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Withings has been making watches for longer than most people realise, and it has spent that whole time refusing to build the obvious thing. While everyone else raced toward brighter touchscreens, Withings kept putting real hands on a real dial and hiding the technology underneath.
That stubbornness has produced an unusually clean product history: two distinct eras, one design idea, and a steady march from step counting to genuine medical instrumentation. Here is every Withings watch in the order it arrived.
The hybrid era (2014-2018)
Withings Activité (2014)
Announced in mid-2014 and on sale that autumn at around $390, the Activité was Withings’ first watch and the template for everything since. Swiss-made, sapphire glass, leather strap, two analog hands — and a small sub-dial showing progress toward a daily step goal. No screen, no notifications, eight months of battery from a standard coin cell.
At a moment when smartwatches meant a chunky rectangle that died overnight, this was a genuinely different argument about what a wearable should be.
Withings Activité Pop (2015)
The same idea in a cheaper package. Plastic and silicone instead of steel and leather, at roughly a third of the price. The Pop is what took the concept out of the boutique-watch bracket and put it in front of ordinary buyers.
Withings Activité Steel (November 2015)
The middle option, arriving November 2015 — a steel case at a price between the Pop and the original. This became the shape of the mainstream Withings watch for the next several years.
Withings Steel HR (2017)
The first meaningful jump. Steel HR added continuous optical heart rate and a small circular OLED window in the dial for notifications, without giving up the analog hands or the multi-week battery.
A later variant, the Steel HR Sport, added connected GPS and a fitness-level estimate. Worth stating plainly because the internet keeps getting it wrong: neither Steel HR model measures blood pressure. They never did. If you have seen the Steel HR Sport on a list of blood pressure watches, that list is wrong — the real state of that technology is in our guide to smartwatches with a blood pressure monitor.
Withings Pulse HR (2018)
A band rather than a watch, and the odd one out in the line. Twenty days of battery, heart rate, GPS via phone. It marks the point where Withings was still deciding how much of the tracker market it wanted.
The medical era (2019-present)
Withings Move and Move ECG (2019)
Both debuted at CES in January 2019, and the Move ECG is the genuinely historic one: the first analog watch with an ECG, shipping in Q2 2019 at $129.95.
That price is the striking part. Withings put a single-lead ECG on a $130 watch at a time when the feature was the headline justification for a much more expensive Apple Watch. It set the pattern the company has followed since — medical-grade sensing in a body that does not look like a gadget.
The plain Move was the same watch without the ECG, at an even lower price.
Withings ScanWatch (2020)
Introduced at CES 2020, and the model that consolidated everything: ECG, SpO2 blood oxygen sensing, respiratory-disturbance detection during sleep, and a month of battery life, all inside the same hybrid dial with a small OLED window.
ScanWatch is where Withings stopped being “the nice analog tracker” and became a serious answer for anyone who wants cardiac screening without wearing a computer. It sits alongside the wider field in which smartwatches have ECG and AFib detection, and its sleep-side sensing is covered in smartwatches that detect sleep apnea.
ScanWatch 2 and ScanWatch Light (announced August 2023)
Withings announced both on 31 August 2023, splitting the line in two.
ScanWatch 2 is the full instrument: ECG, SpO2, and a new body-temperature module for tracking overnight temperature variation, with availability rolling on into 2024.
ScanWatch Light went the other way — the same hybrid design and 30-day battery, keeping heart rate and sleep tracking but dropping the ECG and SpO2, at a substantially lower price. It shipped from September 2023.
The split is the single most important thing to understand when shopping this line. Light is a lovely watch and a poor medical device. If the sensors are the reason you are here, you want the 2.
ScanWatch Nova (2024)
A dive-watch interpretation of the same platform — a rotating bezel, a heavier steel case, 10 ATM water resistance — carrying the ScanWatch 2’s sensor set in a more assertive body. A Brilliant Edition with a dressier finish followed in November 2024.
Nova is Withings answering the one durable criticism of the range: that the watches were handsome but slight.
Where the line stands in 2026
No new Withings watch arrived in 2026. The company’s CES 2026 announcement was the Body Scan 2 smart scale — $600, launching in Q2 2026, adding hypertension risk notifications and atrial-fibrillation detection pending FDA clearance.
That is worth noticing, because it says something about where Withings thinks the next step is. Having pushed cardiac sensing about as far as a wrist reasonably allows, the interesting work has moved to a device you stand on for thirty seconds a day.
For the watches, it means the ScanWatch Nova and ScanWatch 2 remain current rather than superseded — a rare thing in this category, and good news if you were worried about buying just before a refresh.
Which one should you actually buy
For the medical features: ScanWatch 2, or the Nova if you prefer the heavier case. These are the only current models with ECG and SpO2. Check current pricing on Amazon.
For the look and the battery, without the sensors: ScanWatch Light. Go in knowing what it does not have.
On the used market: a Steel HR remains a genuinely pleasant watch and a decent step and heart-rate tracker. Just do not buy one expecting ECG or blood pressure.
If you want a screen: buy something else. Every watch on this page is a deliberate compromise that trades display for battery and for looking like a watch. That trade is the entire proposition — the alternatives are in the best smartwatches of 2026 and the best fitness trackers of 2026.
The pattern worth taking away
Twelve years, one idea. Withings decided in 2014 that a health wearable should look like a watch, and it has spent every release since adding clinical capability underneath that constraint rather than abandoning it. The Move ECG at $129 and the ScanWatch’s apnea sensing are what that discipline bought.
It is a smaller company than Apple or Samsung and its watches will never do as much. What they do instead is disappear on your wrist for a month at a time while quietly watching your heart.