Wearables: The Good, the Bad, the Weird
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- Belty
Greetings from sunny Las Vegas, home of CES 2015. After a few weeks of writing about the latest and greatest new gadgets, it’s time see them up close. Anyone who is a bit of a fitness freak would be drawn to the health-related wearables that you encounter as soon as walk in to Tech West on the Vegas Strip. Some were beautiful, some were unbelievably advanced and some just leave you scratching your head.
The Future is Here and it Wants You to Sweat
The iFit Duo from Icon Fitness has a split personality: an analog face that flips ’round to reveal a digital screen. From there, things get very smart, very quickly. You can monitor your heart rate, distance traveled, calories burned and sleep cycle. By connecting the device to a compatible treadmill (featured at many popular gyms), you can call up Google Maps and select a real-life route. The treadmill will then replicate the terrain as best it can. You can train on the New York Marathon course without leaving Memphis. This is close as you can get to a dry-run without getting on the plane a week early.
On top of that, the watch is classy enough to wear with clothes not containing Spandex or Luon.
Tasty Tech
The Wellograph sticks closer to the fitness smartwatch basics, though wraps it in a form factor that makes you simultaneously think “Tiffany’s” and “candy.” This stylish watch is the belle of the ball, and would team up winningly with a suit or evening gown.
Just Get It Done
Reign, from Jaybird, is the most minimalist of today’s bunch. It’s more of a band than a watch, with only a column of twelve tiny LED lights to communicate with the wearer. All it can show you is proximity to exertion goal (via a green-to-red bar) or the time (which you’ll have to re-learn how to tell). Everything else is handled via interfacing with an app, and it assesses your exertion through heart rate variability. The folks at the booth claimed that the algorithms built into Reign’s software could tell if you’re walking, running, cycling or just driving very slowly.
Elegantly Waisted
Then there’s Belty, the mostly-ironic star of CES Unveiled. Created by Emiota, this smart belt does more than just act as a pedometer: It will ratchet down to your waist size, and then remember it.
If you sit down, it’ll adjust. If you eat too much, it’ll adjust again. So, yeah, your belt will fat-shame you. This particular wearable seemed a bit like a solution in desperate search of a problem. Still in the prototype stage, Belty will apparently look different when it comes to market, which is good: It currently looks like an accessory worn by ROM, the Space Knight (below).
Stay tuned for more from CES 2015.