The ultimate sport headphones have arrived: Kuai, good for any sport and the perfect mate for your smartphone. The Kuaiwear team is headed by three triathletes and Ironmen; marathon masters with business acumen and engineering experience. Seriously, their records include multiple Ironmans in China and Malaysia, as well as the Escape from Alcatraz this year, so they have personal experience with next-level sports gear, and they’ve realized it would be nice not to have to carry a suitcase of it just to track your performance. The Kuai multisport biometric headphones give you info that would usually require a bunch of sensors and straps. Now you don’t have to feel like you’re suiting up for war every time you head out to train.
Swimmers, surfers, triathletes, skiers, and snowboarders, fear not — the Kuaiwear’s are waterproof to three meters, so you don’t have to worry about water shorting out your expensive new gear. They even come with multiple earbuds for sport-specific use; for instance, the cycling buds hold securely while letting you hear what’s going on around you — like that SUV coming up on your left a little too close for comfort.
But of course waterproofing is just the beginning. The Kuai multisport headphones are not just waterproof wireless headphones — they have a built in 8GB MP3 player, an accelerometer and an infrared pulse oximeter. What this means is that these headphones can calculate your calories burned, speed, heart rate and VO2 max, and whisper this info right into your ear. It’s like a sports watch that talks to you – it also makes your old heart rate band envious and sad when you leave it behind.
These features are crazy convenient to have in one device, all running on a battery that will last between five and seven hours, depending on use. But it gets better — the Kuai headphones are BLE and ANT+ compatible, so you can link them with other sensors if you choose to, though it seems like they’ve go that covered. They don’t have a built in cadence sensor or power meter for cyclists, so those are pretty much all that’s left to link up. The BLE and ANT+ will likely come in handiest for uploading the headphones’ .FIT data to your computer or iOS or Android smartphone. Once there, you can manipulate your training plans, create your own workouts and workout schedule, and set up custom voice alerts. All of this info goes back onto the headphones, and voila! You have an in-ear coach, telling you when to pick it up and push a little harder.
At this point, you may be wondering if these sound too good to be true. They’re not. The Kuaiwear team already has several working prototypes based on over 30 licensed patents validated by Duke University School of Medicine. The only part that’s too good to be true is that you can’t just up and walk into any Best Buy and grab a pair of these off the shelf. Well, not yet anyway. For now, the Kuai team is asking for Kickstarter funding to cover software fine-tunes, molds, and manufacturing. Check out their Facebook page for info on a drawing to win a free pair.
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.