How the Withings ScanWatch 2 Helped Me Lose Weight Without Obsessing

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I love to doomscroll on my phone, catching up on TikTok videos and checking Flipboard for the latest rumor mongering. This idle finger-swiping has cost me dearly, however. I’ve gained a few pounds since last spring, but more importantly I’m just not getting outdoors as much. Recently, I started using the Withings ScanWatch 2 and it motivated me to start walking and cycling more often. I even cut back on the hamburgers and french fries once I started tracking my health.

I felt some “measurement overload” at first. The health-monitoring and activity-tracking features on the ScanWatch 2 match and in some cases exceed my go-to watch, the Garmin Venu 3. You can count your steps, of course, but also take an ECG (a heart rhythm and vitality metric) and oxygen saturation test (a body health metric). Oh, and you can check the time! I strapped on the elegant-looking timepiece with a navy-blue band and headed outside to test it.

What It Is

The Withings ScanWatch 2 is a serious tracking device, even more so than the Apple Watch or the Garmin devices I’ve reviewed over the years. I also owned the original ScanWatch model but the second-gen product adds breathing and temperature tracking and something called HRV (Heart Rate Variability) that tells you—among other things—if you’re stressed out.

Withings went for an elegant style with the ScanWatch 2, which is a curious decision. It’s meant for workouts (e.g., going on a run or a bike ride), but you can wear it all day at work. I prefer a rugged watch—I don’t wear a suit coat and tie unless I’m at a wedding or a funeral, so it was an adjustment for me. If you lean more toward vintage Timex watches or a Rolex and not as much to the CasioG-Shock brand, the stainless steel design looks stylish and professional.

Withings ScanWatch 2 Overall Impressions

I happened to be testing a high-end No. 22 Great Divide Disc road bike, and the ScanWatch 2 was an excellent workout accomplice. I biked 20 miles one day and then pored over the workout data using the Withings app. You can press the “crown” on the right side of the watch to start, pause, and end a workout. On my iPhone, the Dynamic Island at the top showed my workout status including when I paused a long walk at a park.

The problem is that the actual digital display, measuring just 0.63-inches diagonally, is fairly limited. Like a Timex of old, you mostly see an analog watch face—hour hand and minutes. You can only view information like incoming texts and phone calls, health readings, and a few settings on the digital display. In direct sunlight, that information was hard to see. The idea is to use your iPhone or Android phone to check results, which is not always ideal—you want the watch to do all of the work and not have to look at your phone constantly.

It’s not a dealbreaker for me, though. My take is that the ScanWatch 2 is an intelligent workout aid and pushed me to take my health more seriously. At times, it was the sheer wealth of information plus the reminders and notifications that helped me stay healthy. Eventually, due to the overall vitality tracking over a period of time, I even ended up losing a few pounds.

Key Features

With the ScanWatch 2, it’s really all about whether the feature set meets your needs. The watch excels at measuring health data and tracking workouts but is not as capable overall as a smartwatch compared to the Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy, or Garmin Venu 3.

What does it offer? Just about any health measurement you’d ever want, including daily steps, the ECG, oxygen saturation, HRV, and much more. The watch lets you track 40 different workouts from yoga to swimming. On my bike workouts, I appreciated seeing the total miles and my exact route on a map. The watch does not have built-in GPS like the Apple Watch or the Garmin Venu 3, so to see your bike route you need to bring a phone along.

For a smartwatch made in 2025, there are some missing features. There’s no voice control, speakers or a mic like there is with other smartwatches so you can’t dictate a voice memo, text people back by voice, or take calls using only the watch. The ScanWatch 2 does provide a Vitality Indicator which is a good indicator of your health. It combines metrics from HRV, sleep, and workouts. I prefer the “body battery” indicator on Garmin products, though. With a glance, you can see if you didn’t rest enough during the course of a day. The Venu 3 also does a better job of letting you know you are stressed and need more downtime.

The ScanWatch 2 is an excellent sleep tracker, for the most part. I wore the watch many nights in a row and discovered the metrics are helpful—you can track your total time sleeping, deep sleep, and breathing, for example. Because the watch is made of stainless steel and has somewhat sharp edges, I can’t see wearing it every night. Watches like the Samsung Galaxy with its circular design (and no hard edges) work better if you want to track sleep.

One quick comment about battery life. The ScanWatch 2 lasts a long time—it’s rated for over 30 days. My major gripe about the Apple Watch is that it only lasts about a day.

Pros

• Elegant piece of jewelry
• Excellent health tracking features
• 40 workout modes from yoga to swimming
• Lasts over a month

Cons

• No built-in GPS
• No voice control, speaker, or mic
• Display is hard to see in the sun

Final Verdict

What this all means is that the Withings ScanWatch 2 is not for everyone, but it might exactly fit your needs (and your wrist—it comes in two sizes). It’s more elegant than most of the Garmin watches I’ve tested—perfect for the boardroom or the gym. I lost weight during my testing period and stopped overeating so much. (It’s hard to eat a burger while you’re riding a bike.) As a general purpose smartwatch, there are more capable products for sure. The design is not for everyone, and some of the tech specs don’t measure up to the competition. I hope a future version uses an all digital display and offers voice control and the ability to reply to texts. As it stands, I recommend the ScanWatch 2 if your goal is to workout and get healthy.

Why You Should Trust Me

I’m a total tech geek and have tested dozens of smartwatches over the years including the Apple Watch, most Samsung models, many Garmin products, and quite a few “normal” watches including those by Casio and Timex. In the last 25 years, I’ve tested around 10,000 gadgets in my career as a journalist, including a multitude of exercise equipment, Peloton bikes and treadmills, rowing machines, and everything in between.