If you’ve been looking for a fitness tracker, your budget is probably in the $50 to $150 range. That’s reasonable for a connected pedometer/fitness data collector, but Pivotal Living disagrees. They see the value of fitness tracking in the service, not the hardware, so they sell a subscription model instead. $12 gets you one year of service and one Pivotal Life 1 band!
MIO Global made a big splash as the first to provide a highly accurate heart-rate monitoring without a chest strap. Now they are back with the MIO Alpha 2, which refines and improves on the original in every way. They also announced the MIO Fuse, which combines their heart rate monitoring technology with an all-day fitness tracker!
CES isn’t just about the latest fun gadgets. It’s also a showcase for all sorts of breakthroughs, including incredible medical ones. Dan and Judie caught up with the CEO of ReWalk, a company that is working on exoskeletons to help people with lower limb disabilities walk again! Check out their video interview!
For most people, a typical set of everyday items includes phone, keys, wallet, maybe a notebook or pens and other small items. If you (or your child) have food allergies, an Epipen or similar product is the top item on that list. Aterica has just announced an app/case combo for EpiPens called Veta to make that everyday carrying much simpler!
We already reported on the new additions to Garmin’s vivo line-up, the vivofit 2 and vivoactive, which round up Garmin‘s consumer wearable line. But they also added to their higher end products with the Epix and Fenix 3. The Fenix 3 is the latest in the company’s multi-sport category, and Epix is intended as a wearable GPS for outdoor enthusiasts.
I’ve always been a fan of Garmin products, considering them the ‘gold standard’ for running GPS watches. Their leap into fitness trackers in 2014 with the vivoFit and more recently the vivoSmart were highly successful and each is on a wrist in my household. Now they are announcing the ViVoActive Smart Fitness Watch that pretty much does it all!
I have professed my unabashed love for the Magellan Echo before, because of how it perfectly melds GPS watch capability while using your smartphone as the engine. I reviewed the Echo almost a year ago, and still use it regularly – because it just plain works. Now Magellan has introduced the follow-up Echo Fit at CES 2015!
I wrote about Wellograph when it was first announced in September, and have had one since they were first available. The rate of improvements has been incredible, so when I heard about the new stuff announced at CES, I thought ‘of course’, without surprise. The new functionality is definitely worth noting if you have considered buying a Wellograph.
We all know that proper hydration is critical, especially when being active. When we’re away from home we bring water bottles or other hydration sources, but there are risks such as hyponatremia or weaker muscles or bones from too much acidic fluid intake. DYLN contains a VitaBead diffuser that generates alkaline water for maximum benefits.
If you like the look of a regular wristwatch but want the benefits of activity tracking, you’ve probably heard of the Withings Activité. It’s a beautiful Swiss watch with a second analog hand that indicates your activity levels, and syncs to your phone. But it’s a bit rich at $450, so Withings is aiming for the mainstream with a $149 Activité Pop!
Being a parent comes with a healthy side of worry. Are you feeding your child the right foods? Are you teaching them how to be a good person? Are they safe? SAFE Family is trying to address some of this with their new Paxie band wearable for children.
We just passed the start of winter, but in some areas it feels like we’ve been mid-winter for a while. We’ve had some sub-zero wind chill days and it felt more like February than November at times! As things settled down in December, I had to break out more variety of gear and remind myself of my running weather breakpoints!
There’s a saying that the woman you love will have farts that “smell like roses”, but we all know that is never true … or at least that was the case until now! A French company has developed the Pilule Pet Fart Pill that can make your farts smell like roses, violets, or even chocolate!
If you believe you can fly, then the VERT wearable jump rate monitor can measure how high. This device is the first sports wearable to measure and report jump rate data on iPhone, iPad, smart watches and other devices. with an accompanying app for iPhone or the VERTcoach team management app on iPad.
As a person afflicted with obstructive sleep apnea, I recognize when I have had a good night sleep. One issue I struggle with is that I hear my machine as well as other sounds when trying to sleep. On Kickstarter, I came across this interesting project that aims to change that with Hush, the first smart set of earplugs.
For a ‘free’ sport – you don’t need any special equipment not already in your house – running can get expensive really fast! From expensive shoes to GPS devices, to smartphone apps, to special clothes, and gels and hydration and so on – it really adds up. Worse yet you need to replace it all frequently!
As a runner I follow a lot of running and ‘healthy living’ blogs, which means that since mid-November I’ve read about 100 variations on the ‘how to avoid holiday pounds’ theme! The reality is that an old adage from the ‘Bloom County’ comic applies – eat less and exercise more. The folks at Runtastic have a new app to help!
The last time my son had a cold, we couldn’t determine for sure if he had a fever because he wouldn’t hold still long enough for us to keep a thermometer under his arm (or anywhere else). Not long after, we were offered the Exergen Smart Glow Temporal Scanner to review, and I knew we had to give it a shot!
At CES 2014, Judie and I attended a Linkin Park concert. JBL did a special speaker installation in the theater for the night. We stood at those speakers, and boy was it loud; I couldn’t hear properly for the next day. Next CES I’ll protect my ears, and I’ll bring a pair of DUBS Acoustic Filters everywhere I go.
Timex was the watch of my youth. From the watch that ‘took a licking and kept on ticking’ to self-winding watches to the Ironman series that brought ruggedness to the digital age, Timex has been there. Now they have expanded the Timex Ironman line with a connected fitness tracker (X20) and a slimline GPS watch (X20 GPS).
Survival Straps, one of the big names in paracord bracelets, has recently released a new line of bracelets called Active Edge, which claim to have been enhanced with “InBalance technology” for better range of motion, strength, and recovery. I’ve been testing one of their bracelets for a few weeks now. Did my experiment of one prove to be a success?