Types of Wearable Technology You Should Know About

Man wearing smart watch

Wearable technology—called “wearables” for short—has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Largely, this technology is all about fitness and health; whether they’re tracking your heart rate, steps, or even your oxygen intake, many wearables can be hugely beneficial for tracking your health and fitness progress, risks, and goals.

Wearables can and do fill other roles, and our goal is to run you through the most common wearables and what they do!

Smart Watches

Oh, smart watches. By far the most popular wearables, smart watches track your fitness and health and perform a variety of smartphone functions like displaying notifications, responding to messages, and taking calls. If you want a compact arsenal of wearable technology that also looks aesthetically pleasing, definitely pick up a smartwatch. 

Man is looking at smart watch

You can even customize them! You can get good-looking smart watch bands, or get cardio smart watch bands for functionality and comfort.

Fitness Trackers

While there is minimal difference between fitness trackers and smart watches nowadays, fitness trackers do still exist and are a perfectly valid pick for wearable technology, especially if you want functionality over form. Fitness trackers are the workhorses of well-being technology, between ankle, armband, and wrist fitness trackers. Ankle bands can be especially useful for monitoring your cardio.

Fitness Trackers

Smart Jewelry

If you want some wearable technology that’s even more fashionable and discreet than smart watches, smart jewelry is for you. While smart jewelry is still a little niche, there are many good options for smart rings and bracelets. These can provide some of the same fitness and health insights as fitness trackers and smart watches, but are smaller and can be cheaper.

Head Mounted Displays (HMDs)

HMDs are an incredibly varied field of wearable technology. There are largely two categories for these: glasses and other head-mounted devices that serve specific purposes, and then the larger, more general VR and AR headsets

Couple using wearable technology

Smaller HMDs like glasses are perfect for daily wear and niche uses, like audio speakers or small heads-up displays. Meanwhile, the larger HMDs like the VR headsets are great for games, videos, or working from home!

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