Withings has issued an update for its range of Activité fitness trackers, bringing the long-promised addition of automatic swim tracking into play.
The Activité and Activité Pop will now recognise when wearers are swimming and track the workout on the Health Mate companion app.
The addition is significant as it makes the French company’s wearable devices the first activity trackers on the market to boast automatic swim tracking.
Those few devices that are currently offering the functionality must be pre-set to a swim mode before hitting the water.
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As of right now wearers will be able to see the length of their swim and calories burned following the workout. However, a future update will also add lap times and distance tracking.
The announcement didn’t make clear whether the trackers were able to distinguish between individual strokes, but we’ve reached out to the company for clarification.
Both the Activité and the more affordable Pop variant are water resistant to 50 meters, so unless you plan on deep sea diving you should be good to go.
Related: 8 Best fitness and activity trackers in 2015
Does today’s announcement change your thought process when it comes to buying a wearable device this summer? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.