CES 2015 Wearables Wrap Up
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Wearables.com
It’s been an exciting week here in Las Vegas for the International Consumer Electronics Show. We saw some amazing new products that we can’t wait to get our hands on and we were blown away by the amount of wearables on display at the show. We also saw a lot of unique and interesting products that will most likely never hit the mass market. That’s one of the best parts about CES – you can see how inventive companies can be with something like wearables. We wanted to give you a look at some of the products that amazed, stunned, and puzzled us during the show.
This is one of the products that shows how wild and unexpected CES can be. We spoke with the founder and even he talked about how silly it was, but it was rooted in good intentions – to help people with pre-diabetes monitor their food intake.
GoPro has proven that the extreme sports action market is a great space for wearable tech, but will consumers really go as far as spending $500 for special snowboard bindings? We’re not quite sure yet. The design of the hardware is great (you can’t even tell the difference with regular bindings), but will weight of battery be an issue? We really liked the app design and how it reacted in real-time. The jury is still out on whether this becomes mainstream, but the snowboard enthusiasts in our office are in love.
All we can say is WOW! It was awesome to get the live demo of the solar charging with just a flash light and we were surprised to learn that Swarovski does a lot of work with LED and lighting which makes this product so unique. It only needs 15 minutes of direct sunlight to get fully charged which is a good way to make sure you get at least that much sunlight, vitamin D, and outdoor fresh air everyday! We were also happy to see that there is finally a fashionable option for wearables which is something this market really needs.
It’s very exciting to see a gamer-first company get into virtual reality headsets. The gaming community is probably the largest consumer market for VRs and what better way to do it than open source. It’s a great strategy to let the community figure out how it wants to build out VR without making a large bet and we hope Razer provides the right support throughout to help the product succeed. We’re really excited to see what the community does with this!
This is a very cool product with unique applications on the wearables side. It’s meant for consumers with chronic neuropathic pain, so definitely not for all, but very promising especially since it’s FDA approved. They’ve had a prescription-only model out for some time that has distributed over 7,000 units. We believe Quell is likely the best unknown wearables find of CES 2015.
We were fortunate enough to get a demo of the consumer version of the AR glasses and we have to say the resolution is fantastic and the user experience was seamless. We’re curious to see what the price point will end up at since the only quote they gave us was “sub-$1000.” All-in-all, we’re excited that ODG has come out swinging with this model and we’ll be interested to see how the retail model compares with the demo version.
All we have to say is that these guys are crushing it! We’re super excited to see what they bring in the coming months, especially given their move to Oregon which will be closer to a specific pro-sport behemoth (cough, Nike, cough). The user experience was seamless and the pro athletes they have testing the products are really stoked about it. Keep an eye out for these guys this year!
We wrote about them yesterday, but this product is by far a slam dunk. The Activité is the clear winner for us at CES. They’re bringing wearables to the masses in a fun way, and at a more palatable price point.
This is a huge partnership on par with the scale of the Misfit + Swarovski announcement. The design is on point and the fact that it is compatible with both Android and iOS is a huge differentiator. We’re looking forward to seeing it in distribution.
We were very pleased to see that Fitbit is moving up the scale to compete with the more athlete-focused competitors like Polar, however, with it’s sporty design, were interested to see how they it compete with the fashionable looking smartwatches. We are SO GLAD that they switched the band to a traditional wristwatch style clasp rather than the bands on the earlier models (e.g. the Flex) which are cumbersome and unreliable. They only had black on display so we’re hoping that there will be a few more color options down the road.
This was probably the weirdest thing we saw at CES (sorry Belty). It’s a 3D-printed dress with proximity sensors and spider-like limbs that jut out when someone gets a little too close for comfort. We’re sure someone, somewhere will use it, but we don’t see that as hot commodity around the office.
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Tags: Activity Trackers, Calorie Tracker, Health Wearables, Internet of Things, Reviews
