If you've been craving a self-quantified lifestyle but the Nike+ FuelBand SEand Fitbit Force just don't have enough bling for your taste, a new activity tracker with a crystal sapphire watch-face may be more your speed.
At $330, the Wellograph watch and tracker is one of the most expensive I've seen come to market, but it includes just about everything you'd want: a nine-axis motion sensor for tracking steps and distance throughout the day; a built-in heart rate monitor; and a high-end look thanks to its aluminum construction. Did I mention it's a runner's watch, too, that can track pace and stopwatch functions?
The Wellograph is designed to be functionally independent, meaning you don't need to sync it to an app (although there is an app, of course), according to Art Booppanon, the company's managing director. The watch automatically displays infographics based on detected activity and analyzed against the user's "fitness age" and fitness percentile ranking among peers. The collected data are also summarized for the current day and week, and the watch can hold about four months' worth of data at any given time.
The Wellograph runs on a rechargeable lithium battery, said to be about double the size of the battery in the Pebble Smartwatch. You can turn on battery-saving features of the Wellograph to get about a month's worth of energy from the battery (in normal use, it should last about two weeks, according to the company).
The heart-rate sensor reads your pulse through the skin and displays a continuous reading while you're working out. Another battery-saving feature is that the watch takes your heart rate less often when you're at rest, whereas once your heart rate starts to increase, it will take readings more often.
According to the company, the Wellograph watch will be ready to ship sometime in April, with a few hundred units going to the early adopters who pre-order the watch now.