A while ago I saw this post on The Verge about wearing an Apple Watch alongside a normal watch. It got me thinking. I’m in a similar boat, I prefer real watches powered by gears and springs and vibrating quartz crystals. I wasn’t thinking about wearing two watches, I have a hard enough time making outfits every day as-is. No, it got me thinking about how ridiculous the industry’s obsession with the smart watch has become. Why is it our only real fitness tracking option? Why is a wrist-worn screen our only option for tracking fitness?
This year, there weren’t lines around the block for the once again, barely-upgraded Apple Watch 8. There were fights in malls and on streets for another watch though… a quartz watch from Swatch. The watch is a collaboration between two Swatch Group companies, Omega and Swatch, to make colorful versions of Omega’s Speedmaster Professional, also known as the “Moonwatch,” as it was the first watch designed for and worn on the moon. The MoonSwatch was an instant hit with fans of watches and even those who hadn’t considered wearing a watch before. For many, it was their first watch. It cuts through the snobbery of watch collecting with an inexpensive and accessible watch with a cool design and fun color choices.
With a renewed interest in the trustworthy watch technology of the past, many people have got to be thinking, “How can I track my fitness and wear cool watches?”
Somehow, the companies of the world just don’t have a good answer for you. Perhaps it’s because they swallowed up every company that could compete and now the market is an unimaginative mess made up of very few options.
In This Article:
A Non-Watch Tracker?
This feels ridiculous.
What I’m looking for should be simple, right? Basic heart rate and O2 sensor with a bluetooth connection to my phone. That’s it. Easy, right? Should be quite a few of them.
None.
Companies have put screens on everything, or made devices so large and wide it’s weird that they don’t have a screen. Furthermore, many require expensive subscriptions, some as much as $30/month, for the privilege of having access to your own health data! Not to mention the privacy issues. Every device wants to put your data in their cloud. Conservative lawmakers the world over have made women’s bodies a political battleground. With devices that could hold data useful for cycle tracking and prosecuting women who have abortions, surely these companies would understand why we only want our data on our own devices, encrypted and secure.
But… no. They all want to analyze our health data, perhaps sell it or use it to sell other products and services. For some reason, they can’t just let you use your own health app (like Apple’s on iOS) to track your data. In my hunt for wearable technology that is simple, unobtrusive, secure, and without subscription, I turned up nothing. Most couldn’t even make something that was unobtrusive, but asking for privacy from companies handling health data seems a step too far.
Fitbit
Even FitBit’s “Trackers” are now all watches.
Fitbit was one of the first companies to the market with fitness trackers. Simple, small bands you could wear on your wrist that would report health metrics to your phone, like steps and heart rate. Things were far from perfect. Fitbit’s privacy, for example, was non-existent. Users’ health data was uploaded on public websites by default, allowing people to figure out what that “workout” you got in the middle of the night was. Still, they’d get past their growing pains.
Eventually they’d buy Pebble, one of the first smartwatches, and then Fitbit was bought out by Google. Like that, two wearable tech companies were gobbled up, stifling competition. Gone were the basic fitness bands from Fitbit. Now every device is a smartwatch. Perhaps worse than that, however, is that Google has control over that data. Google’s entire business relies on finding innovative ways to violate your privacy and show you ads. Having them in charge of your health data may not be something you’re comfortable with. I know I’m not.
Oura Ring
I next looked at a product I remembered from Kickstarter, the Oura Ring. I couldn’t believe this plucky little company made such a device, but now they’re on their third generation of smart rings. They look great. Plain, unobtrusive rings with enough battery life to allow you to wear them for some workouts and sleep over multiple days. The price tag is steep, with them starting at $350 for the latest models, but, honestly? It’s a cool product, I’m willing to pay Apple Watch prices for something that gives me everything the Apple Watch does in a small, unobtrusive package, even if it wouldn’t be perfect for all workouts.
And then I found out about the required membership subscription. Mind you, you can get super generalized “readiness” and “sleep wellness” scores with no underlying data, but without forking over money to Oura every month, they won’t let you access the data your ring records about you. Seriously, do a search for Oura without the membership, and you’ll find a popular Reddit post, where you can see just how useless your $350-$550 device becomes when you stop giving the company money every month.
It’s almost like the company is still kickstarting, begging for monthly fees when they’d probably have better success simply ditching the subscriptions… you know, like other successful fitness trackers from Apple, Fitbit, and Google. It raises another issue: if they can’t just let your phone read that raw data, why do their servers have to get involved? What data can they collect, and what can they do with it? According to their privacy information, yes, they do collect your health data to provide those scores, as well as marketing and third party integrations. Why do you need to share your health data with them at all? To justify a subscription? To find other ways to profit from the data? Is that what you want?
Amazon
If you’re already paying for Prime services and Prime video, maybe Audible too, you’ll be happy to know that Amazon has another subscription for you! Amazon’s “Halo Band” looks like a wider, larger version of exactly what I’m asking for. A simple piece of tech with a strap. Sure, it’s still as wide as a watch and looks a bit silly, but it’s a simple option. And, at just $40, it’s a good bargain!
That is if you forget that Amazon will collect $3.99/month after the first 6 months to keep using the device’s entire feature set. That’s right, you still need yet another subscription from Amazon.
Amazon already collects a ton of information online. They use it to sell ads, make recommended products, and create new products that are eerily similar to products that are popular on their website. With their Halo service, you get some deeply creepy insights. There are some expected ones, like activity and sleep tracking. Some other services you might expect, like workouts, meditation, nutrition too. Then there’s body fat percentage, which is… okay, easy enough to track. Then there’s “tone analysis.” Amazon will “Analyze your tone of voice to become more aware of how you sound to others.” Yeah… what? Why does a fitness tracker have a microphone? Oh, I’m sorry, two microphones? It records so much that battery life drops from seven days to just two with tone detection enabled. It spends that much time just listening to you, policing your tone.
Ah, yes, the future where tone policing is part of your interview process. Good luck women and anyone who isn’t neurotypical!
Now, to Amazon’s credit, it does seem like you can go without their Halo services to just get very basic activity monitoring and turn off that ridiculous tone tracking. But do you really want a product from the company that’s A) trying to sell you another subscription, B) already collects an inordinate amount of data on you, and C) can record and analyze your voice? Amazon says tone information is only ever on device, but it’s still being recorded, possibly processed, and information can be pulled from it. Amazon doesn’t directly say whether or not they gleam any information from recordings, for example, if you were talking about any products you’d like to buy.
Even Amazon admits they collect a large amount of data for use within the company. Let’s say you’re okay with Amazon having that information for their own needs, are you okay with a company having that data and being able to hand it over to anyone with a warrant? Are you okay with them getting better at mapping tone so they can have AI doing parts of job interviews?
No way in hell.
Amazon came close to delivering something here, but Amazon just can’t stop being Amazon. It’s still the kind of company that cannot be trusted with any piece of any data, let alone what they’ve enabled this thing to collect.
Garmin
Even Garmin’s Vivofit is basically a smartwatch now
Ah, Garmin! There’s a company that has been in the smartwatch and fitness business for a long time. From car GPS devices to hardcore fitness and hiking trackers, surely they’ll have…
Oh for crying out loud. It’s all smartwatches again.
Last year’s Vivofit model is the only device that comes close to being just a basic fitness band. It still has a screen and somewhat bulky form factor. Their newer model of the Vivofit is, obviously, larger and more watch-like… because of course it is. Everyone who buys tech says, first and foremost, they want it to be large, obvious, and obtrusive, right?
No wonder Apple conquered the market. At least they made their smartwatch pretty.
Garmin’s privacy page also states that they do collect information from their devices, including, when relevant, GPS location. So don’t expect your data to be locked down here, either.
Whoop
This is another simple looking device. Once again, it’s huge, the size of a large watch but without a screen. It looks a lot like Amazon’s band. The Whoop band is free… with a subscription. The pricing plans are not user-friendly. The cheapest plan is buying two years up-front for $480, $20/month. After that, you can buy a year at a time at $25/month, or, just buy in monthly segments at $30/month (minimum initial purchase of 12 months, or $360). Whoop might have a good service, the most health data you can get on the market, but it also is an expensive monthly plan, especially if you just want basic biometric data. I can’t even imagine many people needing this level of detail and getting their money’s worth out of a $20-$30 monthly subscription.
Apple
Apple is pretty good about your personal healthcare data, ensuring it’s encrypted. They even do allow the user to turn off temperature collection on their Apple Watch, so data on ovulation can’t be so easily figured out. The data in encrypted on device and now you can also encrypt your entire iCloud. Perfect! Now, let’s take a look at their fitness devices… oh, right, it’s all watches. Apple only sells watches, and their smallest is a sizable 41mm watch.
It might be the best option for so many reasons, but the fact that their fitness services are locked behind wearing their watch is just missing a huge part of the market.
What We Need?
I think that, if the Amazon Halo band was a narrower, slimmer design, it might be the best design on the list. A small device that’s just held in place with highly customizable bands? It’s fantastic. The Oura Ring is a neat idea, but, I’ll admit, I don’t like wearing rings. My workouts often aren’t low impact or jogging either. I regularly have scrapes on my hands. Forget wearing the Oura for a boxing workout, weightlifting, climbing, or skateboarding. It’s just for basic cardio, really. That’s why I think that, if Amazon could figure out how to make a band that isn’t 20mm wide, they could actually have the best product on their hands… if they weren’t also data-hungry Amazon.
Fitbit’s old LED bands would be a decent solution too. Just a basic band, maybe an LED or two. But Fitbit has moved past these style of bands. They’re also owned by Google now, and Google will do anything to collect your data.
What we need is competition. Capitalism is supposed to breed innovation and competition, right? Instead, it seems it has just given way to vertical integration and companies buying smaller innovators to cancel their products, stifle innovation, and retain market share. Infinite growth above all, competition, innovation, and fair markets be damned! What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws. The market needs competition again. We need something new, something unique. Damn it, we just need a simple health tracker that isn’t interested in violating your privacy!
Unfortunately, I may be asking for too much.