Finely crafted classic watches can do more than just tell the time and date these days..
With a mix of smartphone connectivity and companion apps, along with precision Quartz movement and the attention to detail of a fine Swiss timepiece, smart analog watches provide the best of both worlds.
These connected classics don’t have full-color touchscreen displays like Android Wear smartwatches or the Apple Watch, but you won’t need to charge the batteries every two days either. In fact, most of them don’t need charging at all, with batteries that last a few years like traditional watches.
Here are the best smart analog watches available..
The Best Smart Analog Watches for Style
Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch
The Frederique Constant Horological Smartwatch brings the style of a hand crafted luxury Swiss watch along with smarts from Silicon valley. Behind the beautiful analog display are diamond cut hands with the precision of Quartz movement.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calorie output, sleep quality and duration, goals, active alerts, vibrating (silent) alarm, smart digital coach that offers fitness tips based on your activity goals. Like the other Swiss made Horologicals below, the watch is equipped with MotionX technology; an activity and sleep tracking platform found in some of the top fitness trackers, such as Fitbit.
Smart Notifications
The Frederique Constant doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters.
Battery Life
Around 2 years – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices. Swiss made Horological smartwatches exclusively use the MotionX-365 smartphone app.
Price
• Starting at around $598 USD.
Frederique Constant – With Notifications
This Frederique Constant model has ditched the activity tracking sub dial in favor of a mechanism that allows you to press the crown button on the side of the watch so the hour and minute hands spin around to show your activity goal progress. There are also tiny icons for incoming calls and messages alerts, and the watch vibrates when you receive an incoming call, text or email notification. Apart from that, it’s the same as the model above.
Price
• Starting at around $715 USD.
Mondaine Helvetica No.1 Smart
The Mondaine Helvetica No.1 Smart is a Swiss made timepiece with Quartz movement and activity tracking powered by MotionX.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calorie output, sleep quality and duration, goals, active alerts, vibrating (silent) alarm, smart digital coach that offers fitness tips based on your activity goals. The Helvetica 1 uses the MotionX Horological Smartwatch open platform.
Smart Notifications
The Mondaine Helvetica 1 doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-resistant
3 ATM – up to 30 meters.
Battery Life
Around 2 years – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices. Swiss made Horological smartwatches exclusively use the MotionX-365 smartphone app.
Price
• Starting at around $478 USD.
Alpina Horological Smartwatch
Smart analog watches don’t get more stylish than the Swiss made Alpina Horological. Along with beauty, it offers the precision of Quartz movement and MotionX-powered fitness tracking.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calorie output, sleep quality and duration, goals, active alerts, vibrating (silent) alarm, smart digital coach that offers fitness tips based on your activity goals. The Alpina Horological smartwatch uses the MotionX Horological Smartwatch open platform.
Smart Notifications
The Alpina doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-Resistant
10 ATM – up to 100 meters
Battery Life
Around 2 years – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices. Swiss made Horological smartwatches exclusively use the MotionX-365 smartphone app.
Price
• Starting at around $479 USD.
Movado Motion Collection
The Swiss made Movado Motion collection features some seriously stylish smart analog watches for men and women. Expect luxury, Quartz movement precision, and MotionX-powered activity tracking. Above is the Movado Museum Sport Motion which also comes in different colors. The is another great-looking watch and designer versions from labels such as Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Scuderia Ferrari, Lacoste, Juicy Couture, and Coach are due to land by the end of the year,
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calorie output, sleep quality and duration, goals, active alerts, vibrating (silent) alarm, smart digital coach that offers fitness tips based on your activity goals. The Movado Motion watches (apart from the “Bold Motion”) use the MotionX fitness tracking platform.
Smart Notifications
The Movado doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-Resistant
3 ATM – up to 30 meters.
Battery Life
Around 2 years – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices. Swiss made Horological smartwatches exclusively use the MotionX-365 smartphone app.
Price
• Starting at around $995 USD.
Best for Style + Spared No Expense
Breitling Exospace B55 Connected
The Breitling Exospace B55 is tailor-made for aviation professionals and enthusiasts. It’s 100-percent Swiss made, including the companion smartphone app.
If you’re into aviation, there’s a good chance you have the kind of cash needed to wrap the Exospace B55 around your high-flying wrist.
In the unfortunate event of you dropping out of the sky there’s a good chance the titanium watch will survive the fall and live on as your legacy. You’ll have something beautiful to look at while you’re plumeting towards the hard floor, and if you’re lucky, you might receive one last notification on the way down. You could even use the watch’s precision movement to calculate how many seconds you have left before leaving this world upon impact.
Breitling’s masterpiece connected chronograph uses SuperQuartz and thermocompensated quartz electronic movement and remains completely operational offline. It features a suite of specialist aviation features, such as Chrono Flight, Chrono Add, Time Zone and Lap Timer. It also has a vibration feature that can be used for alarms and notifications.
Fitness Tracking
Unlike the Horological Swiss watches above, the Breitling Exospace B55 doesn’t offer any fitness tracking features.
Smart Notifications
The watch uses Bluetooth LE to connected with your smartphone. When you receive an incoming call, text, email, calendar reminder or social notification from apps such as WhatsApp, it is displayed on the upper digital display.
Water-Resistant
100 meters.
Battery Life
2 months – rechargeable.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 7.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices.
Price
• $7k + USD
The Best Smart Analog Watches for Notifications
Nevo Watch
The Nevo Watch is a transoceanic breed; with French design, Swiss movement, and it’s made in China. If minimal is your thing, it doesn’t get much more minimal than the Nevo Watch, which can also easily be identified as a classy and pricey timepiece.
Fitness Tracking
The Nevo Watch will track your steps, distance and calories burned with decent accuracy. You can set your activity intensity level to light, moderate and intensive, and it recognizes running and swimming strokes. It also offers sleep monitoring – sleep quality, duration and vibrating alarms.
Smart Notifications
The Nevo Watch keeps you in touch with the social domain with smartphone notifications for incoming calls, texts, emails and more.
Water-Resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters.
Battery Life
The Nevo Watch uses 2 batteries: CR2025 coin cell for smart features – around 6 months – no charging required. 364 coin cell for timekeeping – around 5 years – no charging required.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.3 + devices.
Price
• Starting at around $169 USD.
Movado Bold Motion
Unlike the MotionX integrated Movado Motion watches (above), the Bold Motion is powered by HP. It uses Ronda 763 Swiss quartz movement and brings the build-quality and designer style ubiquitous to the luxury Swiss watch maker.
Fitness Tracking
The Movado Bold Motion doesn’t offer the greatest fitness tracking package; in fact, it tracks your steps and nothing more. Progress towards your daily step goal is displayed by way of LEDs around the edge of the clock face.
Smart Notifications
The satisfaction that comes with strapping a Movado to your wrist is the watch’s greatest attribute. The next best thing are the notifications. The Bold Motion will alert you when an incoming call, text, email, or social notification arrives. You can’t interact with the notifications directly from the watch, but the teal blue or white LEDs (depending on model) will blink different patterns, accompanied by vibration patterns for different notification types.
Water-Resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters.
Battery Life
The smart module has a batttery life of around 1 week – rechargeable.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 8.0 + and Android 4.4 + devices.
Price
• Starting at around $695 USD.
Fitness Tracking + Style
Withings Activité Sapphire
Withings really pulled a rabbit out of the hat with the Activité Sapphire. Before the arrival of the Swiss Horological smartwatches (above), the Activité was easily the most stylish fitness-orientated wearable. The Activite offers the precision of Swiss made connected movement.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calories, sleep quality, goals, automatic activity detection for running, walking and swimming; sleep quality and duration, active reminder, vibrating (silent) alarm.
Smart Notifications
The Withings Activité Sapphire doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-Resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters (safe for swimming).
Battery Life
Up to 8 months – no charging required.
Compatibility
The hybrid watch connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iOS 7.0 + and Android 4.3 + devices.
Price
• $450.
Budget + Fitness Tracking
Garmin Vivomove
Garmin are best known for their GPS gadgets, not fashion accessories, but the tables have been turned with the Vivomove as it lacks a GPS and looks pretty damn fashionable.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calories, sleep quality and duration, goals, active reminder. The Vivomove is light on data compared to some of Garmin’s other fitness wearables and there are no extra features on board, such as music or camera control. Another thing lacking with the Vivomove are vibration alerts and silent alarms.
Smart Notifications
The Garmin Vivomove doesn’t feature smartphone notifications (calls, texts, emails, social media alerts).
Water-Resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters (safe for swimming).
Battery Life
Around 1 year – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
The Vivomove uses the Garmin Connect app which is compatible with Android 4.3 + / iOS (iPhone 4S +) / Windows 10 +.
Price
• Starting at around $129 USD.
Misfit Phase
Misfit are one of pioneers of fitness wearables and are now taking orders their first smart analog watch, the Misfit Phase. It brings all the fundamental features along with a minimal and kind of sporty look.
Fitness Tracking
Steps, distance, calories, sleep quality and duration, goals, active reminder, vibrating (silent) alarm.
Smart Notifications
Calls, text, email, app notifications. In addition, the Misfit Phase is Link-compatible so it can be used to control your smartphone’s music, camera and other connected devices.
Water-Resistant
5 ATM – up to 50 meters (safe for swimming).
Battery Life
Around 6 months – coin cell battery never needs charging.
Compatibility
Misfit App: iOS 7 + / Android 4.3 + / Windows 8.1 +. Misfit Link app: iOS 8.0 + / Android 4.3 + / Windows 10 +
Price
• $175.00 Misfit.com
No doubt for me the Movado wins for style. BTW the Garmin Vivomove doesn’t look as good in real life as it does in this picture.
Which Movado, Museum Sport or Bold Motion?