Week in wearable: Watch Series 4 rated, Withings returns and Huami gets busy

Welcome to your latest instalment of Week in Wearable as we look back at what's gone down in another busy few days in the world of wearable tech.

Down below we're going to get into all things Apple, Withings and Huami. Before that we need to talk about some of the other stories that made the cut on the site this week. Like the potential new name of Huawei's next smartwatch, another big name wearable getting into health, a new Spidey wearable from Garmin and the game of golf getting the AR treatment courtesy of Vuzix.

But if you only care about the big stories, we'll dive into those below, plus select the best reads from across the site. If you want to check in on all of the news, head over to our latest wearable news section.

Apple Watch Series 4 gets some love

The Apple Watch Series 4 is now up for grabs and the journos worldwide (including ourselves) have been having their say on the next generation smartwatch.

The first Apple Watch Series 4 reviews have rolled out and people like it a lot. The design changes (including a bigger screen), new watchOS 5 features and improved health and sports tracking features have been well received. It's managed to bag the highest score we've given a smartwatch this year and while we still have some grievances about battery life that's the same as the Series 3 and a jump up in price, the pros certainly outweigh the cons on the Series 4.

Now it's over to the public to decide whether the Watch Series 4 will be deemed a success. The addition of an ECG heart rate sensor is its most groundbreaking new feature. but it's one that only prospective buyers in the US will be able to use until Apple gets clearance in other countries.

Withings returns with new hybrid

After Withings co-founder Eric Carreel agreed to buy back the digital health business he and his pal Cedric decided to sell to Nokia earlier this year, we were promised another rebrand. That rebrand is complete with the arrival of the Withings Steel Sport HR.

The successor to the Steel HR is another hybrid very much built in the mould of its predecessor. This time it's adding to its sports tracking prowess by adding GPS support (via your phone) and the ability to take VO2 Max measurements.

It still has that digital display baked into the traditional-looking watch face and prmises up to 25 days battery life when you put all of those tracking features to use.

We've spent some time with the new hybrid (full review incoming) - have a read of our early impressions in our Withings Steel Sport HR first look.

Huami's gang of new wearables

There's one company we've spent a lot of time talking about this week and it's not been Apple, Fitbit or Samsung.

Chinese outfit Huami has been a busy bunch launching new wearables and a platform that will power its next-generation devices to do more when they land next year. We got our first look at the Amazfit Verge, a feature-packed watch that has built-in GPS, a heart rate monitor, NFC for contactless payments and five-day battery life. The Verge was also joined by the Health Band 1S, a fitness tracker that lets users take ECG recordings to detect atrial fibrillation a lot like a certain smartwatch that launched this week.

Huami also found time to talk about the Xiaomi Mi Band 3 NFC edition too and revealed its new AI-powered wearable chipset that has biometric data tracking at the core. It's fair to say that this is one company to keep an eye on in 2019.