Oaxis' Timepiece is like a more minimalist Withings Steel HR

Withings' signature wearable, the Steel HR, is arguably one of the more iconic smartwatch designs out there, with a clean face and tiny digital display.

Now Oaxis wants to take it on with the Timepiece, its own hybrid smartwatch, which is available on Kickstarter now for $89. In fact, the Timepiece is even more minimalist than Withings' watch, with only etchings to mark the time – though Oaxis' name takes up the 9 o'clock spot.

Read this: The best hybrid smartwatches

Just above the 6 o'clock spot is a small 0.42-inch OLED display that shows your heart rate, messages, battery life, step count, calories burned, distance travelled, sleep tracking and more. There's also 30 days of battery life, so you'll be able to sleep track as much as you can in a month.

It comes in two sizes: 38mm and 41mm. The 38mm comes in either black or gold while the 41mm comes in either black or silver. You can swap in your own bands with the quick release switch too. On the inside, you've got Swiss-made movements from Ronda, which also provides the movements for Mondaine's watches. And oh, both are waterproof to 30m.

The big event is on the underside of the watch though – the heart-rate monitor. Oaxis CEO G-Jay Yong tells Wareable that the company decided to make the Timepiece after it made fitness trackers for the Singaporean government.

Oaxis started to realise that many people were wearing both a fitness tracker and an analogue watch. So it simply decided to combine the two into a single product and save people some wrist space. Thus, simplicity became a mantra for the Timepiece.

"The Timepiece assumes the role of simplicity, or rather, back-to-basics wearables," Yong tells us. Specifically, Oaxis wanted to make a dress watch, largely because a lot of the people that Oaxis saw wearing both a fitness tracker and analogue watch – often on the same wrist – would use a classier dress watch rather than a sporty watch.

Navigating the Timepiece relies on pushing in that crown to scroll between all your metrics, from heart rate to step count. You can't use the crown to actually set the time though – for that you'll have to open up the companion app to adjust the hands of the clock. Of course, you'll also get to use the companion app to check out all your metrics and see your trends over time.

Crowdfund this?

There's never a bad time to ask a question like this, that's for sure. The Timepiece does feel a bit familiar. It looks similar to a Withings, and it's not particularly doing anything wild or out of the ordinary, but then Oaxis isn't really looking to do anything wild or out of the ordinary.

Oaxis just wants to give you a minimalist hybrid watch that also acts as a fitness tracker. And it looks like it does that, but then comes another question: Can you trust Oaxis to deliver and deliver on time? Yong, of course, says you can.

"Every project comes with its own unique risks and challenges but we try to do our very best to minimise them," he says. "As a business, it is our duty to produce products that our customers find useful. It is also our duty to ensure our customers receive the best service and timely delivery of their purchases. We have been in this business for several years now and we aim to do so for a long, long time."

Being a business that's made wearables, Oaxis certainly has its ducks in a row. Yong says the Timepiece is its final stage of production, that design and materials are set in stone and that 80% of manufacturing is done. The Kickstarter seems to be more of a way to drum up some excitement, though Yong says that the crowdfunding money is headed to pay the rest of the manufacturing deposit before units ship out by February 2019.

So should you crowdfund this? If you've ever been interested in a Withings but didn't want to drop the cash on it, this does look good – especially the design of it. The one thing you can't be sure about is whether the heart rate sensor and other tech will be up to scratch. But we'll have to wait to get our hands on it to find that out.