2button system)
Large digit screens
Low power backlight
Low power bluetooth function
Responsive sleep tracking function
Easy to use well designed app
Long battery life, quick charging
Cons
No GPS tracking feature.
Variable accuracy on step tracking
Straps have limited sizing holes
Poor distance measurement when out running
