It's been a busy few days at the IFA exhibition in Berlin, and in amongst the plethora of new products announced is this Spark fitness watch from TomTom. Its focus is on combining locally stored music with your workouts, so you can leave your phone at home when you need to.
There are now so many smartwatch/fitness tracker hybrids on the market that it's difficult for anyone to stand out. TomTom tries using a bunch of different band colors (eight in all) and the aforementioned music-playing capabilities to do it. There's 3 GB of storage inside, enough to hold about 500 songs from iTunes or Windows Media Player (though you don't get anything fancy like Apple Music or Spotify).
You even get an exclusive 11-song Ministry of Sound playlist pre-loaded on the Spark to help get your workouts off to a good start.
It's by no means TomTom's first wearable tracker device but this is the smallest and most compact one yet: it's designed to be worn through the day and the night, with rudimentary step and sleep tracking built into the tracker. There's no room for a headphone socket, though, so you're going to have to go with some wireless Bluetooth headphones to tune into your music.
Up to a week's worth of data can be stored on the watch itself while the accompanying TomTom MySports app gives you the opportunity for a deeper dive into your statistics. Notably, there is the option of a heart rate monitor and a built-in GPS unit here, components you don't always get with trackers like these and which add to the appeal of the Spark.
Like the offline music capabilities, the GPS unit means you can ditch your phone more readily for the next jog or cycling session outdoors. The wearable device is still going to be able to keep track of where you've been and how far you've traveled (the Apple Watch, in contrast, uses the GPS data from a connected iPhone).
We don't have a full list of specs for the watch yet – and we'll have to postpone a more considered opinion until we can do a full review – but the device goes on sale in October for €249 (roughly US$280, £185, AUS$400) and up, depending on which version you opt for.
Source: TomTom
