Wearables: 2014 and Beyond
by Stephen Barrett on January 15, 2015 11:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Wearables
- Apple
- Microsoft
- pebble
- Android Wear
- Microsoft Band
- Fitbit
Final Words
While consumers may see the wearable market as early or immature, their proliferation seems inevitable. Wearables have not quite crossed the chasm yet, but the investment major consumer companies are making is only going to grow. Functionally, some use cases such as running are fairly well addressed now, and if you’re an avid runner you could be quite pleased with the developments of 2014. For other use cases such as smart watches or weight lifting, there is still a ways to go. Socially, people have accepted passive activity trackers like Fitbit but are still getting used to wearables such as smart watches or Google Glass.
Tracking the market through 2015 will be interesting as Microsoft’s Health platform does battle with Android Wear and Google does battle with Tizen. The Apple Watch launching in early 2015 could also be a watershed moment for wearables if those devices enter the main stream. All the while, smaller (but more established) players like Fitbit and Pebble continually improve to prevent gains by the big three.
You may have noticed that AnandTech has only performed one comprehensive wearable review. Admittedly, part of the reason has been finding time between all the other important launches, but another reason is we would like reader feedback on content. What do you desire from an AnandTech wearable review? Battery life testing is obviously important, but what about other tests or subjective analysis? Is wearable screen quality important to you? Voice recognition? Durability? Obviously all things are important to some degree, but providing feedback will help us focus. Please use the comments thread below to describe why you are, or are not, interested in wearables as well as aspects of wearables that require evaluation for you to find value.
I mentioned I have a Moto360 in house and have requested some other samples. Your feedback and these devices will combine for increased wearable content in 2015.
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wallysb01 - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
But what's the value added over a simple heart rate monitor, learning a thing or two, and doing it enough to just "know yourself"? People have been training based on fatigue or maximum exertion percentage for a long time now. As former triathlete and fitness nut, I just don't see how these things get going. A decent heart rate monitor is what, $20. Get a bike computer for another $20. You have the distance/speed already on any treadmill or stationary bike. So we're basically just talking runners, or bikers that MUST have a GPS.I just have a really hard time seeing very many fitness nuts spending $100-200 on this thing, and applications outside fitness seem very pointless as well. So you get notifications on your wrist? You don't have to take out your smart phone? How much money are people going to be willing to pay for THAT? Maybe it won't get the backlash of Google Glass, but I see it failing in a similar way, as a novelty 5% of your friends will show off to you, while you go "eh, you payed how much for that?", and 3 years later its mostly dead.
Impulses - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
Fitbit actually has devices covering a lot of price ranges... I wanted something to monitor my runs, not because I need it (I've been running for the past 15 yrs since high school without it), but it appeals to my geek sensibilities.I wasn't interested in all day tracking, I KNOW I'm a sedentary geek, don't need to be told... So I ended up buying the cheapest Fitbit Zip model which is a little $50 clip on thing, and I only wear it in on runs or when I go biking.
As far as I can tell it works as well as any pedometer, and it's easier to use and better connected than any other device at the price range. I continue using it even after getting a Wear watch because I'd rather not run with a leather strap, or any kind of visible watch for that matter.
Penti - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
I thought Fitbit discontinued or at least stopped developing all non-wrist stuff. But it appears they still sell their clip-based ones.Impulses - Friday, January 16, 2015 - link
Nope, the Zip keeps chugging along, Best Buy still has them in stock all the time, etc. It's pretty solid for $50, specially if you just want it to track specific workouts as I do rather than all day monitoring. It even syncs up with Android devices now, which wasn't possible originally.Impulses - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
$200 for a decent smart watch doesn't seem like a terrible value proposition to me, having enjoyed the convenience of one and knowing what I'd otherwise pay for a nice looking watch that I wouldn't use nearly as much.name99 - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
"b) people who can't be bothered taking their smart phone out of their pocket, which is all those watches enable - a short cut to see something your smart phone could show you."So your argument is, "people won't pay for convenience"? Yeah, good luck with that.
90% of what's sold in America, from McDonalds and Starbucks to dog walking and gardening services to microwave ovens and dishwashers are based not on "could *I* do this myself?" but on "I'd rather pay more for convenience!"...
wavetrex - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
Simple. Make a product that doesn't suck.Let's look at a Smartwatch of today:
- Shitty battery life
- Weak performance
- Difficult to see in sunshine
- Not really useful for anything
- Bloody expensive !
No wonder (almost) nobody buys them.
Suggestions:
- Use E-INK ffsake!A watch should be visible at anytime without having it to turn on. It will also be perfectly visible in the sunshine and not consume power.
- If you want colors, use OLED and a way to turn it on via motion (shaking?) so you can look at it without actually "touching" the device.
- A permanent "deep sleep" mode, when not use only the detection sensor should be on. CPU, RAM, everything should be completely off and not consuming power.
- Design a simple and efficient OS from scratch that can initialize in less than 2 seconds from some fast flash memory, basically fast-booting every time you look at it, other than that the device would be almost OFF and not consuming power. PC Os'es like Linux (on which Android is based are NOT GOOD for these kind of devices!)
- No fancy animations and stuff in the interface, just simplicity and efficiency. THIS IS NOT A PHONE OR COMPUTER! It's a WATCH.
- Camera ? Putting a camera on a wrist watch ? That's madness ! Useless feature of the century...
- In time it will become cheap if a lot of people like them, consider them useful and buy them.
I know almost nobody from the tech companies will read this comment but... whatever.
Schnydz - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
I can agree with most of this. It comes down to simplicity doesn't it? It seems the smaller the device the more simpler it should be. So, if we are talking about a watch then keep the UI/UX as simple as possible. Have tried using the Moto360 and man what a useless PoS. I have a feeling the apple watch with be more of the same. In my opinion MSFT is on to something with their fitness band. The design and "feel" just needs a couple of revisions...it's just a tad too bulky. But, keep it simple!nevertell - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
"Design a simple and efficient OS from scratch that can initialize in less than 2 seconds"Linux is able to do that, provided that you don't need to run a virtual machine to execute all of the applications and you don't load all of the modules you can get in a standard linux tarball off of the repo for armv7 kernels.
XabanakFanatik - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
My Microsoft Band takes 4 seconds from the moment you push the power button to being completely booted and usable for all features. I'm not sure why any other watch takes longer.