Best Watches: Touchscreen

Touchscreen timepieces we want to own

Pick of the 5 best watches packing touchscreen displays that are like a box of tech tricks that fit snug around your wrist

Love it or loathe it, touchscreens are here to stay and now more watches are stripping away the buttons. We are lovers of the more traditional timepieces as our list of the best watches shows, but we also like the idea of a watch that looks like it has been yanked straight from a Sci-Fi flick. If you yearn for a time piece sans the dials and buttons and comes with smartphone-like features, here's the touchscreen watches to have on your radar..

1. Motorola MOTOACTV

Garmin and Polar have already introduced touchscreen sports watches, but Motorola has taken things further Moto with this smart music player watch and performance tracker that is very much in the iPod nano mould. Hosting a 1.6-inch full colour touchscreen that is protected by scratch, rain and sweat-proof Corning Glass,  the MOTOACTV uses advanced AccuSense technology and GPS to track your every turn and every hill, there's Android compatibility to take calls while the MOTOACTV works out which songs motivate you the most and arranges them into playlists.
Price: £244.99 | Motorola

2. I’m Watch

Unveiled at CES 2012 in January, the smart watch which features a curved HD screen comes running Android 1.6, which means you can access some of the app content on the Google Play store. Hooking up to your smartphone via Bluetooth, the I’m Watch will be able to play music, get e-mail, let you read Twitter or Facebook updates and check the weather forecast. The onboard accelerometer means you can rotate maps or use it as pedometer, and if you want to make calls from it like Dick Tracy, there’s also a built-in microphone and speaker.

Price: From £249 | I'm Watch

 

3. Sony Smartwatch

The timepiece which plays nice with Xperia smartphones, hosts a 1.3-inch OLED display can connect to your Android smartphone displaying texts and tweets. It also doubles as a Media Player streaming the audio from your phone to the device and then to your earholes via headphones. You'll also be able to enhance the Smartwatch further through downloadable apps which will increase its functionality and appeal.

Price: £109.99 | Sony

4. The Pebble

Having raised a massive $10 million on Kickstarter the Pebble concept is fully customizable to work in harmony with your iOS or Android smartphone. The Bluetooth 4.0 packing device which sports an e-ink display will alert you of calls, with caller ID, display short text messages when they arrive, let you control your music and even uses your phone's GPS to make itself into an activity monitor. Those are just a few examples, and there are more Pebble apps on the way too...

Price: $150 | Get Pebble

5. MuteWatch

This Swedish wristwatch has the makings of a minimalist design classic. Tap the screen to bring up the time, swipe horizontally to access stopwatch and alarm, then swipe vertically through the digits to alter settings. Supporting Apple-like pinch support to erase alarms and a motion sensor to turn it on with a flick of the wrist, it even vibrates on your wrist instead of beeping for a suitably laid-back alert.

Price: £179 | Mutewatch

6. Phosphor Touch Time watch

The latest success story on crowd-funding website Kickstarter, the Touch Time combines E-Ink technology and an ‘always on’ high resolution LCD capacitive touchscreen display that you can swipe through to access conventional watch features such as setting and a stopwatch with detailed lap data. The smartphone functionality comes in the shape of giving access to calendars, a calculator and the unique Lunar phase mode. The good news is that it runs on a a coin cell battery so it doesn't need charging.

Price: Starting at $99 | Phosphor

7. HD3 Slyde

Fusing cutting edge tech and the 'traditional art of watchmaking', the Slyde is a Swiss timepiece that offers a host of different virtual watch interfaces via the touchscreen interface. Displaying the ‘present time’ on the vertical axis, the horizontal axis displays past and future time which can be illustrated using pictures or videos. The Slyde is set to be available in a variety of models made from titanium or steel with either a leather or rubber strap, and users able to go customize crazy by adding more virtual interfaces via the Slyde website.
Price: From $6,895 | HD3Complication