> "UNA is currently a non-submersible device due to its innovative modular design. So, swimming is not something we offer as an activity, nor do we advise it. UNA is IPX5 rated, which means it is splash & showerproof to a high degree."
If I had a dollar for every time some project that was ipx5 rated failed after getting caught in the rain one too many times...I'd have enough to buy another Garmin Fenix.
I got all the way to the order screen thinking it was IP68 because my eyes scanned over "UNA features a universal IP68 rated usb-c charging cable" and thought the port was IP68.
The CABLE is IP68? But the watch is IPX5? This is just up to the line of criminally deceptive false advertising. It's not criminal because the fine print, but what an absolute loss of trust. They know what they're doing. IPX5 is a no-go, which they know, which is why they're being so deceptive.
Cue to younger me that discovered the difference between water resistant and water proof when I found out that my "7 melodies electronic watch" didn't survive after a few minutes in the swimming pool.
Will the UNA hint us with a little bit of fog on the window?
I too destroyed my "7 melodies electronic watch" back in the 80's by taking it for a swim at the beach .. man, that was so disappointing. Did get me on the CASIO Data Bank train, though ..
Yeah that's a non-starter, I don't ever wanna worry about that in a watch. And putting "designed for lifetime" next to it is just hilarious, where are you gonna trek with no water, from bathroom to kitchen ?
I would not buy a watch rated less than IP68/IPX-8, annd ideally it would be much more water resistant. Apple Ultra watches are rated to 100m of water which is well beyond that.
The watch I am wearing right now is a steel automatic that would have an IP69 rating as it’s rated to 150 meters of water depth.
The only IP ratings that I trust are on dive computers and dive computer watches (but I've read mixed results about Apple Watch Ultras for diving). The Garmin Descent Mk3i dive computer and smart watch is a solid performer.
Yeah, and drop your iPhone, in a ruggedized case, into 3 inches of bath water for 5 seconds from a height of one foot and then realize apple's IP68 claim is laughable.
I wash my iPhone like every month. As I do with all of my phones for the past decade. Zero issues. I had a problem only once a long time ago, when I was in water with one of my Sony, but they replaced it immediately. No issue with the replacement.
Yes, this happens to people all the time. The seals that keep water out degrade over time. New phones are generally ok, but heat, dirt, detergent/salt in water, etc. wear them down until they are not water resistant anymore.
This is also why almost none of the manufacturers will fix the device under warranty when there is water damage, despite the IP rating.
Even Apple themselvers recommend against submerging and iPhone in water:
To prevent liquid damage, avoid: [...] Intentionally submerging your iPhone in water
The water resistance in these phones exist so that the phone hopefully survives when they get wet accidentally (heavy rain, pool drop, etc.). Not to shower with the phone, cleaning it by putting it under the tap, or doing underwater photography. Usually, it survives, until the seals fail.
Interesting. I've seen people wash their phones in just simple soap and I've done the same many times. I only use pretty minimalist castille soap though. Figured that would have the least chance of damaging the oleophobic coatings
My old iPhone 13 I used to take swimming daily in a salt pool, it was still running fine after 2 years of that, although the contacts in the lightning port did eventually corrode (now I can only charge it wirelessly)
I felt while running next to the sea and my iPhone bounced on the ground and ended up somewhere in a levee under water. We could call it until the battery ran out of power. So I guess it depends.
Exactly, it depends. I completely believe your experience. My wife's experience was instant bricking and Apple's warranty completely excludes liquid damage. If you have Apple Care+ they'll replace it for a fee.
My first (and the original) Apple Watch, I won at the company Christmas party. My kid dropped it in the tree sap water under the Christmas tree and I didn’t find it for two days. After a lot of cleaning, it worked perfectly fine for years. I’m on the series 10 now. They’re very tough little devices.
Same for most Garmins (Fenix 8 even has inductive buttons to avoid worn-down seals), Coros, and recent Galaxy Watches (the way beyond IP5X part).
Note though that all these watches are water resistant, the seals degrade over time and water can get in. Even the Apple Watch Ultra, plenty of people who had it leaking after scuba dives or even after swimming.
You can usually improve longetivity by following manufacturer instructions (e.g. typically rinsing with tap water after pool or sea use, avoiding saunas/steam baths, etc.).
The fact that they call it an "open source wearable" when only the SDK is open source feels underhanded. You'd expect at least the OS to be open source.
I just finished swimming, tracked by a Garmin Forerunner 910x which I bought back in 2015 and I have been constantly using since. Wrist band replaced once each side. Battery lifetime still amazing, even with longer bike rides and GPS. Data can be analyzed locally. Uptime since I bought it: almost 100%.
Amazing peace of Hardware.
Also their algorithms are cool. If the watch tells me to rest more than 24 hours, I know, I will be tired the next day.
The two features that I miss are built in heartrate monitor and temperature sensor. I payed around 500€ back then. Over the years I use this watch, the price became very reasonable.
Honestly, Garmin watches are amazing. Going from a watch I had to charge daily (Samsung Gear line) to one I charge about 3 times a month feels incredibly liberating, particularly for travel. _And_ it feels almost as slim and light as my old Pebble Time Round.
I agree completely! Our Garmin Descent Mk3i dive computer smart watches are the best watches I've ever seen. They just work. You can charge it for an hour or so and it's good for 25 days. I hated having to charge previous watches every day. It has a double-tap light on/off feature with a very bright LED, four light levels, and a red light mode. It automatically starts tracking my dives and is rated to 200 meters. It can also do diver-to-diver messaging, air tank tracking, and group tracking using subwave sonar. And it has all the normal pulse ox, heart rate tracking, step tracking, sleep tracking, and smartwatch stuff. Just don't enable the one touch kill-switch ;-). Apparently it's a feature for military divers to erase their data (but sounds like a marketing gimmick).
True, but in defense or Garmins, one cool feature is that they are really similar to their GPSr units in that you can just connect them to a computer and transfer data and maps (including many custom maps) through MTP (or as a USB drive on older models). Plus they work with Gadgetbridge. So you can pretty much use the watch forever without Garmin involved.
I have a Garmin Vivoactive 3. Fantastic watch but I find the HRM underwhelming. Not very accurate and drains battery. I pair a chest band with it instead for much better quality monitoring.
The missing heart-rate monitor is a pretty big limitation for a lot of users. LOL. Imagine writing a review and leaving the heart rate in last place. Just don’t write a review then.
He's talking about an 11 year old device of a 15 year old (long since discontinued) design, even flagship devices were less featureful then than some mid-market devices are now. Imagine expecting a review of such a device to be enticing to someone comparing modern options…
Also, not everyone with a GPS watch cares that much about heart rate. I am a runner (well, less so now that I used to be, but working on fixing that) and have a Feninx7, not for the health tracking features but for route tracking and the long battery life (for “ultra” events covering many hours or even multiple days).
As a former very very fast swimmer, i never found a watch that worked. The ones with the features were to heavy/draggy. So i always bought dirt cheap ones that i could leave at one end of the lane. Cheap ironmans. They got stepped on every day. People would apologise and i would throw the watch across the deck to show how much i did not care about scratches. Try this: put your watch on your other wrist. The weight/drag difference will be dramatic.
The price is also insane nowadays though. IMO they are very vulnerable to the likes of Coros, who also have MIP watches that last for weeks, have much faster mapping and are less than half the price.
Part of the selling point of a smartwatch, atleast in my opinion, is its ability to run apps that aren't developed by the manufacturer - for example, ones that help me be able to see my blood sugar from my CGM on my watch. They have a whole section of their site for developers, but I can't seem to find a link to any kind of store, even though they specifically say developers should register on their portal
Some good points were already brought up in the comments (IP5X, USB C charging), but I have the feeling that it's also just not a good fitness tracker/smartwatch.
I see a single unboxing of the watch from three weeks ago on Youtube and zero reviews on YT or websites. Just posts based on their PR release that it's available now. (Though some clearly already shipped.)
Thus, it's unfortunately very likely that the product is also not good at its main purpose, tracking activities, workouts and health. If it would only even come somewhat close to the performance of all the competitor smartwatches/trackers, they'd be louder about that part.
so it's been out for less than a month. That's why you've seen zero reviews on websites, it's an indie Kickstarter. They don't have the marketing budget of a big wearables brand.
It has a GPS, IMU, and heart rate sensor: That's enough, obviously, to track activities, workouts, and health which their competitors do with the exact same set of sensors. It remains to be seen how accurate those are, or how well the manufacturer and community can develop useful algorithms to turn raw sensor data into activity logs and actionable health insights, but step 1 is to release an MVP to get people wearing the watch and logging data, and step 2 is to use the data to improve the algorithms.
It's not as simple as just dropping a heart rate sensor though. It also took Garmin, Coros, Apple, etc. several generations to make good-enough heart rate sensors and most of them are very proprietary.
> UNA is currently a non-submersible device due to its innovative modular design. So, swimming is not something we offer as an activity, nor do we advise it. UNA is IPX5 rated, which means it is splash & showerproof to a high degree.
that's the thing about these "open" devices, there's always one "would absolutely be considering" use case that they never meet. makes it real easy to not buy one ;)
For me the value of Garmin (Forerunner) is their proprietary algorithm for calculating Stress Level from HRV. It is the basis for the Body Battery measure. I find it useful to see how food and activity affects my stress levels.
I guess it would be possible to reverse engineer a similar stress level calculation. Perhaps AI-powered?
I'm not sure the body battery/stress measures are that great. Garmin is infamous for having an awful sleep algo and it still has a lot of trouble detecting naps. It doesn't bode well for being able to get stress data. I think it's good for generally determining high stress vs low stress and when you've overdone exercise recently but probably not much more.
Body battery is amazing. I had long COVID/ME/CFS, and looking at the body battery when waking up was an outstanding predictor of how my day was going to be. When I hit 5% body battery, I was really feeling horrible.
It's just a collation of sleep-end RHR/HRV. It's completely trivial and many manufacturers do this correctly; both are extremely reliable predictors of recovery metrics.
Garmin has absolutely shitty sleep tracking but it doesn't matter; any wearable more or less nowadays can get static heart rate correct, leading to more or less accurate recovery metrics.
"Collect every paper you can find on RHR/HRV/etc. recovery metrics. Develop an algorithm for predicting recovery score per day based on the research" as a prompt to a Codex or Claude agent can probably get you 98-100% of the way there.
Edit: As a proof of concept, I had ChatGPT Pro 5.6 write the algorithm with my Fitbit data. Looks great.
Do you have a particular hardware sensor requirement needed to clone the body battery function? I’m interested in developing this too but always resisted getting a smartwatch due to privacy concerns. If there’s something available that’s Gadgetbridge compatible I’d be very interested.
HRV is an indicator of how much stress you are experiencing. The variability increases when you are more relaxed and under less stress and decreases as your stress level increases. The relationship is a bit counterintuitive but it's a thing.
My body battery and stress often starts declining for no apparent reason and then 12-24 hours later I feel the symptoms of an illness. Similarly, when in a tough training block, HRV is a great tool to gauge how hard I ought to be able to go: I've tried to push through and just do a tough workout anyways when it's out of range, but failed to complete the workout in good form, or felt superficially crappy but had good training readiness according to the watch and was able to do better than expected.
The same holds true in the other direction, I don't log into Connect or scroll through the multitudinous widgets of data often enough to really keep tabs on this stuff, and when I get sick or feel good or bomb a workout or succeed at a workout when I felt off, the metrics consistently back up the actual results.
Personally, I've been thinking about jumping ship to a Coros Apex 4 if my battered Fenix 6 ever gives up the ghost - Garmin's prices are insane these days. At $270, this is cheap enough in comparison to a $1200 Fenix 8 Pro to take the chance. I could buy this and a $480 Apex 4, and then decide I didn't like either of them and go back to a used Forerunner 955, before spending as much as a new top-end Garmin.
Personally using a 955 I recently (ish) got new direct from Garmin while they were still selling them. Got some major discount through a link I believe was tied to health insurance or something.
The newest watches seem insanely priced though and don't seem to add much. But the newest Enduro with decent solar is tempting
I like this a lot. USB-C is obviously not ideal for a super durable plug but with the right cap (sounds like they use a rubber insert?) it could be great. Especially since it would allow direct data access.
What might be cool for a version 2:
1. Custom hardshell "door" to cover the USB-C port. Something that cannot fall off the watch. The port itself could be well sealed like a phone and then have this additional layer of physical protection.
2. Wireless charging of some type (or even add pogo pin as well). Would be nice to top up charge without having to expose the USB-C and probably increase the plug life. Does this require a glass back? Because obviously that would not be ideal in a watch.
3. Better waterproofing. I dont personally use my Garmin for swimming often but would be nice to not have to worry about it.
Anybody know about the battery life in real world use?
Not to pile up on the negativity, but looking at the SDK, first reaction is it's fucking C++ ? Can't wait for my watch to crash in the middle of something. And second reaction, when I see signatures like this :
littered everywhere, it makes my heart sink a little. Can't we have some data types and data modeling in 2026 please ? And leave unit conversion at the front end where it should be and not have to worry about it in every single core API ?
No, we can't. It's an ultra-low-power embedded ARM Cortex-M33 (successor to Cortex-M4) processor, the right language to use when programming it is C++. You want a minimum of abstractions and a close-to-the-metal programming environment to maximize battery life.
Just because its C++ doesn't mean it'll crash, come on, that's just lazy thinking. It could just as well mean that it will be rock solid and industrial strength. After all, a heck of a lot of very important life-critical systems run on C++ ..
This is cool because we need more open competition for the app/identity locked ecosystems of sports related electronics like gps watches, bike computers, and action cams. I hate how none of the major brand ones will work without at least signing up for an account and most wont work at all without the manufacturers app.
Doesn't this also use its own app and services? The only "open" part of it I saw in the docs was that there's an sdk to write your own app that runs on the watch. Better than nothing, i guess, but not quite what I was hoping for.
More than half imo, my Forerunner 265S is pretty much a full-blown coach that fits on my wrist. It adapts training to my sleep (such a great feature when you've just had a baby) keeps track of load, low aerobic, high aerobic, etc...
It's been a fragile piece of hardware, I am on my 3rd one in as many years (always replaced under warranty though), but I still probably wouldn't switch to anything else. When it breaks out of warranty I'll just buy another one.
Love the idea, but I can't handle the big screens on these smart watches. To me it feels like having a fisher price toy on my wrist. Hopefully a more open alternative to Withings will emerge
This is a comparatively small one: 40.25mm diameter screen, 14.4mm thick, at 50g.
My Fenix 6 Pro has a 47mm face, is 14.7mm thick, and weighs 80g (but as a Fenix that's the stainless bezel one, the plastic bezel watches are closer to 50g).
If it has a flashlight and is beyond waterproof, I would maybe consider it.
My Garmin Epix watch is practically bullet proof. I've dove with it in open ocean. I've jet skied with it. I rock climb with it. It's surived 108miles of Unbound (the race) in mud, sun, sweat. I've water rafted with it. I've swam in crappy lakes, streams and jumped off cliffs. Hottubs? also no problem.
Zero chance a iWatch would ever survive these conditions.
Oh and despite all of this, the screen has not scratched, not even a little. Plus it has 5-10 days of battery life... and did I mention I always have a flashlight on me?
I also don't see why an Apple Watch wouldn't survive all those mentioned things. Pretty sure I did all those things with an Apple Watch on, except for the specific 108 mile gravel race. But I don't see why it would fail that.
And both might absolutely scratch while climbing, and if you're unlucky and hit it in the wrong spot, also crack.
That said, if I were an athlete in any of those categories and did it all the time, I'd still absolutely choose a Garmin.
Until I got to the Forerunner 965, my Garmins would easily scratch. I have an Instinct with such a deep gash I cannot see the top 1/4 of the display. The 965 display is wonderful but I still have a couple minor nicks.
They are, they still scratch though (just google e.g. Fenix 7 Sapphire scratches). It's also not on all models. I guess part of it is also just layers on top of it scratching and not the sapphire itself.
But, Apple Watch Ultras and also Titanium models since Series 6? ship with Sapphire crystal too.
I've wasted so much money on vendor charging cables in the past 10 years while traveling or moving that I would probably buy this just for the USB-C port, assuming it is actually
splash proof.
I wonder what HR sensor they use. Samsung apparently has an average error of 7% which is pretty bad, so I wonder if this would be worse. [0]
I really want to like this watch. Price is certainly right, and it does all of the things I'd want out of a Garmin or Apple Watch Ultra. But what problem does this solve for me? In the Apple Watch use case, a replaceable battery would be nice. But in contrast to Garmin, I've never replaced a Garmin because the battery wouldn't hold charge anymore. I've never broken a screen (if one has a habit of that, Garmin and Apple make watches with raised bezels). I just hold on to the Garmin for six or seven years, by which time it's so beat to hell that it's time for a new watch anyway. But I'm wondering if the subtle message isn't aimed at Apple and not Garmin.
USB-C charging would be awesome, instead of Garmin's proprietary plug and a cable that's made from spider silk. I'd prefer, though, wireless charging like Apple. Never once have I pulled an Apple Watch off a charger and said, "WTF? Why didn't it charge?" Garmin, OTOH...
I'm no triathlete, but the "no swimming" kinda puts a damper on my enthusiasm as well.
I wish them well, I love the idea even if I probably won't buy one.
USB-C would suck. Part of the purpose of that proprietary plug is that it's very water resistant and very durable. Imagine getting mud or coarse sand in your USB plug and not being able to charge anymore.
And it's always been terrible, as long as I've been using Garmin watches (their bike computers seem to charge fine, mainly because they use whatever the standard USB plug is at the time). I remember the 410 had some suckass plug that didn't work well. I think it was the 610 with that gawd awful clip. And the 9xx series continues to use that delicate snowflake plug that has to plug in juuuuust right, maybe wiggle the cable a little, otherwise no 5 hour Sunday run for you.
Whereas I throw my Apple Watch in the general vicinity of the magnetic charger, it locks into place, and charges just fine, 100% of the time. Fine, don't use induction like Apple, use two exposed, flush pins and a magnet like my Coros armband HR monitor, because that works 100% of the time, too.
I ran into the same issue when building ProForta.com. My solution was to build a companion app that pulls data (including Garmin) via Health Connect. Right now, it seems that every hardware platform from Oura to Garmin is trying to build their moat around user's data. That's not OK - users need access to the combination of all their data to derive meaningful health benefits. Thats the guiding principle behind lifecare.id (https://lifecare.id)
There are several apps[0] off the top of my head that pull data from Apple's HealthKit. Apple even has a framework for it: HealthKit. That said, I've never written to that API myself, but it observational evidence indicates that you can pull data from Apple just fine. The app I use to pull data off Apple and ship to Strava says as much.
There's a Python API that's "unofficial" but has worked well for me for ages. I've got it hooked up to NextCloud tables and it imports everything once a day. I've now got years of queryable metrics in NC.
Polar has an API where you can get more or less anything out. That bit is fine - sadly you can't put things in (like virtual cycling, or any activities not recorded on the Polar).
Any "open ecosystem" product needs to be a competitive product out of the box, otherwise it's just a development toy. Developers aren't going to enhance your product to fill in all the gaps unless there are customers, and preferably paying ones.
One of the tiles on the buy page says "HR BAND SUPPORT Connect compatible BLE chest straps". But one single connection type doesn't compare to Garmin's list of supported ANT and BLE accessories.
I have an Amazfit Balance, and previously several Amazfit Bips. I really like being able to use my watch as a BLE heartrate monitor with iSmoothRun on iPhone. I gather that being able to do so is not typical for smartwatches.
I do like the idea of USB-C, the garmin's power plug is nothing but annoying. It's really just a matter of battery life and what sort of software integration it has. Although, it's hard to beat the Garmin ecosystem.
I think battery life is the most important. My Garmin Instinct 2 goes about 3.5 weeks between charging (the older non-OLED screen). It has solar, so I usually go over a month.
But a watch, something people will wear swimming, sweaty, in the rain, etc, is something that should ideally follow the wireless charging standards, and not have a plug taking up space, and being a spot for leaks...
Is it hard to get waterpoof, considering that every modern smart phone is both usb-c and waterproof? Important to note that this watch doesn't claim to be waterproof.
> considering that every modern smart phone is both usb-c and waterproof?
I doubt that modern smart phones are waterproof. Who would trust use their smartphone while showering or being in a bathtube (including submerging the smartphone a few centimeters into the water)?
Tons of people trust having their phones while taking a bath or near a swimming pool. I've sometimes clean my phones off by washing them in the sink when they get exceptionally dirty after the kids have been messing with it. I regularly have mine near the pool, and have taken some work meetings while in the pool before. Why not? The featurelist says its waterproof.
I remember when the iPhone 7 had just come out (the first waterproof iPhone), a friend bought one and then went on a cruise. On a shore excursion he was at the docks and saw some cool fish. He dunked his phone in the water to take some cool photos. Everyone looked at him like he was a mad man, dunking his iPhone in the water just to take some pictures.
This product category is very important to me because of security concerns. The push notifications are stored in a database on most smartwatches that are relatively simple to hack. This and other vulnerabilities represent a significant attack surface on top of smartphones.
On a more social side, I find that people are more frustrated if I don't immediately reply when they know I have a smartwatch. While I understand that these watches make it easier to stay notified, I find it annoying to have more expectations in return. I still have plausible deniability with smartwatches similar to the Una watch. Otherwise, the toxicity of the technology is significantly greater.
Nice, this might be the right thread to ask a question i have had on my mind for a while: is there a watch that can track some biological metrics (heart rate, steps, sleep data etc) but allowing my to pull data off it without using some proprietary platform? Basically i want to store my data in my own database.
The problem isn’t “one screw to change a battery”, the issue is parts cost, if they are expensive, it defeats the purpose. The other day I wanted to buy a new small container for the air freshener I have, and I found the container only is sold in packs and far more expensive than buying the freshener with one container, so I bought a new device instead with one container.
Also, any watch right now should be waterproof, it won’t survive otherwise.
The title is misleading at least, to compete with garmin you need the similar offering, with swimming/waterproofing being the huge outliar here but also the ecosystem and like it or not features like the notifications.
Very valiant first effort for sure but after 6 years with a Garmin Fenix still holding 90% of its battery (and being able to replace it), I'm not their potential customer.
I would say the big outlier is the battery life (for Garmin). Theres other options for waterproof stuff and a lot dont need something good enough for swimming. Of course its a huge plus.
Talking about a 6s pro and got at the beginning around 10 days without much GPS enabled exercise, after 6 years I get about 9 days!
Good thing with the Fenix line is that you stop the updates which I did a year in so I don't really care about them, but I do think they stopped firmware updates for the 6series about a year ago.
Can you analyze the data your watch and body generates locally using FOSS without uploading it all to surveillance capitalists? That'd be the true alternative.
> without uploading it all to surveillance capitalists
I by now often see the term "surveillance capitalists"/"surveillance capitalism" on HN.
While it is a great thing to fight surveillance organizations, don't forget that communist countries had/have (for the latter: People's Republic of China) much worse surveillance in place.
Charging? It likely adds a lot of cost and complexity to add mag-charging if you’re not Apple or Samsung. Does Garmin even have it yet? (Edit: only on a small number of models at the premium end of their range.)
So it’s an important differentiator from Garmin, which uses a proprietary connector for its charging cable, that is easy to lose/break and expensive to replace (from personal experience with a 2022 Epix).
I love the Garmin pogo chargers. I've got a few of their $3 puck cables scattered about my home, car, and office, a USB-C to Garmin adapter in my keychain and backpacking kit, and someone recently made a neat little portable battery that I wore under my strap in an ultra to recharge mid-activity.
Yeah, if you only use the stock Garmin cable (why isn't it at least right-angle?!) it kinda sucks, but there are lots of products that do it really well:
I would much rather these totally waterproof surface-level pads that put the spring pogo pins in the cable than give up internal device volume to a USB receptacle or magnetic charging coils.
the second one are fantastic, i think i have 5+ distributed through the house and in several bags. 100 % agree, the garmin cable sucks, but at least they seem to be fine with 3rd parties offering different solutions.
If I had a dollar for every time some project that was ipx5 rated failed after getting caught in the rain one too many times...I'd have enough to buy another Garmin Fenix.
reply