LAS VEGAS—Lenovo is showing off its new Vibe Band VB10 here at CES. The good news: The gadget addresses two of my chief complaints about most current smartwatches—battery life and price. The bad news: It's probably never going to the come to the U.S.
As you can see in the photos, the Vibe Band has a completely different look from most other smartwatches on the market. Rather than go for a traditional circular design, or the increasingly standard square, the Vibe Band is long and rectangular, with a screen that wraps nearly halfway around your wrist. The 1.43-inch E Ink display has 296-by-128-pixel resolution. It's not the crispest display I've seen, but it was still very easy to read under the harsh lighting conditions in which I saw the watch. And it allows for battery life of up to one week, which is worlds better than most options on the market, and comparable with the Pebble and the Pebble Steel.
In addition to activity tracking, the Vibe Band connects via Bluetooth 4.0 with devices running Android 4.4 and above. There's no word on iOS support, though a Lenovo representative told me that because it connects through an app, support is possible, though I wouldn't count on it. Once connected to your Android device, the Vibe Band is able to serve notifications including calls, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter. There's enough space for up to 150 characters on the display, which should be more than enough to provide you with a little snapshot to help you determine whether or not to pull out your phone.
The Vibe Band VB10 doesn't necessarily feel like the most well-built smartwatch I've ever handled, but for $89 when it ships in April, it offers a lot of functionality for the price. It's a shame that there's no plan for a U.S. release, because this is one of the more affordable smartwatches I've seen so far as CES. Then again, the show floor officially opens today, so check back soon to see what else we find.