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I’ve reviewed every type of fitness watch and thought I had seen it all, but my first glimpse of an Una watch had my jaw on the floor: There is a USB-C port on the side of the watch. Not a set of pins for a magnetic charger, or a socket that requires a proprietary cable—just a hole you can stick a regular old USB-C cable into. This is what watches have been missing.
The Una watch started popping up on my feed about two years ago, and finally started shipping this summer. I’ve been wearing a review unit for a few weeks. The Una watch is advertised as repairable and upgradable, with open source software. There are little screws that I can see around the watch face, and on the back panel. The Una website sells a replacement battery for $40 and a replacement screen for $50. They also sell the tiny screwdriver that you’ll need to make repairs, but if you’re the kind of person who gets excited about a repairable watch, you may already have your own.
Overall, I like it. The Una watch has an MIP screen (an older tech that is a cult favorite) and an app that’s simple but effective. Not everything lived up to my expectations in testing, but no features failed outright. This feels like a solid start to the concept of “one watch for life” and I’m excited to see how the hardware and software offerings evolve over time.
The Una watch and its app are simple
Most wearables these days try to do as many jobs as possible, whether they’re the right tool for those jobs or not. I am honestly fine with a running watch measuring time, distance, and heart rate while I run, and not trying to score my sleep or pretend it can tell how fast I’m aging.
The Una watch app shows my steps, activity, and floors climbed for the day, as well as my average and resting heart rates. When I go for a run, it tracks my pace, distance, and heart rate during the run and gives me a nice page of data afterward. It reliably uploads this data to Strava, and can make little bar graphs of how these numbers vary from day to day.
Developers have lots to play with
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
There is a “store” (everything is free, as far as I can tell) where you can download extra watch faces and features. One I’m trying out is a habit tracker called HabitLab: It asks you every evening whether you had alcohol, cigarettes, a late meal, and so on. Every morning, it asks how you’re feeling. And then, even though the watch doesn’t normally track your sleep, the app takes note of your overnight HRV and resting heart rate. Over time, it will correlate the answers to those questions with the sleep data, to hopefully give results that are similar to Whoop’s journal analysis. (I haven’t been using it long enough to judge how well it works, but stay tuned.)
HabitLab appears in one area of the watch as a standalone app; another, called Gym Sets, gives me a strength training activity type, which the watch did not otherwise have. I just select Gym Sets instead of “Run” or “Workout,” and the app tracks my heart rate while also giving me a set timer.
The store is small, and the apps are simple, without many of the features that you can find on the apps for Apple Watch or other more fully featured devices. But the Una watch has only been out for a few months, so it’s not surprising that users haven’t created a plethora of apps yet. The company’s software development kit, and even its circuit board designs, are free for people to download and develop from.
I’m not impressed with the Una watch’s accuracy
Credit: Beth Skwarecki
I was worried that the emphasis on repairability, and the affordable price, meant that the Una watch would be made with components that maybe aren’t fully up to date. Heart rate sensors have been getting better over the years, so Una’s will have to be pretty good if it wants to even sit in the middle of the pack. Garmin, Apple, and now Fitbit have raised the bar quite a bit.
I will say the GPS track was reasonably good; on trail runs and road runs, it accurately followed the path I actually took. (It doesn’t seem to do quite as well as a new Garmin, but it’s still perfectly usable and its distance totals added up to reasonably accurate numbers.)
Heart rate accuracy disappointed me, though. When I first got the watch, the heart rate tracking was abysmal. I sent a few emails to my contact at Una, and almost had to publish this review with very bad news about the watch’s accuracy, but then a firmware update for the Una watch popped up on my phone. I installed it, and then tried another test run or two, and the heart rate accuracy is much better. If you get the watch, make sure it’s updated to at least 1.6.0.
That said, the update brought the heart rate accuracy to a level where I’d say it’s adequate, but it’s not good (and definitely not great). Its graph follows the ups and downs of my heart rate as measured by a chest strap, but sometimes the Una will spike and show a reading that’s significantly higher than my heart is actually beating. In the graph below, note the spike to around 165 when the true value was 155, and then later in the workout the Una watch detects another spike around 160 when my heart rate was actually around 145 and decreasing. (I saw similar anomalies in multiple workouts.)
The Una watch is a good start, but it’s not ready for everyone
In my time with the Una watch, many things made me happy. I still love the USB-C charging, and it was a delight to just plug it in to the same nightstand cable I normally use with my phone, no need to go looking for an adapter or dongle.
I like the MIP screen, which was brilliant in the sunlight and had a serviceable backlight for use indoors or in the dark. The small number of workout profiles and the small number of glances and apps is just fine if you’re not asking for much from a watch, and I wasn’t. It’s minimalist, low-distraction, and there isn’t a single AI-based feature anywhere. A true breath of fresh air.
And at $199, you’re not paying extra for these privileges. The price is just a little more than the new Fitbit Edge ($179.99), but less than a Coros Pace 4 ($249) or a Garmin 70 (also $249). The Una watch doesn’t have as many features or activities as these watches, but perhaps those pluses I mentioned make up for it.
The Una watch would be a good pick for someone who is excited about developing apps, wants a repairable watch, always loses charging adapters, or appreciates a minimalist approach. But would I recommend it for the average person who just wants a basic fitness watch? I’m not so sure.
The flaky heart rate sensor disqualifies it for a wearer who wants a more accurate, modern watch. The MIP screen is going to look old and weird to people who have gotten used to brighter, clearer AMOLED screens. The lack of sleep tracking or other convenience metrics may be hard to take when plenty of watches have these features.
So I like this watch today, with reservations, and I have high hopes for the future. If Una lives up to its vision, it’s going to be great to see replaceable components become available—perhaps there will be an option for an AMOLED screen for those who want it, and maybe there’s room for heart rate accuracy improvement in future firmware updates.
But a lot depends on the company itself. “One watch for life” implies that the company stays around long enough to make more than one model. I’m also hopeful that the future offerings will match what people want, and that the watch and app will stay uncluttered and subscription-free. But surely there will be competing interests that the company has to balance as they grow (if they grow), so time will tell whether the reality lives up to the vision. That said, I am liking the vision a lot.
