The best wearable and fitness tech from CES 2024
Every year, CES – the Consumer Electronics Show – introduces us to a wealth of innovative technologies, and this is no more true than in the fitness and wearables category. CES 2024 was no different.
At last year’s conference we saw a smartwatch without a display, smart beds for athletes, and a home pee tester (a bit gross, but potentially a useful health accessory).
This year (thankfully) we don’t have any toilet gadgets to highlight, but there are plenty of other fitness and wearable gadgets that we were excited to learn more about – and even had some hands-on time with to see if they can living up to the hype.
Here are some of the best wearables and fitness tech from CES 2024, including a glove that counteracts Parkinson’s tremors, fitness headphones with a built-in AI coach, and a smartwatch that we could see surviving it all.
Smartwatches at CES 2024
Normally there are a handful of smartwatches on display at CES, usually sleek, sophisticated-looking things that combine fitness tracking with an elegant electronic movement.
That goes for the recently announced Garmin Lily 2, which features a “small, fashionable” smartwatch design – weighing just 20.6 grams – and a hidden display that shows a patterned background until tapped. It’s also very useful with connected GPS – although no built-in GPS, which would have been a huge upgrade for runners and cyclists over the original Garmin Lily – as well as five-day battery life, sleep scores, menstrual cycle tracking and a pulse oximeter to check the oxygen level in your blood. It’s available now for $249.99 / £249.99, with Australian pricing TBA.
Garmin also launched the HRM-Fit heart rate monitor, which is specifically tailored for people who wear medium and high support sports bras. It offers the same real-time tracking of workout information in a package that should be more comfortable for sports bra wearers than traditional Garmin heart rate monitors.
If instead you want a smartwatch that looks like it could survive a nuclear explosion, then there’s the Casio G-Shock Rangeman GPR-H1000. It features heart rate monitoring, a pulse oximeter, built-in GPS and Casio’s triple sensor for measuring altitude, compass heading and temperature. Casio’s smartwatch can also give you sunrise and sunset times, and create global tide data, although that comes at a price. When it launches on January 20, it will cost $500 / £449 (about AU$750).
Smart rings at CES 2024
Smart rings are becoming increasingly popular: they look like fitness watches, but they pack all their health-tracking sensors into a ring that’s a lot less bulky and less distracting.
The 4G Amazfit Helio ring comes to claim Oura’s crown at the top of our best smart rings list with its promises of detailed sleep tracking and readiness scores that can help you improve your running and cycling workouts. However, to access the premium analytics features you’ll have to pay $69.99 (about £75 / AU$105) per year.
Conversely, the first Evie smart ring for women offers a one-time approach. Not only is the ring packed with useful trackers for sleep, blood oxygen and heart health, but it also has an AI that can look at this information, as well as logs regarding your menstrual cycle, mood and activity levels to provide insight into what is positively impacting your health – like the fact that the days when you take more steps than average are days when your mood is better.
It even has an open ring design to account for the changes in women’s finger size at different points in their menstrual cycle. Evie’s smart ring will launch later in January, but only in the US for $269.
Fitness headphones at CES 2024
Music can be a powerful training tool, with powerful tunes helping you get through a workout, or distracting you from how tired you feel during a long run. But Mojawa’s new bone conduction headphones aim to take it a step further with an AI sports trainer that can apparently help you take your training further.
Featuring vibration-based workout guidance, Mojawa’s HaptiFit Terra headphones AI “elevates workouts into complete training sessions with automatically generated exercise plans.” What this will look like in practice is anyone’s guess, but when it launches in the coming months – the official release date is Q1 2024 – we should find out.
The gadget is currently on pre-sale for $199.99 / £239.99 – slightly cheaper than its retail price of $299.99 (Australia and UK release prices to follow in the future). On top of the AI, you get headphones with an IP68 water resistance rating and 32GB of built-in music storage controlled by pressure-sensitive haptic controls.
Sennheiser also introduced a new set of Momentum Sport headphones, with built-in fitness tracking and PPG heart rate sensor, as well as Polar’s full range of impressive fitness metrics. The Sport Buds go on sale on April 9 with a retail price of $329.95 / €329.99 / approximately AU$492.14.
Health wearables at CES 2024
The most innovative health technology on display at CES could be a total game changer for the people it helps. In the case of the GyroGlove, it helps people suffering from Parkinson’s regain some of their independence.
By counteracting her tremors, Roberta Wilson-Garrett – a person with Parkinson’s disease – told us she can make herself a cup of tea, button her shirt and eat something using utensils thanks to the FDA Class 1 approved glove. In a live demonstration we saw a stark contrast between her ability to draw with and without a glove.
The GyroGlove is on sale now – although each hand will set you back $5,899 (about £4,600 / AU$8,800) – but CES is also a chance to get the future of health technology, such as the Vixion 01 specifications.
This sci-fi visor isn’t just another Apple Vision Pro competitor. They are glasses that can automatically correct your vision, so that everything you look at is always sharp. The obvious advantage is that you only have to buy one pair of specs for the rest of your life. As your vision changes, Vixion 01 adjusts itself so you can still see with perfect clarity. The only downside is that we don’t know when it will come out, or how much it will cost at launch.
@techradar
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