Withings

The year of electrocardiogram tech is underway. You didn't think it would just be the Apple Watch, did you?

Withings' newest fitness watch, the Move, was announced at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. It has the ability to take electrocardiograms, a chart of your heartbeat often abbreviated to EKG or ECG. It's also a regular-looking analog watch -- and at $130, it's about a third the cost of an Apple Watch S4. (Converted, that's about £100 or AU$95.)

Withings makes a number of health and wearable devices, including blood pressure cuffs. The Move ECG is the company's first watch that's supposed to be able to check for atrial fibrillation. It's expected in Q2 of this year, pending FDA and CE clearance.

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The Move ECG looks like an evolution of the Withings Steel fitness watches that have been available for years, minus the Steel HR's optical heart-rate monitoring and LED display. Instead, the Move ECG leans on analog dials to show fitness and step tracking. You tell it to take an ECG by touching the sides of the steel bezel, and it shows results on your phone through the connected app.

The watch is water-resistant to 50 meters, measures steps and sleep, tracks elevation and has a one-year battery life (it's not clear if the watch has a replaceable battery or recharges, but it might be the former). Like previous Withings watches, it also connects with Apple Health and Google Fit.

A version of the Move without ECG and heart rate is available now for $70, but only ships to the US, Canada and Mexico.

Nokia acquired French health technology company Withings in 2016 and rebranded it as Nokia Health. The company was bought back by Withings' co-founder in 2018, however.

To be clear, lower-cost ECG devices have been available before the Apple Watch. AliveCor's KardiaBand ECG watch band for the Apple Watch debuted at the end of 2017. But the Move ECG looks like one of the most promising signs that ECG tech could start entering more affordable fitness wearables this year.

Withings

Withings is also putting ECG into its newest blood pressure cuff, the Withings BPM Core, which combines standard cuff-based blood pressure measurement with an ECG sensor and a digital stethoscope that promises to measure for heart valve health. The $250 BPM Core is also under review for FDA and CE clearance, with the same Q2 targeted release date.

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