10 Best Hybrid Smartwatches for Family Holiday Gift Ideas

THE 2016 HOLIDAY SEASON GIFT IDEA LINEUP. For those of you on a gift imagination diet or extended creativity fast? Unsure ideas for your post-Thanksgiving and holiday gift buying season?

Here is a lineup of sexy and stalwart gift ideas for each of the people in your life, starting with Mom and Dad.

We’re talking Hybrid Smartwatches here, folks – the gift of time laced with a modicum of essential activity and sleep tracking incorporating a minimalist suite of life’s daily alerts. These new breeds of smartwatches deliver filtered notifications that are all slimly frosted atop classic old fashioned analog watch faces.

It all adds up to a most welcome change of pace from the sometimes-heavy duty, non-stop daily data, app slogging and overdose of the touchscreen laden, pure smartwatch world.

Yes, “hybrid smartwatches” are a thing, peeps, ever more so this season, as they are hitting their stride, with many different high fashion watch houses co-marketing and co-opting technologies to pin to their enduring consumer brands.

So if you hit up your nearest ecommerce joint of choice to peruse the smorgasbord of offerings for your family and circle of loved ones, you can be the star of your family’s holiday gift giving bonanza, the envious apple of your BFF’s eye. . . . That is, unless you’re really into giving two dimensional, magnetic stripe laced, stored value cards that you usually pick up next to the candy rack at the cashier’s counter the day before the big event.

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4 MOM – Fossil Q Gazer Gen 2 Hybrid Rose Gold Tone Stainless Steel Smartwatch (MSRP USD$235) – This rose gold-toned feminine marvel from Fossil presents a smart crystal accented bezel that nicely offsets a soft and supple apricot colored watch face laden with even more crystals. The final product is a total watch face package that says, “Mom, you’re the shining crystal that lights our path and we love you.”

Q Gazer Gen 2 is iOS and Android compatible, offers fitness tracking for steps, calories, and sleep, as well as filtered notifications in the form of vibrations to alert you to social media, texts, emails, and app events on your smartphone. This smartwatch will even allow Mom to remotely snap a photo from her smartphone and remotely control the music on that digital powerhouse in her purse. Top that off with a battery life of six (6) months, and Mom will be happy as a clam at a cool winter clambake this holiday season.

4 WIFE – The Frederique Constant ‘Notify’ Horological Smartwatch (Model # FC-281WHD3ER2B @ MSRP USD $1,295) with a Rose Gold plated bezel, a Mother of pearl watch face background inlay with guilloche embossed hearts and rose gold mounted diamonds sparkling at the 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 hour markers on the watch face. The Rose Gold plated indices and middle links on the metallic band are absolutely stunning, a gorgeous piece of feminine jewelry masquerading as a hybrid smartwatch.

Dads and hubbies, this piece of hybrid smartwatch art simply reeks of adoration from your heart, which will make her heart beat to the same tune as yours. And it will even keep her activity and sleep data in the cloud for 30 days in case she temporarily misplaces it in the bottom of her laptop bag or gym bag.

4 DAD – Emporio Armani ART3001 Black Connected Hybrid Smartwatch (MSRP USD$395) This hybrid smartwatch is stylishly, ruggedly handsome, with just a hint of secret agent flash. The cache in the form of a black stainless steel case latched to black leather straps with a gun-plated stainless steel closure, and a black watch face background with silver indices color schema that simply smokes of testosterone.

This smartwatch bad boy offers up activity tracking, sleep tracking, filtered notifications, and remote music control for Dad to hit his favorite tracks on his smartphone.  Additional quality features include a long-life coin cell battery, and water resistance down to 30 meters depth.

The Emporio Armani ART 3001 is compatible with iOS and Android smartphone operating systems. And did I say it looks smokin’? If you’re a high school or college brother-sister team and you need to ask Dad to responsibly borrow his car this dating season, this is your ticket to ride.

4 HUSBAND – Frederique Constant ‘Classics’ Horological Smartwatch (MSRP ~ USD$1,280) offers a Swiss quartz movement, with precision sleep tracking (tracking deep sleep, light sleep, and awake time), an activity tracker (steps, calories burned, and total distance), 2-year battery life (grumpy dad won’t crab about any lack of battery power), and automatic world time changing for frequent travelers.

Combining a gold colored stainless steel watch case with a classic brown calfskin leather strap, this baby’s as close to a classic, high end business or industry professional analog watch as you could find, just sprinkled with some digital tracking pizazz and two years of no worry coin cell power.

This lil’ puppy is worth at least 10 hubby honey-do-list chore Saturdays with absolutely no complaints from him, ladies – just ask him what time it is just before you launch that fusillade of chores (he’ll look at his Frederique Constant and think of your sweet holiday gift), and tell him to track his steps, distance, and calories burned while he’s at those chores.

4 SISTER – Withings Activité Pop, Activity and Sleep Tracking Watch (Pink or Sand version, MSRP USD$130) is the primo gift this season for your sophisticated active lifestyle sister. It offers a slim and attractive watch face user experience (UX) and design minimalism with a variety of eye popping silicone strap colors – sorry, you’ll need to guess sis’ fav color. It offers activity tracking, swim tracking, sleep tracking; silent vibration alerts, an 8-month battery life. This is the hybrid smartwatch that is especially worthy for your active sister that will keep up with her busy schedule while on-the-go.

4 BROTHER – Withings Steel Activité, Activity and Sleep Tracking Watch (White watch face and black bands, MSRP USD$150) – Withings has designed a starkly high contrast work of smooth-edged minimalist art for your bro’s wrist. It actually has no buttons or lights to bamboozle the slimline stainless steel look and feel. This sleek but classy smartwatch continually offloads your brother’s activity tracking data and sleep data (heck, even his pool swimming data), as well as time zone smarts and vibration based silent alarms. As long as bro has this work of art on his wrist, he could show up to the family gatherings or trig class in ragged shorts and worn out flip flops and he’d still look more elegant than most.

4 DAUGHTER – COGITO Classic Smart Bluetooth Connected Watch for Smartphones Watches (w/ Alpine White bands, MSRP USD$143) – It’s water resistance down to 100 meters, has a 1-battery life, and the Alpine White bands are a stunning offset to the alerts and notifications of this hybrid smartwatch.

4 SON – Fossil Q Crewmaster Gen 2 Hybrid Black Silicone Smartwatch (MSRP USD$175) OR Fossil Q Nate Gen 2 Hybrid Brown Leather Smartwatch (MSRP USD$195) – These two, new iOS and Android compatible Fossil Q Hybrid Smartwatches are the cat’s meow for the handsome young crew mate son in your life. These Fossil’s offer all the usual activity tracking, remote smartphone music control, photo snapping bells, social media, text, email, and app alert whistles now familiar to you in the world of hybrid smartwatches.

The colorful bezel on the Crewmaster evokes a high-energy pulse for your son’s daily activities.  The more overtly testosterone laden watch face color tones and brown leather band combo motif of the Nate evokes a world of primal masculine confidence mixed with the wristborn mystery of a primal outdoor adventurer. You can’t go wrong with either one, but the Crewmaster might be good for your son, the future Olympic athlete, while the Nate is for your future tech startup CEO son.

4 GIRLFRIEND – Kate Spade New York Women’s KST23101 Grand Metro Grey and Silver Hybrid Smartwatch (MSRP USD$250) – This iOS and Android compatible work of suave champagne-colored beauty tracks steps, distance, calories, and sleep. The Spade offers vibration alerts for calls, texts, emails, and remote control of music and snapping photos from her smartphone.

The Grand Metro is water resistant down to 30 meters, so she’ll have the absolute sexiest looking wrist in the entire pool. If she doesn’t appreciate this blockbuster of feminine style and dash, then at least you’ll know what your next move is next holiday season.

4 BOYFRIEND – Michael Kors Access Gage Silver-Tone and (Brown) Leather Hybrid Smartwatch (MSRP USD$295) – This piece will adorn your boyfriend with the class and subtle pizazz you need and want on his wrist to always remind him of you. The Kors Access is powered by a 3V coin-cell battery for long life with no recharging required. It’s compatible with iOS and Android, so he’ll get alerted to every text you send to him and receive filtered notifications (hopefully not from your heated rival), and if he’s hybrid smartwatch challenged, you help him set it up so that he only gets alerts and notifications from you (hah!). It offers non-display activity tracking and it’s water resistant down to 3 ATM (~30 meters).

Are you interested in other Wearable Technology Holiday Gift Ideas?  Check out our Latest Reviews, News, and Trends on everything Wearable such as Fitness Trackers, Smartwatches, Virtual Reality Headsets, and Smart Tech for the Home on I Wear the Tech.Com—We Find Technology that Fits You!