​Alpina X Alive smartwatch supercharges the Swiss-made hybrid

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.

The 45mm Alpina X Alive packs in GPS, a heart rate monitor and an AMOLED touchscreen onto the face of its analogue watch.

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.

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.

Alpina X Alive smartwatch supercharges the Swiss-made hybrid

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 fiberglass 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 – 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.

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