A smartwatch can end up in heading 91.02 as a watch or in heading 85.17 as communication apparatus, and the fact that usually decides it is whether the device works without a smartphone. Two rulings show the split. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) classified the COROS PACE 3, a GPS sports watch that tracks activity on its own, in subheading 9102.12 by GIR 3(c), confirmed by Note 1(n) to Section XVI. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in NY N349122 (May 29, 2025), classified two Njord Bluetooth watches that do nothing without a paired phone in subheading 8517.62.0090, HTSUS. The products differ, and that difference, more than any policy preference of either authority, explains the two results.
The analysis uses the HS 2022 nomenclature. GIR stands for the General Interpretative Rules, the same rules many sources call the GRIs.
The two products are not the same good
This is the main point of the comparison. Both rulings concern “smartwatches”, but the products are built differently, and those factual differences drive the classification.
COROS PACE 3 (CBSA ruling). The COROS is a wrist-worn multifunction device with a watch, timer, alarm, fitness tracker, heart rate monitor and built-in GPS navigation. It has a 1.2″ touchscreen LCD and a rechargeable Li-ion battery, and it connects to a smartphone by both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The CBSA found that the device is designed and marketed to track biometric data, satellite GPS position and fitness activity independently. The link to a smartphone is supplementary: the watch does not need it to work as intended.
Njord smartwatches (CBP ruling). The Njord watches (the Watch Pro and the APEX) are wrist-worn Bluetooth devices designed as companion accessories to a host smartphone. They have no GPS, no Wi-Fi, no cellular connection, no SIM card support, no internal storage and no way to install apps. They connect only by Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and CBP described them as not functional without pairing to a smartphone. Everything the sensors collect is sent to a companion phone app, where the user reads and analyses it.
Standalone capability on one side and total dependence on the phone on the other: this is the fact that sends the two rulings to different headings.
The competing headings
Both rulings looked at overlapping candidate headings, but weighed them differently because the two products can do different things.
Heading 85.17: “Telephone sets, including smartphones and other telephones for cellular networks or for other wireless networks; other apparatus for the transmission or reception of voice, images or other data, including apparatus for communication in a wired or wireless network (such as a local or wide area network)…”
According to EN 85.17, Part (II)(G), the heading covers apparatus that allows connection to a wired or wireless communication network, or the transmission or reception of speech, sounds, images or other data within such a network. Subheading 8517.62 covers machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data, including switching and routing apparatus.
Heading 85.26: “Radar apparatus, radio navigational aid apparatus and radio remote control apparatus.”
EN 85.26 includes global positioning system (GPS) receivers in this heading. It matters only for the COROS, which has built-in GPS. It cannot apply to the Njord watches, which have none.
Heading 90.29: “Revolution counters, production counters, taximeters, mileometers, pedometers and the like…”
The CBSA considered this heading for the COROS’s biometric monitoring functions (sleep monitoring, blood oxygen, heart rate, sports tracking). EN 91.02 states that pedometers fall under heading 90.29, not Chapter 91.
Heading 91.02: “Wrist-watches, pocket-watches and other watches, including stop-watches, other than those of heading 91.01.”
EN 91.02 says the heading covers mechanical and electronic timekeeping instruments with case and movement, of a kind intended to be worn or carried, which indicate the time or measure intervals of time. It includes sports watches, chronograph watches, stop-watches, and watches with complex systems that do more than show hours, minutes and seconds.
Why the two rulings diverge
CBSA’s reasoning (COROS, subheading 9102.12)
The CBSA treated the COROS as a composite good that performs several functions, none of which is provided for in a single heading. Its steps were these (the order of the rules is explained in more detail in this practical guide to the GRIs):
- GIR 1 does not settle it. No single heading describes the complete good. The COROS is at once a watch (91.02), a communication device (85.17), a GPS receiver (85.26), a thermometer (90.25) and a biometric measuring instrument (90.29).
- GIR 2(a) and 2(b) do not apply. The good is complete and assembled, and it is not an unfinished article or a mixture of materials.
- GIR 3(a) does not settle it. Under paragraph (V) of the Explanatory Note to GIR 3(a), when two or more headings each refer to part only of the functions or components of a composite good, those headings are regarded as equally specific. None of the five candidate headings describes the whole good more specifically than the others.
- GIR 3(b) does not settle it. The CBSA found that headings 85.17, 85.26, 90.25 and 91.02 “equally merit consideration.” It could not identify an essential character, because the COROS’s design emphasis (independent fitness tracking, GPS and biometric monitoring) does not point clearly to any one heading’s function. There is a strong counterargument that fitness and biometric tracking gives the essential character, but the CBSA did not make that finding.
- GIR 3(c) decides. Of the headings that equally merit consideration, 91.02 occurs last in numerical order, so it prevails.
- Note 1(n) to Section XVI confirms the result. The note reads: “This Section does not cover: … (n) Clocks, watches or other articles of Chapter 91.” Once the COROS is placed in Chapter 91 through GIR 3(c), headings 85.17 and 85.26, both in Section XVI, are excluded by law. That is why the CBSA cited GIR 1 (through Note 1(n) to Section XVI) alongside GIR 3(c).
- WCO Classification Opinion 9102.12/1 (2023). The CBSA relied on an opinion in the WCO Compendium of Classification Opinions that classifies a similar smartwatch in heading 91.02, which gives the result persuasive international support.
CBP’s reasoning (Njord, subheading 8517.62)
CBP took a different path because the product’s architecture led somewhere else:
- The Njord watches are not standalone devices. They have no independent functionality: no GPS, no Wi-Fi, no cellular connection, no internal storage. They exist to receive, process and relay data between the user’s wrist and a paired smartphone over BLE.
- Their primary function is transmitting and receiving data. The biometric sensors collect data locally, but all of it has to be sent to the smartphone app before the user can see it. Notifications (calls, SMS, app alerts) arrive from the smartphone and are displayed. Voice calls run over Bluetooth through the phone. Every function is a communication function: receiving, converting and transmitting data between the watch and the phone.
- Heading 85.17 describes this directly. Subheading 8517.62 covers “machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data.” The Njord watches receive data from their sensors and from the phone, convert it for display, and transmit sensor data back to the phone. CBP classified both models in 8517.62.0090, HTSUS.
- Chapter 91 does not appear in the ruling. CBP did not need to reach GIR 3, and the ruling does not discuss timekeeping at all. The case for leaving Chapter 91 aside is that, unlike the COROS, the Njord watches are not self-contained timekeeping instruments of the kind EN 91.02 describes: the ruling describes them as not functional without pairing to a smartphone, so on that description timekeeping is incidental to their communication function.
The factual distinctions that decide the outcome
| Feature | COROS PACE 3 (CBSA) | Njord watches (CBP) |
| Built-in GPS | Yes | No |
| Wi-Fi | Yes | No |
| Standalone functionality | Yes: tracks fitness, GPS position and biometrics independently | No: does not work without a paired phone |
| Time display | Independent (internal clock) | Depends on the paired phone (not discussed in the ruling) |
| Communication dependency | Supplementary: not needed for core functions | Total: every function depends on the BLE link |
| Primary design intent | Independent fitness and sport tracking wearable | Companion accessory to a smartphone |
| Data processing | On the device | Sent to the phone app for processing |
| Result | 9102.12 (GIR 3(c), Note 1(n) to Section XVI) | 8517.62.0090, HTSUS |
Who is “correct”?
Both rulings are internally consistent and defensible on their own facts. They do not conflict on the law. They apply the same legal framework to materially different goods and reach different results, each of them logically sound.
The CBSA is correct for the COROS PACE 3. A standalone wrist-worn device with built-in GPS, Wi-Fi and independent fitness tracking is a composite good that no single heading describes in full. When GIR 3(a) and 3(b) cannot decide, GIR 3(c) sends it to 91.02 as the heading that comes last, and WCO opinion 9102.12/1 and Note 1(n) to Section XVI support that result.
CBP is correct for the Njord watches. A Bluetooth-only companion device that cannot work without a smartphone, and whose only purpose is to receive, convert and transmit data between the user and the phone, fits the text of heading 85.17 and subheading 8517.62. There is no real competition between headings here, because communication is not one of several equal functions. It is the device’s function, and GIR 1 resolves the case.
Classification principles from the two rulings
- In these two rulings, standalone capability was the deciding fact. A smartwatch with its own GPS, sensors and on-device processing that works without a phone is a composite good, and GIR 3 analysis is needed. A smartwatch that depends on a smartphone for all its functions is classified by its primary function, the transmission and reception of data, in heading 85.17.
- GIR 3(c), “last in numerical order”, applies only when GIR 3(a) and 3(b) really fail. The CBSA was right to use it because headings in two different Sections (XVI and XVIII) each covered only part of what the COROS does, and no essential character could be identified. GIR 3(c) is the last resort.
- Note 1(n) to Section XVI is a one-way exclusion. Once a good is classified in Chapter 91, the note excludes it from all of Section XVI (Chapters 84 and 85). The exclusion operates only after the GIR analysis has placed the good in Chapter 91; the note does not pull goods into Chapter 91 on its own. The same kind of Section XVI exclusion, for articles of Chapter 90, decides the SoftBank PEPPER robot case.
- WCO Classification Opinion 9102.12/1 reflects international practice for standalone smartwatches, but it does not reach Bluetooth-only companion devices that lack independent functions. Read the scope of any opinion against the product it describes. HMRC’s smart watch tariff notice 10, which refers to Regulation (EU) 2024/964, classifies a Bluetooth-paired smartwatch with no SIM in 9102 12 00 by GIRs 3(b) and 3(c), citing Note 1(n) to Section XVI, and distinguishes WCO Classification Opinion 8517.62/23.
- Specification wording such as “designed exclusively for use as a companion accessory” points strongly to heading 85.17. When the maker itself says the product does not work without a host device, a claim that it has independent functions spread over several headings, needing GIR 3, is hard to sustain.
Related reading: the same subheading, 8517.62, decides the HP Presence videoconferencing system case, where CBP rejected heading 84.71 for a conferencing PC, and the Bluetooth earphone case study looks at the boundary between 85.17 and 85.18.