Swiss watch brand Alpina has released an update to its Alpina X hybrid smartwatch, and it’s fair to say it’s not messing around with the specs or design.
Following on from the AlpinaX, the 45mm Alpina X Alive packs in GPS, a heart rate monitor and an AMOLED touchscreen onto the face of its analogue watch. It joins a growing list of upcoming smartwatches slated for 2020.
Alpina is using a Philips heart rate sensor, which hasn’t been used on too many consumer devices, but was a key part of Philips’ FDA listed Health Watch back in 2016.
The screen shows the time and date, timers, battery percentage, heart rate, step count, alarms, notifications and hydration reminders.
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The spec sheet lists a ‘hydrometer’, without further explanation of what that means technically or in terms of implementation.
The companion app has been overhauled and includes sleep tracking, breathing reminders, and fitness coaching too. In addition to the tracking of sleep cycles, there’s also a smart alarm feature that uses a pre-set window to try and wake you in a light sleep phase rather than deep sleep.
The Alpina X Alive has sport profiles for tracking, running, swimming, yoga, walk, Nordic walking, treadmill and cycling. And it will report reporting VO2 Max – showing that Alpina is really focusing on the performance sport audience.
Alpina is talking up its online configurator too, which enables you to customise the colour of things like the dials, hands and straps.
However, all these extra features mean that the Alpina X Alive requires charging like a normal smartwatch – albeit with an impressive seven day battery life in smartwatch mode.
You can bag the Alpina X Alive in two colorways – a brushed navy blue Glassfiber case or polished stainless steel.
Alpina AlpinerX Alive costs the equivalent of $1,030, while the polished stainless steel version is about $1,340. The company’s site is presented like a crowdfunding project (the original Alpina smartwatch launched on Kickstarter) – and it’s offering early birds 50% off.
That means a Glassfiber case for 500CHF and stainless steel for 648CHF. They ship in August 2020 and September 2020 respectively. The US and UK isn't included yet, but will be in due course.
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James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.