Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tech Thursday on The Last Word. With the 100% electric X-Bang G6. Packed full of tech. Andy O'Donoghue is with us for Tech Thursday and we're going to talk about screenless wearables. What do you mean by that?
There is an increasing trend, Matt, and it seems to have come out of nowhere, but people are kind of saying they're admitting to what we're calling notification fatigue. The idea is that smartwatches keep beeping, they keep buzzing, they keep disturbing you.
Chapter 2: What is screenless wearable tech and why is it trending?
You move your arm in bed and the light comes on in the middle of the night and then all day long you're in a WhatsApp group and you forget to turn off the notifications forever. Smart watches are distracting and people are fed up, but they still want to track their fitness and health. So there is a big movement towards screenless wearables. Like the whoop that I'm wearing.
Like the whoop, trackers without screens. Yeah, exactly.
OK, but there are plenty of other ones.
There are lots of them. Yeah. And just launched the Google Fitbit Air has just come out, 99 euros.
And this kind of looks like... I thought the Fitbit was a screen as well with digits on it and things.
The new one is... No, the new one isn't.
Oh, so they're moving into this thing.
This is where they're going, yeah.
So no OLED display on it?
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Chapter 3: What are the benefits of using screenless wearables?
This is a completely different price band, ā¬355, and this is more sort of intense monitoring, and it's kind of designed to act as an early warning system for your body, monitoring shifts in your cardiovascular and your metabolic strain. And again, no screen, so people are happy to leave them on 24-7. You don't have that midnight disturbance.
Tracks HRV, the heart rate variability and regular heart rate, skin temperature, sleep stages. It generates what they call a metabolic capacity and metabolic momentum, which are designed really, they're like the readiness score, but also with a kind of a view for longevity scores. Water resistant, IP68, has 4.5 days of battery life.
And there is no mandatory subscription to access your core data, which I really like. And that's-
That's sort of the difference from whoops. So this sounds very much like it's doing the same thing. However, you get to keep your own information all the time. And you don't have monthly or annual fees to pay.
Exactly. Yeah, there is an optional premium coaching for kind of, you know, deep biohacking, they call it. But the core data is yours. And I think it's attractive at the price for that.
I was talking to somebody last week who I noticed, and I said to him, was wearing a book, but also was wearing an Aura Ring. The Aura Ring, you've spoken about many times, but they keep updating it and upgrading it. So the Aura Ring 4 is what's out now.
Yeah, we're on the 4. Very popular. They've got a big kind of celeb launch. They've done really well. And one of the things about them is because smart rings measure signals directly from the finger, where blood flow is often easier to detect than at the wrist, many users find the sleep and recovery data really accurate. And that's kind of a difference about these. The Oura Ring, very well made.
They're expensive. They're about 400 euros. You can get them in various sizes. If anyone's looking at them, get the sizing kit first. You try the sizing kit, you get it sized up, and then they send you your correct size. Really important that you do that. The membership isn't bad if you subscribe. It's about ā¬6 a month for the full functionality, but it has eight days battery life.
And you get blood oxygen level, daytime stress, and you get female health metrics as well. Incredibly popular. An alternative, though, I would say, is have a look at the Ultra Human Ring. And that's just been launched, the new version of that, which is called the Air. ā¬379, but... It gives you all that data, again, like you just said, without the subscription.
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Chapter 4: What features does the new Google Fitbit Air offer?
I think you've got to be thinking about two years is probably the time. I think most people, there are some stats about how long people use trackers and things like this for. And if they make it easy without a subscription, I think people will leave them on longer. So that will allow manufacturers to charge us a bit more at the beginning of the journey.
But if somebody's training for a marathon or they plan on getting a bit fitter, losing some weight, things like that, six to eight months, people report that they tend to wear these devices for. But after two years, that's when you can think about upgrading, I think.
I have mentioned the whoop because of personal experience. You actually have it in here and we talk about the upgrades. We're now at whoop 5.0, aren't we?
And yes, whoop 5.0, which is, you know, the gold standard for high performance athletes. You see so many high performance athletes wearing these and it doesn't care about your steps. This is about your cardiovascular load.
But it does measure your steps as well.
It does. But the core data is, you know, it's designed to tell you when to push hard and when to take a rest day. And you have, you know, the strain and recovery scores, the sleep coach. And I don't know if you have noticed, but I love that charging. You can do the on-risk charging. There's a little charging pack you pop on your wrist.
you never have to take it off which is ingenious so at about 265 euros you get the hardware that's for the annual subscription people love the whoop and I think it will remain incredibly popular
Although I have found that sometimes the slide-on battery pack doesn't work on some, and I've seen that with other members of the family with devices, so they're not perfect in that regard. You have a thing called the Bellabeat Ivy Plus. What is this?
And Ivy Plus is a screenless wellness tracker specifically designed for women. And it's designed as a very fancy screen-free bracelet. It looks really good and you can customise it, add different straps so it doesn't look like everyone else's. But basically it monitors biometric data without looking like a piece of tech material.
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Chapter 5: How does the Hume Health Band differ from other wearables?
Andy, that's horrifying.
That's dystopian. Well, or is it? Or is it, Matt? Is it the analysis that no one else will ever give you?
But hold on, is that recording other people's voices as well when you're in conversation with them, or is it just your side of the conversation?
It's recording. You set up who you are, and so it notes who you are. But it does do dictation. If you're at a meeting and you want to capture a dictation, you can do so. You should tell people, obviously, in the same way that we tell people to look at Zoom notes.
But I find myself, I know this sounds slightly bizarre, but I do find myself chatting to it late in the evening, making notes for the next day.
Yes, that is bizarre, Andy. LAUGHTER But you know what actually it brings to mind is that, remember all the fuss, it was this time last year, OpenAI did a deal with Johnny Ive of Apple for an AI device, which we haven't seen yet, and this talk might be 2027 before we see it.
But what you have just shown me, that little circular disk which looks like an Apple tag, if it's doing what you're saying, it suggests they're ahead of what OpenAI is doing, but that the Johnny Ive item could be very similar to that.
I think it will be very similar. And this, since I've been using it, I bought this as kind of an early adopter. And, you know, you'll buy them for between 100, 180 euros.
Now they know everything about you, Andy.
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