Back in August 2016, I was fortunate enough to be asked by Samsung to host the launch event for the Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch, and I was proud to do it because this is among the best smartwatches I’ve ever worn, if not the absolute best to this point.
The Apple Watch Series 2 is the second generation connected wearable smartwatch device from the Cupertino, California, tech giant. When the original Apple Watch came out in 2014, an oft-asked question was “what would Steve Jobs think of it?”
A bit over a year and a half ago, I got to go hands-on with the initial version of the Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch. I was curious about it, as it was not so much a smartwatch as it was a fitness and sleep tracker hiding in a nice-looking dress watch. At the conclusion of that review, I was wondering how the entry would be received. It must have been considered a success, as a new version was released. Today, we’ll be having a look at what the latest version of the Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch has on offer.
While there seems to be some doubts as to the overall viability (and longevity) of the smart watch segment, that is not stopping brands from rolling out new watches. While the fully-electronic watches (such as the latest Android Wear models recently announced) get most of the attention, there is another type of watch, the so-called “hybrid” smartwatch. We saw this with the Frederique Constant Horological Smart Watch, and it offers a long-life quartz movement (no charging!) along with a bluetooth radio to allow some notifications and the like on your wrist. The most recent announcement for this type of watch brought the Armani Exchange Connected to light.
Polar has a 35-year-long history in fitness tracking and creating products for very active runners, cyclists, and more. The Polar M200 smartwatch is the latest in their efforts to provide reliable training metrics and real-time personalized training guidance.
The smartwatches out there run the gamut from full LCD touch-screens that almost want to replace your phone, to those watches that look like, well, normal watches, but include some additional brains inside the case that can talk with your phone. That latter scenario is what we have with the just-announced Michael Kors Access “hybrid smartwatches.”
Functionality between smart watches and fitness trackers increasingly overlaps these days. If you have a watch with the various sensors to pick up your step counts and Bluetooth to send the data to a phone, it is not that far of a leap to blow things out to a full smart watch suite. With the advent of the Android Wear ecosystem, that has definitely become a lot easier to accomplish. The latest entry for that would be the Polar M600.