Garmin today introduced a new smartwatch aimed at pilots and people who love flying. With the Garmin D2 Air X10, a successor to the older D2 Air, the company has built a typical smartwatch experience with a discrete aviation mode that builds in features that pilots would find necessary as well as added a little extra on the top.
The Garmin D2 Air X10 has one major upgrade over the previous D2 Air model — the inclusion of voice functionality. Allowing pilots to keep their hands free while on the go, the D2 Air X10 can now be used in tandem with your phone’s digital assistant, (Siri or Google Assistant depending on whether you use iOS or Android) to dictate texts and ask the typical queries you’d want to know as an air enthusiast. With a starting price of $550, it’s probably worth considering if the existing Garmin D2 Air is a better fit with its $500 price point.
“The D2 series has quickly proven itself to be the choice for pilots and aviation enthusiasts alike who need a purpose-built smartwatch that’s as functional in the air as it is on the ground,” Carl Wolf, Garmin vice president of aviation sales and marketing said in a release. “Not only does the D2 Air X10 offer built-in aviation tools for every phase of flight, it’s the first aviator smartwatch with convenient on-device calling and voice assistant features to keep up with your life on the go.”
Even if you’re not going to be summoning Siri or Google Assistant on your wrist, the Garmin D2 Air X10 has all the basics you’ll expect from all of Garmin’s best smartwatches. This means a long battery life rated up to seven days of passive use, a Gorilla Glass 3 display with an always-on option, built-in music apps with support for up to 650 songs from Amazon Music, Deezer, and Spotify, contactless payments powered by Garmin Pay, and so on. More specifically to its Air line, the D2 Air X10 comes with features for tracking your flight before take-off, during flight, and after landing. The watch will also automatically log your fights, with seamless transfer to Garmin’s Pilot app for pilots, flyGarmin, for aviation enthusiasts.
The Garmin D2 Air X10 is now available for purchase directly from Garmin in ivory or black color options.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.