What better way to start the New Year, than by working off all those extra holiday pounds? That’s certainly LG’s thinking as the company just launched its debut fitness wearables, the LG Lifeband Touch and the LG Heart Rate Earphones at CES[1] in Vegas.
Lifeband Touch
We’ve seen a few products in this space, like Nike’s Fuelband[2] , but LG wants to take it a step further. The Lifeband Touch is an activity tracker that you wear on either wrist. It supports both Android and iOS and can be used in conjunction with the LG Fitness app or other top fitness apps like Runkeeper.
It has an OLED panel providing an at-a-glance view of incoming calls, the time, music controls, and biometrics. There’s a standard workout metrics breakdown of distance covered, speed, number of steps, calories burned, and projected pace. The display automatically comes to life when you rotate your wrist and you can swipe to cycle through the data.
The Lifeband Touch is also compatible with heart rate monitors. Wireless connectivity with smartphones or the Heart Rate Earphones is via Bluetooth.
Heart Rate Earphones
The name may not be as catchy, but this is a more unusual product than the Lifeband Touch. It measures blood flow signals from the inner ear to calculate accurate biometric data on your heart rate and maximal oxygen consumption. According to LG, they are based on PerformTek sensor technology and it sports a flexible ear piece which is designed to be more comfortable than the competition.
The Heart Rate Earphones can send data to the Lifeband Touch or directly to your smartphone via Bluetooth.
More than just fitness?
These are clearly aimed at the fitness market, which seems to be in vanguard of the move to wearable technology, but LG is keen to suggest applications beyond your daily workout. Jim Clayton, executive vice president of LG’s New Business Division in the Home Entertainment Company explained, “The uniqueness of our wearable devices is that they weren’t just designed for exercise but also for day-to-day use in the office or around the home. With Lifeband Touch, you can get call and text notifications sent from your smartphone while the Heart Rate Ear-phones are perfectly happy playing back music all day even when you’re not exercising. These are much more than just fitness devices.”
We’ll try to get a hands-on look at the Lifeband Touch and Heart Rate Earphones at LG’s booth later. They are being touted for a “first half of 2014” release in the U.S. and while this marks LG’s first move in the wearables market, we’re betting it won’t be the last.
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