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Tech

Finally, Wearable Tech You'll Actually Want to Wear

If the shoe fits...
Image: Pebble

Chief among the buzzwords at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was "wearable technology." But like a lot of things that spokespeople and overeager venture capitalists are trying to hawk at the annual gathering of the tech industry in Las Vegas, it's still not clear if wearable tech actually is "the next big thing" that so many CES-ers clearly want it to be. As Google showed yesterday with its new crop of Glass models, even the world's most valuable tech companies are still finding this new realm of consumer electronics a tough nut to crack.

It seemed fitting (pun very much intended) then, that just a day after Google opened up about its latest labor of love to make Google Glass something appealing for people outside of the cyborg class, reviews began to pour in for Pebble's new Steel smartwatch. And, well, people actually seemed to like it. The Verge's Nilay Patel called it "the best smartwatch money can buy."

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More important than the praise itself, however, was where it was directed: at the look and feel of the thing. For the first time, there was a general consensus among critics that this was something they'd actually be comfortable wearing. Proud even.

"I would definitely wear the Pebble every day — a huge achievement I can’t say about any other wearable product I’ve tried in the past year or so," Patel added. Engadget said, "the Steel blends functionality with an elegant and durable design, and it does a fantastic job at it." On the more tempered side of things, Ars Technica and Wired both seemed to agree that while we're not going to see Rick Ross flaunting the Steel in a music video anytime soon, its industrial design gets the job done.

"Of all the smartwatches and sports bands I’ve tried, for a non-watch wearer, this version of Pebble Steel bothered me the least," Christina Bonnington wrote in Wired. "I could wear it all day without discomfort or irritation."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, sure. But it's still high praise for a product category once deemed so loathsome that even technology journalists, nerds that they are, felt embarrassed to associate themselves with.

Does this mean that the consumer tech industry is finally learning from its many botched attempts? Hopefully. But it also means that consumers need to think about what they actually want from wearable devices in the first place.

During CES this year, I spoke to Justin Butler of Misfit Wearables, a startup that's gained a lot of traction over the last two years for making a striking, ornamental variation of the activity tracker. He told me in an email during the show that when it comes to designing and developing wearable products, his company often faces a problem in how people have learned to think about what even counts as appropriate consumer tech in the first place.

"It is important to find the balance between providing consumers the right amount data, while also limiting the 'Iron-Man' look, and providing long battery life," Butler wrote. "Many consumers have been trained to expect screens that provide lots of information on devices, but reactions are often highly positive when just the right amount of information is provided without overload."

Developers are still searching for that perfect Goldilocks balance. And even if someone does find a particular model or gadget that truly takes off, it won't be a singular, monolithic entity like the iPhone or Macbook. But if products like the Pebble Steel are any indication, tech companies have at the very least begun to wise up to the aesthetic biases of all us normal people.