Epson is making a serious push into wearables at CES this year. Hot on the heels of its second generation Moverio BT-200 smart glasses there comes a new line of watches and wristbands under the Pulsense brand name. The focus is on sports, fitness, and health tracking with sensors to monitor your heart rate, steps taken, calories burned, and sleeping patterns.
The Pulsense Watch and the Pulsense Band are designed to be standalone devices. They don’t need to be hooked up to a heart rate strap, and they are capable of storing up to 480 hours of heart rate information before you have to transfer data to your smartphone or computer. There will be support for Android and iOS apps, as well as an option to upload data directly to your computer.
You may be wondering about the differences between the two. The Pulsense Band is a lightweight wristband with a simplified LED display and it can connect to your smartphone wirelessly to enable you to read the biometric data. The Pulsense Watch enables you to view the data in real time on the LCD display, and it can give you the date and time as well.
Both devices are being touted for a summer release this year. The Pulsense Watch can be pre-ordered right now for $200. The Pulsense Band will cost you $130.
These devices look to be the first salvo in a full line of wrist worn sensing devices from Epson, as Anna Jen, director, New Ventures/New Products for Epson America explained “Pulsense has set the performance and features benchmark for the next generation of activity monitors. With additional core technologies in Swing and Location sensing, consumers can expect to see more smart products coming from Epson addressing the needs of the health, fitness and sports segments of the wearables market.”
