The Steel HR has a single button which you can press to cycle through various screens on the tiny LCD, including a step count, your current heart rate or your distance travelled today. You use the app to choose which screens should be included. It's true that on many smartwatches you can have all this information displayed screen at the same time with just a turn of the wrist, but the advantage here is that the battery life lasts for weeks (Withings says up to 25 days, depending on how often you work out).

As a watch for daily wear the Steel HR looks nice and, obviously, tells the time. But you can also have it vibrate when your phone gets a notification or call, and the caller's name or app icon and notification text will scroll across the LCD for a few seconds. You'll want to set it so only notifications from important apps make it through, but the system works well and makes it so I can keep working or walking and just glance at my wrist to see if a buzz is worth grabbing my phone for, which honestly is 90 per cent of the reason I like to wear a smartwatch.

Activity tracking kicks in automatically if the watch detects you walking briskly, running or swimming (it's rated up to 50 metres), and will report your results to the app. You can also start workout mode by holding the button and choosing from one of around 30 support sports and activities (you use the app to choose five for your watch to remember, so you don't have to scroll past equestrian and windsurfing every time). There's no on-board GPS so if you want map and pace data for running or biking you need to keep your phone on you.

Sleep tracking is also automatic, if you don't mind sleeping with your watch on, and you can also set a silent alarm that vibrates during the optimal sleep cycle for an easy wake up. With both sleep and workouts, results are logged in a timeline on the app alongside heart and step data, so you can check it at a glance or dive in and compare over time.

Loading

I've been using the watch alongside a $179 Withings Body+ smart scale, which keeps track of your weight and a range of other stats. It uses body mass index to calculate your ideal weight based on your height, and bioelectrical impedance analysis to calculate how much of your weight is fat, muscle and bone. These are far from perfect methods and in any event body measurement tech should always be used with a degree of caution, but I was impressed with how the watch and scales integrated together using the app.

For example when you step on the scale it weighs you before displaying a series of stats and measurement screens you decide using the app, and you can choose to include steps information collected from your watch. Once all the data's on your phone you could also compare your workout information with an increase in muscle mass or a decrease in weight. Programs work across devices too, for example my wife opted into the pregnancy program which offers insights via the app, adjusts feedback on weightgain and also disables many of the measurements from the scales.

Overall the Steel HR watch is a flexible low-key activity tracker in a nice anti-gadget package. I loved not having to deal with the touchscreen fiddling and constant charging of a smartwatch, the options for sleep and weight tracking (with the addition of a scale) is great and I only occassionally missed not having more data available on my wrist. The addition of a weather forecast option in the watch's screen menu would go a long way to addressing that. For an extra $30 you can get the Steel HR Sport with a larger face, more rugged look, ventilated band and VO2 max estimation so the app can give you a fitness level assessment after workouts.