2018: The Year Wearables Finally Tell Us Something Meaningful

If you’re a tech and fitness enthusiast (especially one making the quest to CES 2018), you’re probably well-aware of the range of health, fitness and lifestyle devices available. You have also almost certainly reviewed, purchased, or at least been hands on, experimenting with at least one of these devices.

Something’s changed.

Take a popular mid-range device like the Garmin vívoactive 3 that debuted last Autumn, for example. Yes, it’s nice, looks great, and is easy to wear – but what makes it new?

There are, of course, all the year-to-year improvements in build quality, form factor, and materials that come with the territory, but there’s something else, something simultaneously important and easy to miss without the right perspective.

The addition of new features like cardiorespiratory fitness (VO2max) detection and all-day stress tracking mean that beyond simply telling you about your activities, you are getting information about yourself. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s a big, big deal.

This phenomenon really goes to the next level when you examine the new Garmin Forerunner 645 Music, debuting this week. There, changes in your VO2max, are examined and interpreted in light of current training loads and historical training patterns to reveal the effectiveness of the user’s overall training activities.

Garmin Forerunner 645 Music was released this week at CES 2018.

Although often obscured by the sound and fury of the wearables boom, the ability to look below the surface to give us vital, personal information about ourselves was the original promise of wearables, and now it’s finally here.

With minimal fanfare, almost under the radar, wearables have finally begun to reveal us how our bodies respond and adapt to the many challenges of life and environment around us.

In life, it’s not necessarily what you do, but how your body responds that matters. Armed with that insight, you can truly begin to make better lifestyle and exercise decisions based on scientific evidence of what works best for you personally, for your own unique physiology.

At Firstbeat, we’ve been working hard for the past 15 years, preparing for this moment to become a reality. To get here, Firstbeat pioneered the application of machine learning to extract vital information from heartbeat data, construct a model of physiology and interpret the results into insights that are both meaningful and actionable for individual users.

Hundreds of thousands of laboratory tests later, the fruits of our research and innovative vision reside not within with a single device, product line, or brand, but impact an entire industry.

Once you know what to look for and begin to look at products from this perspective, you’ll notice it, too.

You’ll see Garmin devices tracking stress around the clock, new Suunto devices reporting on sleep for the first time from the perspective of recovery quality (not just restless movement), and Huawei delivering personalized training plans that adapt based on changes in your fitness level.

You’ll see a standardization of fitness detection capabilities, recovery prediction, and the ability to capture the physiological impact of exercise in terms of future fitness and performance development stimulation.

Look around and you’ll see that in 2018 wearables are finally doing it right.

Just last year, Firstbeat’s unique heartbeat analytics engine was integrated into over 20 devices from Garmin, Huawei, Jabra, TomTom, Epson, MiTac, and Huami devices.

New Firstbeat powered devices making their debut at CES 2018:

• Garmin Forerunner 645 Music
• Suunto 3 Fitness
• Amazfit Stratos

Come visit our exhibition space at CES, Venetian, Lvl 2 – Bellini 2001B

Media Contact:
Herman Bonner
Communications Specialist
herman.bonner@firstbeat.com
+358 44 343 7626

Firstbeat CEO and Co-Founder Joni Kettunen Speaking at the CES Fitness Tech Summit

Actively Solving Your Own Fitness Puzzle
Joni Kettunen, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder, Firstbeat
January 9 at 1:00-1:15pm, Venetian, Level 4, Lando 4304

Data Delivery: Accelerating the Winding Road
Joni Kettunen, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder, Firstbeat
Dr. Steven Le Boeuf, President and Co-Founder, Valencell
Ryan Pitylak, CEO, Unique Influence
Mounir Zok, Head of Innovation and Wearables, United States Olympic Committee
Moderated by Michael Yang, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures
January 9 at 1:15-1:55pm, Venetian, Level 4, Lando 4304