I loved my Pebble Time Round smartwatch, and I was really bummed when it was announced that FitBit had purchased Pebble. The purchase meant there would be no more updates to the Pebble. A shame because the watch did have some bugs like not always updating the weather, and occasionally losing steps. Things that could be lived with, until they were fixed. It also meant that the watch could lose functionality when FitBit eventually takes the servers down. While the watch would still function as a step tracker and watch, that wasn’t enough for me to want to deal with charging a device daily. Plus, if I’m going to have basically a step tracker I want to be able to wear it in the pool.

I started looking at some of the hybrid style smartwatches. These are watches that are analog in look, but have some smart features like notifications. I’m not sure I need the notifications, I had actually been turning them off on my Pebble. Plus, when I bought my Timex IQ+ Move, the Fossil watches were still a little thick for my taste. They’ve since released the Accomplice which is 11mm thick.

So I went down another step and got a Timex IQ+ Move. A step/sleep tracker built into an analog watch. I’ve had it a few months now, and there are some pros and cons to going this route.

Pros

• Light! I don’t know if Timex makes a watch without their Indiglo light, but every watch I’ve had of theirs has had it built in. This is no exception.
• Simple look – It looks like a watch. It has a little sub-dial for activity tracking, but that’s the only sign this isn’t a regular watch.
• No Charging – It runs on a regular watch battery and doesn’t need to be charged. It’s a nice change.
• Water Resistant – One thing I don’t understand about a lot of fitness trackers (I’m looking at you FitBit) is that they can’t go in the water. If you’re doing active stuff, there’s probably going to be a time when you want to get in the pool.

Cons

• No auto sync – Anytime you want to sync your steps, date, or time, you have to manually go into the watch and choose to sync. My guess is this is how they keep the battery usage down so you don’t have to charge.
• No dedicated date – There isn’t a dedicated date. You can set the second hand to be the date, but no little perpetual calendar.
• Tracker records too many steps – I think this tracker is way too high for step counts. I have mine set to the lowest sensitivity and it’s still about 10% higher than my Pebble was. But it is consistent, so you can keep comparing your steps day-to-day.
• Sleep tracker isn’t – The sleep tracker on the other hand doesn’t seem to be sensitive enough. It seems to count all my sleep “deep sleep” or “awake” with very little “light sleep in the mix.
• Compatiblity – The data in the Timex App is only in the Timex app. You can’t sync with fitness apps, Google Fit, or Apple Health. This works for me since I write my steps down in my journal, but it’s a huge draw back.

Overall, I’m happy with my Timex IQ+ Move. I’m not a fitness junkie, and just want to make sure I’m moving throughout the day. And I want something that looks like a watch. If you want any more than that though, you should look elsewhere.