Vibrating watches and tech you pee on - it's the new frontier of wearable tech!
From watches that just vibe to toilets that take urine samples, tech-savvy health just keeps on booming
From watches that just vibe to toilets that take urine samples, tech-savvy health just keeps on booming
Wellness and tech can feel a little like water and, well, electric. A bad combination. Wellness says: touch grass, not glass, right? Well, it seems we don’t have to completely stop swiping for wellness. The technological world is keen to find solutions that help us to use tech to live better. And this year looks to push the notion even further.
How do we know that? The Consumer Electronics Show. CES refers to itself as “the most influential tech event in the world” – and it’s hard to dispute that. The 2023 edition just took place, with over three thousand products exhibited from across 173 different places in the world. That’s a lot!
Produced by the Consumer Technology Association, CES was first held in New York City way back in 1967, and covers new technology coming from basically every single aspect of the tech sector. From crazy futuristic ideas to stuff that’s just about to pop off.
This year’s event took place in LA, and there was a load of wellness-oriented product on display. We’ve rounded up a few that we really like.
NOWATCH
Wearable tech is finally getting very very good, and not too expensive. NOWATCH is a great new example that was exhibited at CES this year. As the name might imply, it’s not your ordinary watch. It doesn’t even tell the time, which might sound a bit wild. So what does it do? It vibes.
No seriously, it’s more of a health tracker than an actual timepiece. The watch features “biosensing” technology, which was developed by Phillips. Essentially, it tracks sweat, heart rate, movement, and sleep and is able to deliver gentle vibrations throughout the day to help you prioritise mindfulness, and ultimately destress by tuning into you, not the notifications popping off all around you.
Also it doesn’t have a screen, the face is a gemstone (there’s a few to choose from) encased in stainless steel, so it’s a great example of a piece of wearable technology which doesn’t mean staring at a teeny tiny screen. It is compatible with iOS and Android though, and has an app that can help you optimise your wellbeing through data the NOWATCH obtains. They start from around £321.
Hybrid watches
Another wearable watch also looked to (sort of) ditch the smart-ness without getting rid of the technology, in the form of a ‘hybrid watch’. That’s a smart watch, hiding behind a watch that looks analog. Wearables are saying, give me the clever stuff, without the screen time. It’s been developed by a company called Fossil, it isn’t their first hybrid watch, but it is a huge improvement on the previous model – pretty much delivering on the aim as opposed to being a bit primitive in design.
... and something you can wee on
Withings who make a lot of smart health electronics, have developed a device that takes urine samples. You place it in the toilet (it looks a bit like those things that clip onto the toilet to keep it smelling nice). It syncs up to an app and provides data on biomarkers such as hydration, menstrual cycles, vitamin levels and more.
Technology, hey!
