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Wearable Technology: It's About More Than Just Google Glass

There's plenty of technology you can put on your body right now to monitor your health, record your life, and so much more.

By Eric Griffith
May 13, 2013
Wearable Technology: Google Glass, Smartwatches, and More
Wearable Technology: Google Glass, Smartwatches, and More

We're not going to be coy about it: one of the main reasons everyone, including PCMag, is writing stories about today's wearable technology is because of Google Glass. It's the high-concept wearable tech product of the year and perhaps of all time. But it's not alone. The era of body-monitoring tech has more than arrived; bluetooth headsets are the norm, activity trackers are gaining steam thanks to products like the FitBit Flex, and everyone and their brothers, it seems, are introducing smartwatches. (There are rumors that both Samsung and Apple will join the fray and release smartwatches to pair with their phones.)

It all seems like a good beginning but people have been trying to make computers wearable for years. It's only now that developments in miniaturization and wireless networking have finally matured enough to make such things mainstream. With all those little pocket computers around—we call them "smartphones"—you have all the processing power necessary to compute whenever and wherever you like. Adding devices like watches, glasses, and bracelets only enhances their usefulness.

These kinds of changes sometimes result in a backlash. In fact, there's already a Stop the Cyborgs campaign being waged to ban the use of devices like Google Glass in public spaces, while West Virginia Republican Gary Howell has introduced a bill that would ban it while driving. This is before the product is even widely available. Expect the revolt to spread as Glass and similar products make inroads with the general populace.

But there's so much more to wearable tech even now than just Google Glass and its camera and screen. Glasses, gloves, necklaces, armbands, watches, bracelets, and jackets have been integrated with gadgets for a long time. Some tech, especially cameras, has moved naturally to using the body as a mobile base of operations. Here's a look at the best of them available today, or at least, very soon.

1. Jawbone UP

Jawbone UP
($28.49 at Walmart) The Jawbone Up is not quite the best fitness tracker we've tested (that would be the Fitbit One), despite having stellar apps for iOS and Android to track your health metrics. But Jawbone isn't resting. The company has launched an Up platform so this bracelet can work with other third-party apps, and Jawbone recently bought BodyMedia, which makes its own line of armband sensors that measure even more.

2. Myo Gesture Control Armband

Myo Gesture Control Armband
With items like Kinect, a camera turns your whole body into a controller. Thalmic Labs says its Myo armband will give you more granular gesture control of what's on your screen—and more. It uses the electrical activity of your arm muscles to sense what you fingers are doing, while Bluetooth wireless controls what it can interface with (currently Mac and PC). It's scheduled to debut in late 2013 or early 2014, but you can pre-order one now.

3. Hi-Fun Bluetooth Handset Gloves

Hi-Fun Bluetooth Handset Gloves
A pinky finger and thumb positioned at the mouth and ear, respectively, has a universal connotation: call me! Now that can come true with Hi-Fun's handset gloves. They have a microphone in the pinky, a speaker in the thumb, and capacitive touch capabilities for phone use. Connect them through Bluetooth and you can talk to the hand—literally. The rechargeable battery is good for 20 hours of talk time. Hi-Fun is U.K.-based, but the gloves are available in the United States online at sites like ThinkGeek and Amazon. They come in black or grey for men and women.

4. Looxcie HD Explore

Looxcie HD Explore
( at Amazon) Strap the Looxcie (pronounced "look-see," get it?) HD camera to your head, hat, or helmet and you're ready to capture everything. The Looxcie weighs less than an ounce, uses Wi-Fi to communicate with your iPhone or Android Looxcie app, and saves 720p video at 60 frames per second or 1080p video at 30fps. You can also capture a quick 30 seconds to the camera itself with a button push, or live stream video over your phone to the Internet. We give the Looxcie HD Explore action camera four stars.

5. SeV Tropiformer Jacket

SeV Tropiformer Jacket
ScottEVest makes so many amazing pieces of clothing that it's hard to choose just one favorite, but the Tropiformer men's jacket nicely balances usefulness, looks, and price. Of course, SeV is well-known for clothing with hidden pockets galore to conceal and quickly access your electronics, even providing conduits in the fabric to channel cables for headphones. The men's Tropiformer (a portmanteau of "tropical" and "transformer") is the latest, with removable sleeves, 22 pockets (including iPad pocket and "quick-draw" pocket to check your phone without extracting it), water-resistant "skin," and more. Steve Wozniak wears one. What more do you need to know? Oh, yeah, the company also has plenty of other designs for men and women (including the top-selling SeV Chloe Hoodie with microfleece and 14 pockets).

6. Novero Bluetooth Pendant Necklace

Novero Bluetooth Pendant Necklace
A standard Bluetooth headset is the most obvious wearable tech in the world. But Novero's headset is different in that it's jewelry first (available in either gold or silver) and tech equipment only when necessary. When a call comes in lift one end into your ear and hit the pendant button to start talking. Expect about four hours of talk time on a charge, and 100 hours in standby while you show it off at the party.

7. Voltaic OffGrid Solar Backpack

Voltaic OffGrid Solar Backpack
Tech that you wear is as vulnerable as any to loss of power—probably more so given you may be far, far away from an outlet when it dies. Voltaic's backpack can hold all your electronics as you travel, and has two two-watt solar panels to charge an included V15 battery, which in turn can charge a typical smartphone in about five hours. The whole solar section can be zipped off and attached elsewhere.

8. Fitbit One

Fitbit One
($229.99 at Amazon) PCMag's current favorite piece of fitness tracking equipment, the FitBit One is the pedometer of the future. Clip it to your body and it'll track steps, stairs, distance traveled, calories burned, and even your sleep. It's the perfect device for non-athletes looking to get in shape.

9. 3RD Space Gaming Vest

3RD Space Gaming Vest
Plug the 3RD Space vest into a game console or PC via USB, put it on, and the "active zones" on the front and back (four each) will help you feel what you've been missing. Namely, they try to mimic the impact felt by the character you're playing in that first-person shooter. For every bullet to your chest you'll get a feeling for the brute force impact via pneumatic actuators inside the vest. It comes in camouflage, black, or pink.

10. Zeo Sleep Manager Pro

Zeo Sleep Manager Pro
Most of the products in this list are meant to be worn all day long. The Zeo is obviously for use at night. (Or while dozing in a meeting?) We consider this four-star product an Editors' Choice in the burgeoning world of fitness tracking, even though the fitness in this case is how fitfully you sleep. Strap it to your forehead for the night and Zeo takes EEG data, then feeds it to an app so you can get a detailed look at your night's rest, or lack thereof.

11. Vuzix Smart Glasses M100

Vuzix Smart Glasses M100
Price TBD
Before Google decided to get into the Glass game, Vuzix was already hoping to compete with this new set of Smart Glasses. The M100 isn't out yet either, but Vuzix hopes the M100 interface, which includes a head tracker and GPS, as well as a camera for video/still capture to smartphones, won't get lost in the shuffle. It won a CES Innovations 2013 award, so hopefully it stands a chance.

12. Buhel SpeakGlasses SG04

Buhel SpeakGlasses SG04
These seem almost quaint in the world of Google Glass, but Buhel's high-end sport sunglasses with built-in Bluetooth also integrate a bone conduction microphone in the frame—the same tech Jawbone uses in its high-end Bluetooth headsets. So in theory you can use these glasses to make a phone call over your smartphone's Bluetooth anywhere and never have to worry about your voice reception. And of course, it has an earphone set for listening to callers and music. Buhel uses the same tech in its goggles and helmet communication system too.

13. Sonic Walk Lightning

Sonic Walk Lightning
Want to take your tunes on a walk, jog, or hike but don't feel that pockets and earbuds are safe? Lightning is a lightweight 8.2-ounce harness for active types that includes a full sound system that works with any MP3 player. There's also a rechargeable battery to charge your player or phone plus surface controls for volume and power. Sonic Walk sells a line of sound harnesses with even more features.

14. Pebble Smartwatch

Pebble Smartwatch
($39.00 at Amazon) The most famous smartwatch on the market today—thanks to a $10 million dollar Kickstarter campaign and the current lack of competition from Apple or Samsung—is Pebble. It's a smart-looking device with a 1.26-inch, 144-by-168-pixel e-paper display that provides wireless notifications of events on your smartphone (iOS or Android). It's still a work in progress, but a good start. Check out our review.

15. LUMOback Posture Sensor

LUMOback Posture Sensor
Remember when your parents would tell you to sit up straight? Today's parents can leave that to the LUMOback sensor and app. Wrap it around your midsection and when the sensor detects you slouching a vibration warns you to straighten up. The iOS app tracks just how well (or poorly) you're doing so you have an accurate idea of when you'll develop a hunchback.

16. Google Glass

Google Glass
And finally, the reason wearable tech is all the rage: Google's Project Glass. Wearing Glass is not going to make you a cyborg, but it will give you instant access to some data and the ability to take a picture or video just by asking. (There's already a hack to make Glass take a pic when you wink.) Then you can share it with the world at large (even if it is on Google+). Glass gives you GPS directions, can translate what you say, receive and send messages, and of course, let you search on Google. And that's just what we know so far. It has the potential to change everything—or given the hype, become the next Segway. Only time, and your willingness to spend that kind of coin, will tell.

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About Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for over 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus Best Products of the Year and Best Brands. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

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