Apple is getting into wearables. The announcement of Apple Watch certainly piqued my interest. For a consumer device, the Apple Watch looks like it has a great design, will be easy to use, and comes with a great set of features, being a hybrid smartwatch and fitness tracker. There are plenty of reasons Apple Watch will be a winner, both in early 2015 when it's released and it future generations of the product, when I think it will have more steam.

But there's something slightly disappointing about this device at the same time. It's not very futuristic. Even after seeing my colleague Sascha Segan's hands on with Apple Watch, the device seems a little banal compared with the more forward-thinking advancements that are happening in wearable technology right now.

Consider these five wearables that go beyond the wrist:

1. Ralph Lauren's smart Polo shirt, which debuted at the start of the U.S. Open, has smart silver-based thread sensors knitted right into the fabric of the shirt that read heart rate, breathing, and stress levels. The fashion company pulled off this feat by partnering with biometric smartwear company OM. The sensors relay information to what Ralph Lauren has called a Blackbox, or a device that snaps onto the shirt at the side, near the bicep.

2. NuMetrex is another smart clothing brand that allow your clothes to work like a heart rate monitor from a company called Textronics, which Adidas acquired way back in 2008. The NuMetrex line has stretchy textile sensors (when seen with the naked eye, you'd call it "smart thread") that looks and feels like they're just part of the clothing. I've been wearing a NuMetrex sports bra for a few days—check back for a full review. Several other well-known sport apparel companies, including LuluLemon, have had smart sports bras with built-in sensors since late 2012.

3. Sensoria's smart socks are even more tech-forward. The socks include pressure sensors in the fabric that can tell in real time if a runner has proper technique or is perhaps running in a way that might cause an injury. When you snap an ankle cuff onto the one of the socks, it becomes a complete system for measuring your runs. Sensoria also makes a smart sports bra,

4.Athos is another company whose clothing I'm eager to wear—and I will next week. I can't wait. The company makes compression shirts, shorts (shown at right), and women's capris with embedded electromyography sensors that go beyond heart rate to capture more detailed data about how your muscles and lungs are performing as you work out. The information is sent to a core, or central device (similar to Ralph Lauren's Blackbox) that transmits the information to a smartphone, so you can see in real time how your body is performing. Athos holds up like any other poly-blend wicking clothing, surviving the washing machine with grace.

5. LifeBeam is an aerospace and business solutions company that's getting into the consumer space with bicycle helmets, caps, and visors that have sensors built into them for measuring the typical sports health data.

Form Factor

With smart clothes, you never have to put on a fitness-tracking device or watch ever again. Health and fitness sensors can be more seamlessly integrated into our lives, and data collection can be a truly passive experience.

Smart clothing does have its own set of kinks to iron out, primarily in fit. Consider a traditional chest strap heart rate monitor. It's a single unit, the strap, which is maybe 2 inches wide. That strap only needs to fit your chest, and you can tighten and loosen it as much as you need whenever you need.

That's quite a different setup than a piece of clothing because clothes are sized, and clothing sizes make no sense! The history of why that is turns out to be an interesting little story, but the fact remains that you can't just buy a size 6, 8, or medium from any old store and expect it to fit. Sizes aren't reliable.

At the Ralph Lauren announcement, I noticed one of the ball boys for the U.S. Open who was wearing the new smart shirts standing quietly to the side while some beefier models demoed the app and garments. The ball boy's shirt fit him perfectly well in the shoulders and in its length, but it was just a little baggy around his ribs—where it needed to be absolutely snug. That's where the conductive fabric is. If the shirt isn't fitted to the body just right where the sensors are, there's no way you'll get a reliable and steady signal coming out of them. And like I said: With a chest strap, all you have to do is tighten the band a few millimeters, or a few inches. It's adjustable to the finest degree. With all the smart clothing I've seen, there are no fasteners to adjust the fit.

For a wristwatch-smartwatch-activity tracker, Apple Watch appears to have done just fine with design. Apple has a long track record of getting design right. But a little wrist-worn gadget is a far cry from the more exciting advancements happening in wearables today.