Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Top 5 Wearable Tech! (Late 2014)”.
Hey, what is up guys mkbhd here – and they said this year – 2014 – would be the year of the wearable. 2014 is set to be the year of wearable tech, electronics that are physically attached to your body. So was it at the beginning of 2014. About 10 months ago, we looked at the five best wearables that you can buy, and these are all first generation products, so they’re the beginning of a new product category and they could all sort of tell you. If you have a new notification, they could tell you if something new was happening, but if you actually wanted to do anything about it or if you wanted to take action or if you wanted to reply to something like a new message, then you still have to Take your phone out your pocket anyway. So that’s, i guess the main difference between what we had then and what we have now at google. I o this summer. We saw the introduction of android wear, so it’s google’s version of their android operating system for wearable tech or smart watches. Specifically, it’s not sexy or anything, but it’s very smart and it’s actually gotten a couple of software updates since it first rolled out and has a bunch of new features now and it’s a lot better.
Looking and wearable tech has made a lot of steps forward since that introduction. So now here we are at the end of 2014 with a very different, very new list. These are your new top five best wearables that you can buy right now. Number five is the samsung gear s, so this is a tizen smartwatch and we’ve talked a lot about tizen in the past and what it means to android, but essentially the gear s.
Is this huge curved amoled display on a smartwatch? It’S not small at all. It’S not subtle at all. It’S this really big thing, but it’s one of the more innovative designs and one of the more interesting looking things we’ve seen this year in the smartwatch game, and it actually turns out to be a really good product, mostly because it’s one of the few that actually Doesn’T require being tethered to or attached to a smartphone to work.
It has its own independent functions. It has its own independent actions. It can do it has a freaking web browser built in.
So if you want to load up a web page, it’ll start chugging that snapdragon 400 and half a gig of ram and it’ll load up a web page. So if you need to do some things on the go, this is actually a pretty solid option and, like i said it’s not small, it’s not subtle, but it’s pretty interesting, looking samsung by the way has loaded the market with a bunch of other smartwatch options and They’Re, basically saturating the market in typical samsung fashion uh, one of the other noteworthy ones is the samsung gear live, which is their android wear version of a smartwatch, pretty traditional, looking smartwatch as far as they are concerned, and they have the gear too as well, which Is a sort of a follow up to their tizen based galaxy gear? Number four is the pebble, and this is actually one of the returners from the video that happened at the beginning this year 10 months ago, which means it’s still really good at what it does, because it’s very focused on just delivering your notifications and it’s still really Good at that now it’s also not going to let you take action really on these notifications. The way the android wear smart watches do so. If you get a new message, you can mark it as red or ignore it, but that’s about it. You still have to take your phone out your pocket to reply, but it still has a display that allows it to have a seven-day battery life. It’S not the most premium feeling in the world, but they also now have a version called the pebble steel.
That’S a bit more expensive, but i would recommend it because it’s much more premium feeling has the metal band has the clasp that feels much more like a normal timepiece than the rubber and plastic of the original pebble. So the pebble and the pebble steel are still very easy to recommend for the simple delivery of notifications. Number three is the asus zen watch now there’s nothing wrong with the square display on your wrist.
It does look a little bit unconventional. It doesn’t look quite as much like a normal watch, but i think the one that strikes the balance best is the zen watch. It’S probably easily the best.
Looking smart watch that has a full square resolution display it has that brushed aluminum around the sides. It has that subtle curve around the edges. It has the leather band. It has that clasp like a normal timepiece. So it’s very nice at striking the balance between something that looks like a timepiece, but also gives you that sort of a high-tech look in the full square display. I i wouldn’t necessarily pick it over the number one and number two, but i do want to put it high on this list, because it’s worth recommending it’s a great performer.
It has a solid battery life, it’s got nice specs, it’s pretty solid and i wouldn’t have any trouble recommending it to someone who’s looking to get into a smart watch right now. Number two is the lg g watch r, and this is an android wear. Smart watch similar to ones we’ve talked about before, but it looks a lot more like a normal time piece because it has a round display and actually has the notches around the display and the numbers as well. It has a leather-ish band. That’S not really that premium feeling and there is no metal version, but it still looks a lot closer to a normal watch than the sort of a mini computer that the square ones look like on your wrist. There also is a square version of this. It’S called the lg g watch, no r and it was introduced at google, i o – and that was one of the first that lg introduced, but the g watch r for round is much better looking, i think, and is easily something i could recommend, but the number One, i think, is the one that you guys probably all saw coming. Number one is the moto 360..
The moto 360 is a round smart watch and it’s also running android wear and it has a metal version too. So if you prefer that premium look and feel closer to a normal watch, it has a clasp. It has everything like that. You have that option.
I think it’s one of the best looking smart watches actually might be the best looking smart watch period with the minimal distractions around the display and the almost zero bezel has that chamfer edge around the display. It has that tiny little bar at the bottom that people like to complain about at first but you’ll, find that it just sort of melts away and disappears from your revision when you’re checking stuff after about a day or two. So it’s a beautiful option for a smart watch.
This is the one on the list that i did do a full review on. So if you’re looking to get into smart watches in general – or you just want to know more about what the best of a smart watch right now can offer check out that link right below the like button, it’ll have the moto, 360 review and i’ll also link. My android wear review to go over all the functions of what a smart watch can do so honestly, if you’re trying to buy a smart watch, especially since it’s the holiday season. Now it’s basically a toss-up between, like the top three or four, depending on what sort of a design you like and what functionality you want. The clasp design, the material design also there’s a sony option: the sony, smartwatch 3 and there’s also those samsung options that i talked about as they start to flood the market uh. So really there are a lot more options than you had at the beginning of the year.
Also, the apple watch, not the iwatch. The apple watch was announced uh this year, but it doesn’t sell until next year and there are still a whole bunch of questions that we have about it. I’Ll leave the video that i did about that also below uh.
It’S a question mark for me. In terms of functionality and what it’s actually going to be able to do and what the interface will look like and all these other things but best watch that video it’s totally separate and it’s an interesting concept. But we all know that once apple tends to get into things, that’s what really gets the competition going and that makes better products for us. There’S.
Also, a new version of google glass expected with internals from intel instead of ti to be released next year, and we keep hearing about these murmurings of bringing google glass back. It was actually on the top five list at the beginning of this year for best wearables, but it dropped off and it’s been pretty quiet lately. But we also always had, in the back of our mind, that thought of a consumer version of google glass for a lower price tag that we just straight up, never saw. I mean google glass is still 1500 bucks right now, so i wouldn’t be surprised if that was resurrected.
Re-Brought back from the dead in 2015.. So we’ll see how this list evolves during the course of 2015 and what new stuff comes out. Keep an eye out for ces stuff, keep an eye out for new google glass stuff and also, let me know in the comment section below what you’re looking forward to in the whole wearable game. Maybe you’re not interested in smart watches at all. Maybe you want stuff to be more on your face, or maybe you want a moto 360 without the black bar whatever it is. Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments section thanks for watching and i’ll talk to you guys in the next one peace you .