Skagen releases its Signatur Hybrid collection for men

Adding to its growing stable of hybrid smartwatches, Skagen has announced its latest connected timepiece collection will be the Signatur Hybrid.

The Fossil Group-backed designer has released the watch in four 42mm styles for men — silver steel mesh, brown leather with a black dial, olive leather with a grey dial, and black leather with a white dial — with all variants starting at $175.

Read this: The best hybrid smartwatches

As we know from the Skagen Jorn and Hald devices that were released earlier this year, and the Skagen Hagen in late 2016, there's often little change in terms of both looks and smarts under the hood between collections. We even had a quick play with the new hybrid, and can report that the only real difference here is the longer side buttons and the sub-dial similar to the one featured on the 2016 Hagen.

Nevertheless, the Signatur Hybrid will offer wearers the ability to tap into activity, sleep and goal tracking, call and text notifications and also automatic time and date functionality.

Users can also customise the three buttons on the side of the watch in order to gain hands-free control of their smartphone — allowing for the likes of music and camera control. And as you might expect, the watch will work in tandem with the Skagen companion app, which is available on both Android and iOS.

Picking up a smart analogue device, of course, is often more about the looks than the sensors and connected elements. But, like many of its hybrid brethren, this also offsets the lack of these features by providing a lengthy battery life — in this case, Skagen's Signatur Hybrid collection will see you simply replace the coin cell battery after up to six months of use.

And while these four designs are solely targeting men, it would be a surprise if we didn't see similar equivalents for women drop over the coming months. After all, the company did indicate it would release 19 hybrid devices over the course of 2017.

It won't just be Skagen watches sitting in the pipeline, either, with plenty more devices under the Fossil Group umbrella set to release over the second half of 2017. Get ready for the onslaught.