CES 2019: More Show Floor Favorites

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

Are you into a smartwatch as yet? I know I am, and I find that I have not used my higher end standard watch very much in over a year mainly because even though I like to know how many steps I have taken as well as my heart rate and many of the fitness, relaxation, and GPS-measured walking apps, what I really have come to depend on is the ability to read a text or even look at an email at a glance without having to get my phone and turn it on. In today’s environment, when you get notice of a text, you want to see it even though you know that 75% or more of them are meaningless. With notifications on a smartwatch, you can glance at it and get the gist of the text in a second without interrupting your present activity.

The issue with today’s smartwatches such as Apple or Fitbit is that they are the Timex of smartwatches. They keep good time and mostly do what you want, but they are somewhat limited and generally have poor battery life. In fact, battery life is one of the most requested improvements with at least 48 hours being the desired minimum and up to a week being ideal. Until recently, we have not had the ability to go to the likes of Fossil, Breitling, Bulgari, or even a Rolex for smartwatches if you are so inclined and if fashion is a must. This year, finally, there were a plethora of new options supporting more advanced features with more attractive and high-end devices. Some of the features becoming available besides time, date, basic fitness information, calendar, and other notifications include music storage and control, photo-taking capabilities, ringing your phone in case you forgot where it is, a basic LED flashlight, GPS and mapping, a microphone and speaker, weather details, good waterproofing, and NFC payments with more features being announced all the time. As someone who would like to move up from my older Fitbit, I spent some time looking at some of the options.

Some other options on the way include the Matrix solar watch. This watch is not any higher in price than the present popular models, but it does have some significant advantages.

It claims to never need to be charged as it is constantly charging using solar and your body heat. While some standard non-smartwatches have had this ability, this is new for a smartwatch. The phone app includes built-in GPS maps, it does the things you would expect from a smartwatch, it is rugged, and does not look like an oversized postage stamp on your wrist.

Another option is the Garmin, which is still reasonably priced with most of the models selling for a few hundred dollars unless you choose the D2 Delta, which sells for over $1K. These include all of the normal abilities including notifications, optional graphics, heart rate, some with pulse OX GPS, and even maps and music. This seems to be a step up and is clearly an option.

Fossil is also an option. They have many models and features, and what is bringing them to the forefront is the recent announcement that their smartwatch group is being purchased by Alphabet—Google’s parent company. Remember, Alphabet did the same thing when it bought the HTC smartphone group, which has now become the increasingly popular Pixel phone. Pixel watch, anyone?

The point is that smartwatches seem to be taking off, and there are more good options with the ability to do more things all the time. There were many brands and models on display this year. In the future, carrying a phone all the time may not be necessary, especially as some of the newer models can connect to the net on their own. As the more successful companies merge and/or acquire others—and as the market share of smartwatches increases—things will change. However, what powers many of today’s smartwatches? The answer that I learned at CES is the QUALCOMM Snapdragon processor.

Whether you are considering a smartwatch now or in the future, do your research, ensure that it does what you want, and find out what is possible from its competitors. Check that it is not limited to an ecosystem that you may not always use. If you are not interested in a smartwatch, just wait. I bet you will be eventually.

Another hot topic at CES—as well as just about anywhere—was smart homes. There were so many connected devices at CES—Alexa, Google, Apple, Cortana, etc. You can control everything from lighting to temperature to music, connected alarms and notification clocks, and even refrigerator doors that act as your family’s smart home center (see the recent Samsung press announcements). There were even connected toilets that flush themselves and include overflow protection, and many other features including Bluetooth and MP3 capabilities. They save water, but they do use electricity.

We could spend page after page talking about the various smart devices that connect to a smart home, but when discussing this topic, one thing always comes up—privacy! When using an internet-connected service, you must consider the possibility of everything you say or do in your home being recorded and archived—from talking about your taxes to leaving your lights on and wasting electricity. There are huge advantages of and things to like about many smart home devices—although some are ridiculous—but privacy seems to be the biggest concern. This is a topic that will be widely discussed in the coming months and years, especially as privacy breaches continue to be discovered.

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