The tech and IT sectors have seen numerous advancements in the last few years. And wearable technologies will be the biggest trend in 2023. We’re seeing our everyday devices get smaller and more compact by the day. These ‘wearables’ seem like everyday items to people. But they’re made of cutting edge technology and can do so much more than look pretty on our bodies.
So what are wearable technologies, and which will be the best in 2023?
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What is Wearable Technology?
Wearable technology is a category of devices that can be worn on the human body. They’re also termed “wearables,” for short. They come in different forms and can take the shape of everyday accessories, such as glasses, rings, watches, and more. Other forms of wearables are more complex and can be embedded in the body, tattooed directly on the skin, or implanted into clothes.
This modern technology has picked up in recent years with the integration of the IoT. With the addition of AR and VR technology, the industry is growing rapidly. Modern wearable technology was first seen in the form of activity tracking wristwatches. These had very simple functions; they tracked steps, measured heartbeats, and recorded fitness activities. All of this data was transmitted to a smartphone app, where it could be studied.
Now we have a range of wearables that have only gotten more complex over the years. Smart watches and glasses allow people to do so much more by connecting to the internet. Even AI has been integrated into these wearables to provide a better personalized experience.
Best Wearable Technologies 2023
Let’s get into the most popular wearable technologies of 2023!
Smart Watches
Smart watches are the most common type of wearable technology nowadays. These watches are equipped with powerful microprocessors and sensors and can emulate your smartphone. You can receive notifications, check messages, send emails, listen to music, track your health and activities, set alarms, and so much more. These watches have so many functions that you might not even need to take your phone out of your pocket for the entire day.
Apple Watch Series 8
The Apple Watch is considered to be the best of all the smart watches on the market right now. And the latest addition to the series is a testament to that fact. It has a wide variety of features that include temperature sensing, crash detection, activity tracking, and third party apps. It has an electronic heart rate sensor that allows you to take an ECG. That’s a mighty big feature that lets you monitor your heart health without going to the doctor.
Along with this, you get most of the basic apps you have on your phone; an alarm, a calendar, a calculator, a compass, and more. It has a wide screen, accessibility features, and a great battery life. The only downside is that it works best when connected to an iPhone. If you use Android, it might not be the best choice.
Galaxy Watch 5
Android users don’t need to get disappointed; we’ve got an equally great smart watch for you as well. The Galaxy Watch5 is a remarkable option that is considered an equal to the Apple Watch family. The best thing here is that it actually looks like a wristwatch, and with the plethora of watch faces, you can customize your watch to look like anything you want.
The Watch5 can monitor your sleeping patterns and track your body composition. This goes above and beyond to track your health and fitness. It’s quite a durable watch as well, with an armor aluminum and titanium body and a sapphire crystal display.
Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid
Last on our list is the Fossil Gen 6 Hybrid Wellness Edition. This is a hybrid smart watch that has a digital display and a mechanical clock. For all the traditional watch fans out there, this is the wristwatch to wear. It gives you the best of both worlds without compromising on anything.
You can still track your health, use apps, control your notifications, and more. The only thing missing is a touch display, but there are three side buttons to navigate through the watch. The Fossil smartphone app also lets you switch watch faces to match your style. But the best thing about the Gen 6 Hybrid watch is that it gives you a battery life of two weeks.
Smart Glasses
Another type of wearable technology is smart glasses. Augmented reality has an important role to play in these glasses. They can do a lot for personal and commercial use. Coupled with cameras and eye-tracking technology, they can capture exhilarating first-person videos.
The ability to transmit first POV videos in real-time can have a huge impact on many complex industries, such as construction and manufacturing. AR-enabled smart glasses can show technicians and field workers on-screen instructions on their eyepieces to give them a more hands-free workflow.
Snap Spectacles 3
Snapchat’s Snap Spectacles 3 are a very fun gadget to play around with. These glasses have two high definition cameras and four microphones. The leading feature here is that you can capture 3D pictures. The two cameras take pictures from different angles, and the glasses combine them to form a spectacular 3D image.
The glasses connect with your phone with Bluetooth, so you can directly send them as a Snap through the Snapchat app. Coupled with the microphone, you can also take videos with 60 fps and high-fidelity audio. Given how they were made to enhance your social media use, they’re quite fashionable with a quirky design. They also support AR filters to enhance your images. The Snap Spectacles 3 have a charging time of just thirty minutes, which is quite handy.
Amazon Echo Frames
Want to talk to your home assistant through your glasses? That’s certainly possible now with the Amazon Echo Frames. You can access your virtual assistant, Alexa, by connecting these glasses to your smartphone via Bluetooth. The Echo Frames have little speakers and a microphone that let you converse with Alexa and command it to do anything you want.
All you have to say is “Alexa,” and your virtual assistant will be right there in your ear. The speakers have an open-ear design, so you don’t have to plug anything in your ears and can still hear sounds. They have clear plastic lenses by default, but you can also get prescription lenses installed, which makes them accessible for everyone.
HoloLens
Microsoft’s HoloLens is one of the coolest mixed reality glasses on the market right now. It’s developed for business use but has fun little features for everyone. It comes with a custom Microsoft HPU, which can do about a trillion calculations every second. It has built-in speakers, four cameras, four microphones, and a light sensor. There’s a power button, a headphone jack, and volume and brightness controls.
It’s equipped with Cortana, your assistant, and Windows 10. You can use the HoloLens with air taps and gestures. With a simple flick, you can move around objects in the AR display. The positional tracking feature lets you interact with your real environment without interrupting the hologram. That means AR objects stay where they are when you move around. All of this comes at a very hefty price tag, though.
Smart Rings
Wearable technologies are getting smaller and smaller, and smart rings are the latest development. These rings are loaded with micro-technologies that equip them with a wide range of functionalities. These include NFC, Bluetooth, and smart sensors.
They can be used to monitor sleep, track your activity, make contactless payments, and act as transit passes and a remote control. Imagine never having to worry about forgetting your keys at home because you have a smart key right on your finger.
Movano Evie
The Evie ring by Movano is the latest breakthrough in accessible health tech. Combined with its smartphone app, Evie can measure calories burned, physical activities, heart rate, oxygen levels, body temperature, and your sleep cycle. Some of its other functionalities are specifically designed for women. Evie can track ovulation and menstrual cycles and even predict how she will feel during her periods.
What sets Evie apart from its competitors is its flexible design. It’s a known fact that finger sizes can change due to hormonal changes and fluctuations. Evie can expand up to two millimeters to ensure that it always fits and is comfortable. This is beneficial for men as well, since finger sizes can generally change with fluctuations in salt and hydration levels.
McLEAR RingPay
RingPay is an upcoming smart ring by McLEAR, the pioneer in integrating NFC technology into rings. It’s a compact ring that can help you make contactless payments with a gesture as simple as a closed fist. You can connect your card (Visa or Mastercard) and pay as you go. It’s a very fast technology and certainly more convenient than taking out your phone or wallet.
It is water and scratch resistant and has no adhesives or plastics involved. The ring can also be used to unlock your smartphone with a simple touch. An additional functionality that seems very useful is that you can store information in it. This includes WiFi information, contacts, and website links that you can share with other devices.
There’s a ring sizer available at checkout, and you can even get free size exchanges. It’s compatible with both Android and iOS and doesn’t require any charging at all.
Arcx
The Arcx Smart Ring doesn’t monitor your health or let you make contactless payments. But it does make your life infinitely easier by giving you full control of your smartphone through the ring. Isn’t it annoying to take out your phone to skip a song when you’re working out or cycling? The Arcx Smart Ring lets you access your phone’s functions right from your finger.
The smart ring comes with five silicone rings, so you can choose the best size for your hand. The ring can also be attached to other accessories, such as handlebar mounts. It’s intricately designed to work even when you have gloves on, making sports and workouts much more convenient.
With the ring on your finger, you can control music, accept or reject calls, use the stopwatch, and even call your emergency contact. With its app, you can customize the functions to your preference.
Wearable Heart Monitors
This wearable technology is designed to keep a check on a person’s cardiovascular health. These heart monitors will track your heart rate through sensors. The latest models are equipped with AI technology that will analyze data in real time to detect any issues before they occur. They can detect signs of high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, bradycardia, tachycardia, and other cardiovascular issues. Some of the latest models, like the Apple Watch, can also generate ECGs on the spot.
Galenband
This heart monitoring band is one of the best wearables on the market. The idea behind it is continuous monitoring for silent atrial fibrillation. Most other wearables will only give you twenty four hours of continuous monitoring. But Galenband goes above and beyond and does this for a whopping ninety days.
The Galenband collects many health metric data points like cycle intervals, respiratory rate, heart rate variability, and sleep quality. The integrated AI then analyzes the data to detect signs of silent AFib. The Galenband is quite a useful wearable, especially for cardiovascular patients, and its multitude of detection features can help prevent conditions from worsening, saving a lot of lives.
BodyGuardian Heart
The BodyGuardian Heart is more of a medical device than the casual wearables you’ll see in this article. It’s a professional grade device that can only be prescribed by a physician. So you know, it’s the real deal. It’s a small device that you stick on to your skin with a medical-grade adhesive. The BodyGuardian Heart doesn’t have any wires and is just a wearable, so you can carry on with your daily activities without any interruptions. You can even workout, and it won’t be an annoyance.
The wearable device will monitor your heart rate continuously, track your activity rate, respiration, and other cardiovascular signs. It connects with an app where you can view all your health metrics and vital signs. Your doctor and caretakers also have access to the app and your information. In case of an emergency, everyone receives a health alert. This can be a very useful feature for patients with chronic illnesses.
Polar H9
Polar is one of the pioneers in the wearable heart rate monitor market. The H9 is one of the best on the market currently, all because of its amazing accuracy and versatility. It’s a chest strap monitor that fits comfortably on all body types. It’s ideally designed for sports and exercise but can be used in all settings. You can track your heart rate in real time when working out, and the accuracy is top notch.
This wearable is also famous for its versatile connectivity. You can basically use it with any smartphone or device. With both Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity, it can be used with a wide range of devices. It can also override sensors in other devices. For example, if you connect it with your Apple Watch, you’ll notice that the green light of the sensor under the watch will switch off. It’s waterproof, and you get four hundred hours of battery life.
Smart Clothing
E-textiles, or smart clothing, are the latest development in wearable technologies. These blend a number of technologies into textiles to give you functional clothes that can do a number of things. Integrating electronics into the fabric itself opens a world of opportunities for health monitoring, communication, and even entertainment.
These interactive clothes are much more comfortable than traditional wearable technologies, which gives them a clear advantage. The most obvious applications are in the healthcare industry, where they can be used to keep an eye on patients’ health. But they can also be used on the industrial side. They can help track the movements of workers, provide relevant information, and keep an eye on their safety.
H -Tee
This smart t-shirt by Italian startup H-Cube was made for athletes who want real-time body monitoring. It uses several electrodes and batteries that are contactless to measure a number of health metrics. These vital signs include body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, cardiac variability, and respiration, among others. The H-tee is very accurate and can be used for all types of high-intensity activities. This makes it a very good fit for athletes.
The H-tee works with its companion app, which analyzes the data from the t-shirt. It then presents very precise results for both the activity and recovery phases. One of the best things about the H-Tee is that it also records how the wearer’s body reacts to different exercises and movements. This is especially helpful for coaches and trainers to create personalized plans for athletes.
Levi’s Trucker
This Trucker jacket is a collaboration between Levi’s and Google to create one of the best interactive pieces of clothing for the average person. It uses Google’s Jacquard technology, which is an interactive touch grid woven directly into the fabric that acts as a user interface. The grid is placed in the cuffs of the jacket, which allows the wearer to perform a number of actions through simple touches and gestures.
The cuff of the Levi’s trucker lets you access many of the digital services that your smartphone offers. The Jacquard Tag connects your smartphone wirelessly to the jacket. Then you can receive updates from your phone, take pictures, listen to music, and control your media. With haptics and lights, it even tells you if you forgot your phone somewhere. With its accompanying app, you can even customize gestures and touches for specific functions.
Mercury
Mercury is an intelligent heating jacket created by the Ministry of Supply. This jacket leverages machine learning and carbon-fiber heating pads to give your body the optimal level of heat it needs in any weather. It’s designed for travelers who traverse through places where the temperatures can drop to dangerously low levels.
Mercury gathers a lot of different data to give you the optimal heat. It measures the external temperature, your body temperature, motion data, and your personal preferences to control three heating components. The design and functionality of this jacket will protect you against wind, rain, snow, and even bad odor.
Start Wearing Your Technology!
From watches, rings, and glasses to t-shirts, wearable technologies are available in every size and shape. These smart devices become part of our daily attire and seem particularly ordinary to the naked eye. But they have so many functions and capabilities. Measure your heart rate, listen to music, make payments, and so much more.
Which wearable do you use? Let us know in the comments below!
Featured Image: CDN
