pininfarina Senso Hybrid Smartwatch – an Analogue Watch with Digital Display, Tracks Heart Rate, Steps, Calories, Sleep, Fitness – Compass & Connected GPS Tracking

Gorgeous Watch
Get it! It’s a very classy looking watch and works very well. It’s a minimalist smart watch that only alerts you of the things that are important at the moment. Highly recommend

Lovely watch with a couple of caveats
I bought my Senso hybrid brand new on eBay so I will not be a verified owner but here it is. It is a great watch, very aesthetic and pleasant to use.I purchased it partially because I saw it was made by an Italian company and I figured the servers are in Italy and it will have EU data protection. This was incorrect. The watches are styled by Pininfarina but made by Globix, a Chinese company.The heart metrics were interesting but some months ago the app now says that the ECG function is not available in my region (USA) and it does not synchronize.The watch had an issue, every few days it just crashed and would not come back to life until I touched it to the charger for a few seconds, at which point it rebooted and then required a recalibration of the hands (it did not need to be charged and the issue was independent of how charged the battery was).I reached out two or three times to customer services for help, but got no answer.Eventually I figured out a handling on my own. Instead of setting the bottom dial to display a count of my steps, I switched it to show seconds. No more crashes. Looks like a programming error in the watch OS was making it crash when it had to calculate percentage of step target made.I am concerned that customer service fully ignored my warranty service request on this. But I am glad I figured out a handling because overall the watch is very nice and it is fun to wear.

I want this to work so bad…. AND FINALLY IT DOES!
Trying for three hours, I cannot get the Pininfarina software to find my Pininfarina Senso Hybrid Smartwatch. The software is loaded on my Android phone, The phone’s Bluetooth can see the watch. I have given the software every permission. Bluetooth says the watch is connected, and running.Okay, I had to tell it I had no watch, set up the software, and later tell it to switch to the watch.TOTALLY UNINTUITIVE.Pininfarina has been totally let down by the app, and the PDF manual. Neither is worth a bucket of warm spit. I am a member of Mensa, and have been working with software and manuals for half a century, and I have written manuals for software. So, where does the shame belong? Globics Technology, the licensee? Nope. Pininfarina of course. They set the standards to which Globics will adhere. Nuff said. Pininfarina I hope you read this. The user experience with getting everything set up is insulting. We don’t know what the developers (Globics ) know, and they fail to inform us.The watch is not like an elegant piece of jewelry, it IS an elegant piece of jewelry. I have had 3 Seikos over the decades, each one nicer than before. I love them, but this Pininfarina Senso Hybrid is my new mistress. Yes, it has all those health measurements, and the app measures them against your goals, if you’re into that. I am not. I turned all of them off.I don’t think this watch was sold and returned, but the leather band was damaged where it attaches to the watch. Weird that it got by the QC folks. No matter to me, as I prefer a metal band. I bought one, and ordered another, and will stay with the best one. Apparently Pininfarina believes a gentleman should wear leather, or rubber apparently, since that’s all I could find on Amazon, and I couldn’t find a metal Pininfarina watch band period.

I ordered this watch as a gift for my dad who been after a smart watch for a while.He didn’t want one that looked like an Apple Watch, but something more subtle, so this Pininfarina Senso watch ticked all the boxes.The watch comes in a very smart case with a charging base and USB C cable, a warranty card and a soft cleaning cloth.The quality is excellent and really does ooze quality.Setting up the watch is straight forward. Stick it on the charging dock (you’ll need a compatible plug to plugs the USB C cable in to) and whilst it’s charging, you can download the app from the App Store. There is a QR code inside the box which will take you to an instructions and set up page. You can download all the documents here too.Once the app is downloaded, you simply follow the props, such as signing up for an account and pairing the watch.Using the watch is very easy too. This watch is only a fitness watch and won’t take incoming or make outgoing calls. Still, it makes a great fitness companion. My dad mainly wanted a smart watch for keeping track of his steps and general fitness, so he wouldn’t need any kind of phone functionality anyway.You can set up what sort of fitness regime you want, whether that’s walking, running, cycling etc. via the app. You can also set goals for fitness or keeping track of calories, weight or sleep patterns.One of the great things about this watch is that it has an ECG monitor in it. This is especially handy for my dad who regularly monitors his heart rate. Now he can do it all via the watch and app, it’s super handy!There’s also a weather and compass mode in the menu too which is a nice touch.So far my dad has found it fairly easy to use. He’s not particularly tech savvy but he’s just about finding the app usable. Apart from using it like a regular watch,he pretty much only uses the smart functions for steps and heart rate and said he probably won’t use it for much else.Overall, this is a great quality watch with some nice smart features. It’s pretty straightforward to use and has everything my dad needs to keep track of his fitness levels. His favourite thing about the watch is the ECG and being able to monitor his heart rate.If you’re looking for a wall made, good quality watch that has subtle smart watch features, then you can’t go wrong with this watch.

You instantly can’t fail to be impressed with the workman ship here. Everything about it shows that this was designed and built with plenty of thought.The materials used are superb, everything feels nice and robust, whilst looking good too.The analogue watch is a wonder in itself, the dial is nice and clear, with well engineered surfaces. The hands and digits are nice and clear and contrast well with the dial face, making it easy to tell the time with a quick glance.My only downside to the watch as a physical object, is that it is rather thick, but this is because it is a hybrid smartwatch with plenty of electronics and mechanics inside, so I can’t really complain or deduct a star for this, as they have done an amazing job to keep it as slim as it is.The strap is quite strange, in the sense that it looks and almost feels leather, but it is a rubber of some kind. This might put people off, but it’s actually very nice on the wrist and as I said, looks like leather, which is all quite clever, really.Now to get to the smart features.Firstly and foremost, you have to read the instructions here, there is too much to work out with just going in blind.This watch is pretty fully featured and has the usual step counter, heart beat, sleep tracking etc that all seem to work perfectly well, so I wont bore you with those. The best features of this watch are the GPS and Compass, by far. If like me, you like a wander in the countryside, or a cycle/motorcycle around just for the fun of it down country lanes, then this watch is a great partner. I often pull over on my bike/motorcycle to check my phone to see where I am and what direction I should generally ride in and that takes me time and effort as the apps need loading and then you have to wait for it to connect and then you have to change app to get the compass etc. Well this is great, it’s all in one place, so you spend a lot less time faffing around and more time doing what you intended.There are issues with this app and the reason it loses a star, but it could and probably would be fixed in the future with updates, so I wont go to heavy here, but they really need to look at the problems with gestures and the heart monitoring apps and check other peoples reviews as I am sure others have had more of a deep dive into all the features than me and have spotted bugs.So as of late 2024, it’s a great watch with a few app bugs, have a look through some more recent reviews and see if there is any news on fixes, as this would be a 5 star watch with some updates to the app.That’s not to say it’s not worth buying, it surely is, but it’s not perfect and at the price, it should be.