Creoir unveiled the Harmony Watch concept at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, introducing a new take on what the activity tracker could become.
The Harmony Watch is a well-being wearable designed for women, which detects motion, light and sleep patterns on one interface in a bid to promote a healthier lifestyle.
It's constructed from ceramics, leather and stainless steel and it has a similar shape to a pebble that you might skim in the sea, measuring around 40mm wide and 5mm slim. The Harmony Watch goes down a completely different path to many of the current activity trackers available as it offers a "design-first" approach, so we got our hands on it to see what we made of it.
Like the Withings Activité, which also considers design, the Harmony Watch features a traditional analogue face and combines it with a smart feature. In the case of the Activité, it counted steps, calories and distance with only steps shown on the face itself, while the Harmony Watch opts for what the company calls "harmony rings" to display tracked metrics relating to your activity, light and sleep patterns.
The watch face of the Harmony Watch is oval and made primarily of white ceramic but there are a couple blue metallic stainless steel details to give it a different edge. To the right-hand side of the oval is a small dial to adjust the analogue clock and the clock itself has matching blue metallic dials.
A small logo sits above and below the dials within the clock and there is also a blue metallic inner trim placed inside the white frame of the oval face. It can only be seen when the device it held at an angle but it helps add another dimension to the design.
The analogue face sits on the right-hand side but rather than just a plain circle, it looks like a speech bubble, which enables it to lead nicely into a half-moon shape for the harmony rings to fall into. There are three main rings and one smaller core ring, and each of the main rings has a small indented dot within it to help you monitor the three parameters. Over the top of the main rings is a small, curved rectangle that indicates where the three indented dots should be when the metrics are perfectly balanced.
The rings are distinguished from the face easily as they are stainless steel with a blue metallic colouring that moves depending on the parameters, compared to the plain white ceramic finish of the clock.
When your wellbeing metrics are balanced, the three indented dots on the harmony rings will be inline and in the rectangle mentioned earlier. The blue element of the ring will then lead up to the dot so the bottom half of the moon will be completely blue, while the top will be plain stainless steel. When your sleep, motion and light parameters are unbalanced, the blue and plain stainless steel will vary in heights, making it easier to see which you need to improve to help your overall wellbeing.
On the rear of the pebble-looking watch face is the same plain ceramic white that is smooth and comfortable against the skin. A blue trim is featured like the front, but it isn't inside a frame so it is much more apparent on the rear than the front. Both the Creoir and Harmony Watch logos are present and the blue dial is more prominent when looking at it from the rear.
Following the blue and white theme, the Harmony Watch concept also opts for a blue and white leather strap. It measures around 20mm thick, which looks quite thin as the oval face itself is pretty much double the width.
We weren't quite sold on the strap as it opts for a tie-dye kind of design starting with white leather and fading into the blue as you get further round to the clasp. It's a little odd but it is different and different is good. The leather didn't feel as luxurious as the strap on the Withings Activité but we certainly prefer it to plastic.
The Harmony Watch is lovely and slim on the wrist, sitting around 5mm off it when on, which is much slimmer than many activity trackers on the market and we liked this about it. It's a very interesting design and one that will really float some people's boat, while completely sinking others.
It's cool and quirky, which is great as it offers something different from the average. We'd certainly prefer an all white or all blue strap rather than the blending of the two but overall, we liked the design of the face for its uniqueness.
The company has aimed it at women and we can see why as it does have quite a feminine appearance, although we don't think it is completely off limits for men by any means. Creoir said the design of the Harmony Watch concept was inspired by the rules of geometry that influences people's perception on beauty propositions and balance.
It was also designed to allow you to see the balance of your metrics at a single glance and this does seem like it would be possible. The company claims it is the app that has the brain but we didn't see it in action as it was a concept so it isn't something we can judge yet.
We are looking forward to seeing if the Harmony Watch concept does come to market and how popular it will be however. It might not be to everyone's tastes, but we love that it is different, is made from solid materials and makes design much more of a consideration than many of the activity trackers currently available. It's a cool concept and one that shows a glimpse of the exciting times that could be just around the corner.