The world needs another fitness wearable[1] , at least that’s what Adidas believes, showing off its new Adidas Smart Watch for the first time today. Hitting shelves – and athletes’ wrists – from November 1st, the Adidas wearable takes things a little more seriously than rivals like Nike’s recently announced Nike+ FuelBand SE[2] with integrated GPS and a heart-rate sensor, which can be used to give personalized fitness coaching to the wearer.
The smartwatch can figure out your heart rate from the pulse in your wrist, and then factor that in with various onboard movement sensors as well as route tracking. The watch will cook up a custom exercise program with personalized training suggestions, and give prompts for that routine on the color display.
Since Adidas wanted the watch to work as a standalone device, rather than being tethered to a smartphone or tablet since that’s unlikely to be something serious athletes might be wearing, there are a few other functions baked in too. An onboard media player can push audio via Bluetooth to your wireless headphones, for instance.
However, instead of music the wearable can also deliver training suggestions via audio. Adidas is yet to confirm details like battery life and what sort of hardware the smartwatch runs.
“We’re not trying to make a smartwatch, per se, but the smartest running watch” Paul Gaudio, head of adidas Interactive, said today. As for opening up the watch to third-party integration, that’s not on the cards at the start. “It’s something we’ll look at as we go into 2014 as we look at distribution” but there are no plans for open APIs yet, Gaudio confirmed. The approach differs from Nike’s FuelLab project[3] , announced earlier this week.
Taking fitness on your wrist seriously comes with a serious price. Adidas says the watch will come in at $399 when it hits retail on November 1st.
References
- ^ wearable (www.slashgear.com)
- ^ recently announced Nike+ FuelBand SE (www.slashgear.com)
- ^ Nike’s FuelLab project (www.slashgear.com)
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