Fitness trackers and other devices that monitor your health are getting not only smarter, but also less obvious. Technology that was once only available in a wristband or watch is now woven (literally) into bras, shirts, and pants. Sensoria's Smart Socks ($199 for the bundle, including two pairs of socks, one ankle cuff, and one charger) put fitness tracking on your feet. They look and feel like ultra high-quality runner's socks, but are laden with sensors that measure pressure to determine if you're heel-striking or landing on the ball of your foot while you run. An ankle cuff snaps magnetically into place to capture more typical running metrics, such as speed and pace. If you wear the socks and listen to the companion app during your run, it can play a metronome to help you maintain a specific cadence. Sensoria's socks are for a very specific kind of training, but if you're an avid runner who needs to focus on your form, and you love technology, wearing them will be a rewarding experience.

Design

The Sensoria socks, labeled left and right, are gray with black reinforced toes and heels. They come in adult sizes small, medium, large, and extra large. For $49, you can buy two more pairs of socks. You can wash the socks in a washing machine, but you need to hang them dry.

If you turn the socks inside out, you'll notice three patches, two around the ball of the foot and one just near the heel—these are the pressure sensors. The socks also have a design of copper-colored threads that make tracks up to the ankle cuff. That's the part of the fabric that delivers information from the sensors to the ankle cuff, which in turn transmits it to your smartphone via Bluetooth.

The ankle cuff magnetically snaps into a row of rounded spikes at the top of the socks. You can choose whether you want to wear it on your right or left foot, or both if you buy two ankle cuffs. An additional ankle cuff is $159, and is definitely not necessary.

Comfort and Performance

The socks themselves are very comfortable and well-cushioned. You do need to fold the top of the sock over the ankle cuff to ensure it won't fly off your foot if you accidentally kick it or snag it on something.

Pairing the ankle cuff to the app, called Sensoria Fitness, is straightforward and simple, with the app walking you through clear instructions. Once it's paired, you'll see the outline of two feet on screen. If you buy the bundle, you'll only see one foot light up, whichever one has the ankle cuff connected to it. If you buy two ankle cuffs, you'll see data for two feet. Stand or walk, and different areas of the foot change color to show pressure. Just by playing around with the app in this way, you'll instantly recognize that there's not a lot of lag between what your feet are doing and what you see in the app. 

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Settings and Features

The app, which is for iOS and Android, has a lot of settings. For starters, you'll want to set up your profile with your sex, age, and weight, but you can also add details like your shoe size, foot rotation, pronation, dynamic and static leg axis (straight, inward, outward), foot width, and arch type. The app lets you set up a shoe closet where you can select the exact running shoes that you own to keep track of how many miles you put on them. The app can also pair with a heart rate monitor.

One important part of setting things up is to select the part of your foot where you want to land during your runs. By default, it will be on the ball of the foot, but you can roll the landing point back a little to customize it.

When you run with the socks and the app, it tracks all the basic metrics you'd expect, plus a few extra ones, including distance, speed, steps, calories burned, cadence, altitude, ascent, descent, heart rate (when wearing a connected heart rate monitor), foot landing, and foot contact.

A virtual coach gives you feedback, if you choose to use it, while you run. You can set the coach to silent, discreet, chatty, or very chatty, depending how much feedback you like to hear. The coach will announce whatever details you choose: pace, steps, speed, heart rate, distance, or time. She'll also speak up if you're not landing on the part of the foot that you designated.

A metronome setting, which I've never seen before in other running apps, can be set to play all the time or only when you're off cadence. You set the cadence at which you want to run before you start your workout. It would be neat if the app had some dynamic way to capture cadence for you during a calibration run, such as finding your average cadence and highest cadence, and then letting you choose what percent of that highest cadence you'd like as your goal. As it stands, you have to know your numerical cadence. When you set it, the app plays a short demo, so you can take a few strides to see how it feels before saving it.

The app also has options for choosing a long-term goal, which might be to lose weight, increase performance, or increase endurance. If you don't have a goal, there's a no-goal option for you.

In my testing, the Bluetooth connection held up extremely well. I never lost connectivity while running. The metronome feature intrigued me the most. I can see how someone wouldn't want to listen to consistent ticking during a long run, but for short runs, I liked hearing it the whole time. I liked it much more than running apps that play music with a beat that attempts to match your tempo, like RockMyRun.

Smart Socks, Happy Feet

If you're an avid runner looking to focus on form, and you love technology, I highly recommend the Sensoria Fitness Smart Socks Bundle. The socks are comfortable, and the information they provide is clear and immediately actionable. The kit is a little expensive and certainly not for everyone, but it's one of the better examples of smart clothing I've seen to date.