“Hey, nice watch!”, I heard yet again today. That watch happens to be the Misfit Phase, a connected combination watch and fitness tracker that can count steps, distance, calories, and light as well as restful sleep. With the Misfit app on your iOS or Android device, you can easily keep track of how you are doing.
Todays’ wearable technology is being used to track a great many statistics related to fitness and health. Devices from Fitbit and Jawbone, for example, can be used to monitor heart rate, calories burned, total activity time and much more.
Fitness trackers sound good on paper, but the reality is they only measure one tiny slice of fitness. Cardio and steps are important, but they aren’t a full picture. Humon is a new wearable that seeks to rectify that by measuring muscle endurance instead of steps, and it’s a pretty brilliant concept!
Over the past month or so, I’ve been running exclusively with my RunIQ, the first ever Android smartwatch created by popular fitness cross trainer company New Balance. Announced earlier this year at CES 2017, the RunIQ has been putting my love for the Apple Watch to test in both practicality, and honestly… looks.
I love being barefoot. I work out barefoot, and in the spring and fall I wear Vibram FiveFingers when I need shoes and flip-flops in the summertime. While being barefoot is free, minimal shoes tend to be really, really expensive, as well as really polarizing in appearance. Fitkicks Shoes handily solves one of these issues!
I rarely do this, but I am reviewing the Bozlun B15P Band on a bit of a curve. If it were priced in line with comparably equipped fitness trackers, I would not be nearly as generous as I am going to be in this review, because the band is only $32.99 on Amazon.
Jabra is an audio company that is known for their high-performance premium headphones. And a lot is the same with their Jabra Elite Sport earbuds, a competitor in the completely wireless headphone market looking to take down Apple’s Airpods. We had an opportunity to check them out, so let’s see if they can compete with the Dash and Airpods.
I am usually a big advocate for keeping notes and logs digitally. First of all, it’s far more efficient to make notes searchable, and second of all, my handwriting looks as though the evil hand from “Idle Hands” went on a bender and then started taking notes for me. But I’ve stumbled upon one very productive exception: a workout log.
At CES 2016, Judie and I had a chance to check out the Plantronics BackBeat FIT. We were impressed and said so in our review last February. (Read the review.) Fast forward a year, and the BackBeat FIT is still going strong. A few things have changed, so we thought we would take a second look.
Today at CES 2017 in Las Vegas TomTom announced the launch of their new app, the TomTom Sports app, which hopes to be your go-to fitness app to start 2017. Introducing the TomTom Sports app, co-created with help from athletes and fitness app users alike, the Sports app gets people going with motivational messages, showcasing your activity trends and getting you what’s the most important during your workout by breaking down your performance stats. The app is also social, giving you the ability to compete with a friend, and sharing the collected data to various social media on an awesome…
QurdioCore is the first wearable electrocardiogram monitor. The $449 device records more than 20 million data points, streaming the user’s live medical data to their smartphones. It is the first monitor to be IP65 certified making it splash and rain resistant.
Fitness trackers are a dime a dozen, and we’ve seen out share out there, but at CES, New Balance announced a product launch that might just shake up the fitness world starting with us here in Vegas.
Misfit is determined to conquer every level of the fitness wearables market with devices that place style on the same level as function. They started with the Shine, then the Flash, and post-Fossil acquisition they’ve released the Ray and the Phase Hybrid. Now they’re looking to tackle the true smartwatch market with the $199 Vapor! Vapor appears to tick all the usual smartwatch/fitness watch boxes. It has GPS, can function as a standalone music device, tracks heart rate, and is waterproof for swimming. Where Misfit hopes to shine (no pun intended, given their flagship product) is in the style. The…
WELT is the world’s smartest wellness belt on the market, and after the announcement at last year’s CES, it’s certainly going to be worth checking out what was once just a prototype and has come along a year later.
If you’ve visited a large city any time lately, you’ve probably encountered racks of public bicycles available for short-term rentals by tourists and urban residents alike. Where I live here in Nashville, our B-Cycles are red and scattered at dozens of stations around town.
There’s a big flaw in the concept of fitness wearables; they really only work for running or biking. Weightlifting, calisthenics, boxing, and other workouts just aren’t conducive to having a watch on, and it cuts out a big chunk of the fitness market. Twelve South may have a solution with their new ActionSleeve Armband for the Apple Watch.
Back at CES 2016, Digitsole released the world’s first auto-lacing smart shoe; so, how do they plan on outdoing themselves this year? The answer is simple: Make a collection of smart shoes! Effective today, Digitsole has announced over ten new models of their Digitsole smart shoes, including a woman’s high-heel show with telescopic tech, as well as a smart running show that adapts it’s cushioning in real-time. Combining fashion with functionality, Digitsole plans on making the most innovative footwear in the industry. Digitsole’s Women’s high-heel with telescopic tech can be adjusted at the heel with a single tap on your…
Fitness, especially home fitness, has evolved quite a bit in the last few years. Suspension straps, kettlebells, and just plain bodyweight workouts have become extremely popular, and it’s been fascinating to watch equipment evolve to meet these new needs. So when I stumbled across The Yoak, I had to learn more.
It looks like Pebble isn’t the only wearables crash in 2016. Jawbone appears to have quietly imploded, leaving their website like one of those cars on the side of the road. It looks functional, but there’s nothing inside.
If you live an active lifestyle and hate wired cables, you should actually check out LG’s Tone Active+ Stereo Bluetooth headsets. The follow-up to LG’s popular collared headphones the LG Tone Active, how much more of a “plus” can the Tone Active’s be in the wireless headphone market?
I am a big fan of strength training in various forms. When we had a gym membership, I spent quite a bit of time following Stronglifts 5×5, and now that I work out more at home my routine is a mix of calisthenics and kettlebells.