Smart rings are in the middle of a renaissance. That’s great because we finally have way more options than just an Oura Ring. The downside is most of Oura’s would-be rivals are launching their first, maybe second-gen smart rings. Meaning, if you want an Oura Ring alternative, there’s a good chance you’ll have to put up with quirks and a distinct lack of polish. The $199.99 Amazfit Helio smart ring is no exception.

Amazfit isn’t a household name but is well-known among wearable bargain hunters. It’s a compelling brand because its gadgets get you a lot of bang for your buck. That’s the case with the Helio ring, the brand’s first foray into smart rings. It’s primarily a sleep tracker, but it comes with an AI chatbot called Zepp Flow, an AI coaching feature, and it has an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor for monitoring stress, a blood oxygen sensor, a temperature sensor, and period tracking. It also syncs with popular third-party fitness apps like Adidas Running, Strava, and Komoot, as well as  Apple Health and Google Fit. Like the Samsung Galaxy Ring, it works with Amazfit’s other smartwatches so you can double up on data sources — or switch between the two …

Read the full story at The Verge.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Meta press forward with augmented glasses projects buoyed by its million-selling set of smart Ray-Bans, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says that Apple just pulled the plug on an AR glasses project. Codenamed N107, they’re described as something that would’ve looked similar to regular glasses but with added displays in the lenses that could connect to a Mac.

With features that sound similar to devices like the Xreal One AR glasses, the glasses could’ve delivered on the Vision Pro feature that’s closest to being any kind of a killer app (popping up a huge virtual monitor anywhere) without the $3,499 price and heavy design that required a head strap. The glasses also would’ve had tint-changing lenses that, like the Vision Pro’s Eye Sight, could signal to onlookers whether the wearer was busy or not. While other details are fuzzy, it doesn’t appear as if the N107 glasses would’ve had a camera or any of the mixed-reality features of the Vision Pro.

A big problem, according to Gurman, was developing something that worked well while being cost-effective proved to be a challenge. Apple initially wanted the N107 to connect to an iPhone, but it proved to be a battery-guzzler, and the iPhone itself didn’t have enough juice to power the glasses — hence the shift to a Mac. Unfortunately, that switch purportedly didn’t seem to go over well with executives in testing.

This most recent cancellation puts a big question mark over Apple’s future AR and XR plans. Apple purportedly canceled a separate AR glasses project in 2023, and rumor has it that work on a Vision Pro 2 has been put on hold in favor of trying to create a cheaper Vision Pro. Meanwhile, the Vision Pro itself has struggled to find a foothold.

The cancellation also means Apple is falling further behind the competition. CES 2025 was a playground for all sorts of smart glasses, and Google recently entered the fray with Android XR. Samsung has also thrown its hat in the ring with its Project Moohan headset. Last year, Meta showcased its Orion glasses, an AR glasses prototype with advanced Micro LED displays and a neural wristband for controls. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been bullish on smart glasses as an ultimate vehicle for AI assistants, and the company is expected to release both Oakley-branded smart glasses for athletes and a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses with a display this year.

Apple has agreed to a $20 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over battery swelling in early Apple Watch models. If you experienced the issue and owned an Apple Watch Series 0, 1, 2, or 3, you may be eligible for a small payout.

The lawsuit, Smith et al. v. Apple Inc, was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In both the settlement agreement and claim website, Apple explicitly denies that its smartwatches ever had battery swelling issues and “denies all allegations of wrongdoing” and liability. Instead, it says that Apple is choosing to settle to “avoid further costs of litigation.”

In a statement sent to The Verge, Apple spokesperson Aushawna Collins says the company “strongly disagree[s] with the claims made against these early generation Apple Watch models.”

To be eligible for a payout, you have to have owned an eligible watch model and have reported any potential battery swelling issues to Apple between April 24th, 2015 and February 6th, 2024. Anyone who fits those criteria has until April 10th to confirm or update their payment information to receive a payout. According to the settlement’s FAQ site, the payment is estimated to be roughly $20 to $50 per covered watch. Accepting a payment means you also give up any future action regarding battery issues on these particular watches. Those who do not wish to be part of the settlement have until February 24th, 2025 to exclude themselves or object to the settlement.

Update, January 31st: Added comment from Apple.

Dell is the latest tech company to announce it’s ending its hybrid and remote work policy. Starting March 3rd, Dell employees will have to show up in person five days a week.

In an email obtained by Business Insider, CEO Michael Dell writes that “all hybrid and remote team members who live near a Dell office will work in the office five days a week. We are retiring the hybrid policy effective that day.”

“What we’re finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days,” Dell writes.

Despite this mandate, Dell also continues to sell remote work solutions, noting that remote work offers “benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity.”

Technically, Dell had already required its sales, manufacturing, and lab engineers to return to office. The email cites the “new speed, energy, and passion” from those teams as a reason for implementing it company-wide globally. For previously remote workers who don’t live near an office, Dell says they can continue to work remotely.

Dell is not the only company to issue return-to-office mandates in recent months. AT&T, Amazon, Stellantis, and JP Morgan have all either started or announced return-to-work policies this month. Meanwhile, President Trump also issued an executive order last week requiring all federal employees to return to office, noting that all government departments “terminate remote work arrangements.”

Live AI is neat, but the problem is knowing when (and why) you’d want to use it.

Read the full story at The Verge.

I was in middle school the last time I took a Spanish class. I remember enough for toddler talk — phrases like “Donde está el baño?” and “mi gato es muy gordo” — but having a meaningful conversation in Spanish without a translator is out of the question. So I was genuinely surprised the other day when, thanks to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, I could have a mostly intelligible conversation with a Spanish speaker about K-pop.

Live translations were added as part of a feature drop last month, alongside live AI and Shazam. It’s exactly what it sounds like. When you turn the feature on, you can have a conversation with a Spanish, French, or Italian speaker, and the glasses will translate what’s being said directly into your ears in real-time. You can also view a transcript of the conversation on your phone. Whatever you say in English will also be translated into the other language.

Screenshot: Meta

Full disclosure, my conversation was part of a Meta-facilitated demo. That’s not truly the same thing as plopping these glasses on, hopping down to Barcelona, and trying it in the wild. That said, I’m a translation tech skeptic and intended to find all the cracks where this tech could fail.

The glasses were adept at translating a basic conversation about K-pop bands. After my conversation partner was done speaking, the translation would kick in soon after. This worked well if we talked in measured, medium-speed speech, with only a few sentences at a time. But that’s not how people actually speak. In real life, we launch into long-winded tirades, lose our train of thought, and talk much faster when angry or excited.

To Meta’s credit, it considered the approach to some of these situations. I had my conversation partner speak at a faster speed and a longer duration. It handled the speed decently well, though there was understandably some lag in the real-time transcript. For longer speech, the glasses started translating mid-way through before my partner was done talking. That was a bit jarring and awkward, as you, the listener, have to recognize you’re a bit behind. The experience is similar to how live interpreters do it on international news or broadcasts.

I was most impressed that the glasses could handle a bit of Spanglish. Often, multilingual speakers rarely stick to just one language, especially when in mixed-language company. In my family, we call it Konglish (Korean-English), and people slip in and out of each language, mixing and matching grammar that’s chaotic and functional. For example, my aunt will often speak several sentences in Korean, throw in two sentences in English, do another that’s a mix of Korean and English, and then revert to Korean. I had my conversation partner try something similar in Spanish and... the results were mixed.

Screenshot: Meta

On the one hand, the glasses could handle short switches between languages. However, longer forays into English led to the AI repeating the English in my ear. Sometimes, it’d also repeat what I’d said, because it started getting confused. That got so distracting I couldn’t focus on what was being said.

The glasses struggled with slang. Every language has its dialects, and each dialect can have its unique spin on colloquialisms. You need look no further than how American teens have subjected us all to phrases like skibidi and rizz. In this case, the glasses couldn’t accurately translate “no manches.” That translates to “no stain,” but in Mexican Spanish, it also means “no way” or “you’re kidding me!” The glasses chose the literal translation. In that vein, translation is an art. In some instances, the glasses got the correct gist across but failed to capture some nuances of what was being said to me. This is the burden of all translators — AI and human alike.

You can’t use these to watch foreign-language movies or TV shows without subtitles. I watched a few clips of Emilia Pérez, and while it could accurately translate scenes where everyone was speaking loudly and clearly, it quit during a scene where characters were rapidly whispering to each other in hushed tones. Forget about the movie’s musical numbers entirely.

You wouldn’t necessarily have these issues if you stuck to what Meta intended with this feature. It’s clear these glasses were mostly designed to help people have basic interactions while visiting other countries — things like asking for directions, ordering food at a restaurant, going to a museum, or completing a transaction. In those instances, you’re more likely to encounter people who speak slower with the understanding that you are not a native speaker.

It’s a good start, but I still dream of the babel fish from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — a little creature that when plopped in your ear, can instantly and accurately translate any language into your own. For now, that’s still the realm of science fiction.

Samsung dropped some wearable news ahead of its Unpacked event later today: parents can now use the cellular Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 as a smartwatch for their kids.

With a new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode, children can use the smartwatch to call and text trusted contacts, while parents can also track their kids’ locations via GPS. The option starts rolling out today and will work on Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T networks.

The good news is parents won’t need a separate smartphone for this to work. Instead, it’s similar to Apple Family Setup, where parents use their phone to pair and set up the smartwatch before programming guardrails through the Google Family Link app. Parents can control which apps can be downloaded to the device, locate misplaced watches, and specify their children’s contacts for texting and calling. In an emergency, kids can also access emergency SOS features by pressing the side button five times. As with other children’s smartwatches, there’s a School Time mode that limits features during school hours.

In a keyword blog, Google also notes that kids can download 20 “teacher approved” apps and watchfaces from the kids section of the Google Play store. They include Barbie, Marvel, and Rubik’s Cube-themed watchfaces and educational games from PBS Kids and Crayola. Other third-party apps are available for download but require parental approval.

Samsung isn’t reinventing the wheel here — it’s playing catch-up. Apple first introduced Apple Watch For Your Kids (formerly Family Setup) for its smartwatches in 2020, and last year, Google launched the Fitbit Ace LTE, a revamped kids GPS tracker with Pixel Watch hardware and a focus on educational gaming.

Meanwhile, this has been a feature that parents have been asking for in subreddits and Samsung customer forums. Previously, it was possible to set up Galaxy Watches as standalone devices with cellular service for kids, but it required parents to be a bit more tech-savvy in figuring out location tracking, phone setup, and parental controls. This new mode streamlines everything into a more accessible format, though it is only limited to the Watch 7.

We’ve asked Samsung if it plans to introduce the feature to LTE version of the budget Galaxy Watch FE but did not immediately receive a response.

Update, January 22nd: A previous version of this article referred to “Apple Watch For Your Kids” by its former name Family Setup. It has been updated to reflect the new name.

Meta may be releasing new Oakley-branded smart glasses later this year, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The Oakley-branded glasses, internally referred to as “Supernova 2”, would be based on the brand’s Sphaera glasses. Instead of housing the cameras on the side, the Supernova 2 would shift the camera to the center of the frame. The idea is to appeal to cyclists and other outdoor athletes. The report didn’t detail any other potential features, though the Oakley glasses would ostensibly have similar features to the current Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Oakley, like Ray-Bans, are a subsidiary of eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The move to expand Meta’s tech to other brands under EssilorLuxottica’s umbrella is a savvy one. While the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are good for discreet, everyday wear, they’re a bit heavy for endurance sports and lack certain features like polarized lenses for better visibility. Oakleys are also considered stylish and popular among professional athletes. Conceptually, they’re similar to the now discontinued Bose Frames Tempo, which allowed athletes to have open-ear audio with polarized lenses in a relatively light form factor. That said, if the goal is to appeal to athletes, Meta and Oakley will likely have to address factors like weight, sweat resistance, and battery life.

The report also notes that Meta plans on launching a higher-end version of its current Ray-Ban glasses that include a display capable of delivering notifications, running simple apps, and previewing photos.

Every January, fitness tech and wearable companies love to remind us about New Year’s Resolutions. For a small number of people, New Year’s features, challenges, and marketing campaigns will be exactly the push they need. For everyone else, they’re another reason to feel bad about yourself.

The start of the new year is when Peloton Bikes go on sale, Apple trots out its annual Ring in the New Year Challenge badge and new Fitness Plus content, and anecdotally, it’s when I see a lot of friends suddenly start logging miles in Strava. But this year, I saw a new marketing tactic: Quitter’s day.

Quitter’s day is the second Friday in January — the day when most people throw in the towel on New Year’s Resolutions, fitness related or otherwise. Apple rolled out an Apple Watch commercial around it, encouraging people to “quit quitting” with a little extra wrist-based motivation. Popular strength training app Ladder also jumped on the trend with a humorous ad hinting that, if you just have Ladder coaches in your ear, you too can avoid quitting.

I was on the ground at the giant CES trade show during this year’s Quitter’s day. CES is a week where I’m lucky if I get one workout in, eat three...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Las Vegas is punishingly dry. The arid winter air means I woke up on Day 3 of CES 2025 with a nosebleed, chapped lips, and ashy legs. This in spite of the fact I slathered myself with two pumps of a fermented bean essence, eye cream, moisturizer, and a lip mask. Staring at my face in the hotel mirror, I wonder if any of those products were doing what they’re supposed to — and if maybe, I should try something different.

This is why I was so eager to try L’Oréal’s Cell BioPrint.

For anyone who’s struggled with their complexion, the Cell BioPrint feels like a holy grail gadget. The device is a mini-lab setup that analyzes a skin sample to generate a report about your skin’s current condition. It’ll also “grade” your skin with regard to oiliness, wrinkles, skin barrier function, pore size, and uneven skin tone. Based on the proteins in your skin, you’ll also see whether you’re more likely to be susceptible to those issues down the line — even if they aren’t issues now. The test also determines whether you’re responsive to retinol, a popular and well-studied skincare ingredient that nevertheless causes a ton of confusion online.

Read the full story at The Verge.

At CES, the next generation of eyewear was everywhere. It’s just no one seems to agree on why we want it or what the best approach is.

It’s the second day of CES, and I’m waiting in a line to see my 10th pair of smart glasses. I honestly don’t know what to expect: I’ve seen glorified sunglasses with dubious ChatGPT clones. I’ve sidled up to several booths where the glasses were almost carbon copy clones of the pairs a booth over. I’ve seen all manner of “displays” tacked onto the lenses: some washed out, others so tedious to calibrate as to make me walk away.

So when I slipped on the Rokid Glasses, I felt my brows raise. I could see what looked like a mini desktop. I swiped the arm and a horizontal list of apps appeared. Green writing appeared in front of me a bit like a monitor in The Matrix. A Rokid staffer began speaking to me in Chinese, and despite the surrounding din, I could see a text translation of what she was saying float in front of me. After a brief conversation — she asked whether I ate lunch, she hadn’t — she prompted me to try taking a picture. The display shifted to what looked like a camera’s viewfinder. I hit the multifunction button. An animation flashed. On her phone, I saw the picture I took.

“Holy crap,” I thought. “So this is what the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses would be like with a display.” And then — “If this is possible, why doesn’t it have one yet?”

The three types of smart glasses

It seems that everyone is still trying to figure out what makes the perfect pair of smart glasses. I must have tried out 20 pairs over the course of the last week, but they all seemed to fall into one of three different buckets in how they balanced wearability and functionality.

The first bucket is the simple and stylish glasses. The more stylish and comfortable smart glasses are, the fewer features they tend to have. But for this group, that’s often a good thing.

Take the unassuming Nuance Audio. These smart glasses — made by EssilorLuxottica, Meta’s partner in making the Ray-Ban Meta eyewear — discreetly function as over-the-counter hearing aids. When you wear them, you can dampen some of the noise around you as well as amplify the voice of the person you’re speaking to. This would sound like science fiction if I hadn’t tried it myself.

But at a glance, you’d never know the Nuance Audio glasses can alter how you hear the world — and that’s precisely the point. They look like any pair of stylish glasses and come in two colors and three shapes. By “hiding” their smarts in a normal-looking pair of glasses, they’re essentially helping to reduce the discomfort some people feel when wearing visible hearing aids. It’s not flashy, but it’s a precise and clear use case.

The Chamelo glasses take a similar tack. The “smart” part of these electrochromic sunglasses can, depending on the model, change the color or tint with the swipe of a finger. Some models also have Bluetooth audio. Chamelo’s glasses aren’t new, and at CES, they weren’t suddenly adding in AI assistants, displays, or anything wild. This year’s update? Adding support for prescriptions so more people can use the device.

Neither of these glasses is trying to reinvent the wheel. They saw a simple problem worth fixing and decided to fix it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The face screens

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find longtime CES veterans Xreal and Vuzix.

When I arrive at Xreal’s booth, it’s jam-packed. There’s a station where people wear Xreal glasses as they “drive” in a BMW. (The car doesn’t move, but you can pretend you’re moving the wheel and tilt your head on a race course.) I don a pair of last year’s Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses while seated at a desk with only a keyboard in front of me. The Air 2 Ultra are a bit like chunky sunglasses, with miniature screens hovering beneath the lenses. From afar, they look pretty normal. Up close, you can feel their bulk — and on the face, they protrude further than looks natural.

Inside the glasses, I see football players on a football field, information popping up over their heads. The virtual display switches to a panoramic video with avatars of friends watching alongside me. In another window, I’m prompted to type in a description of a fictional creature. I pick “monstrously fat cat with unicorn wings” and lo, it appears. I can pinch and pull with my hands to make it even bigger. The more recently launched Xreal One are also here, though it admittedly gets hard to tell which pair of Xreal glasses is which while elbowing past other eager onlookers.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

When I mosey on over to Vuzix’s booth, it’s less packed, but that’s likely because folks are gawping at a bizarre karaoke contest a few booths over. I, on the other hand, am wearing a pair of the company’s latest Ultralite Pro glasses. The glasses look a bit clunkier, but when you put them on, you can see an array of rainbow lights that culminate in a 3D display. I’m looking at a picture of nature, and there’s actual depth.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’d wear glasses like these walking down the street. They look like glasses, sure, but they can also be bulky and sometimes have cords dangling for battery packs. These glasses show hints of what augmented reality is capable of — but they aren’t meant to be things you wear all day, every day.

The spyglasses

This divide between form and function isn’t new. What’s new is that there are far more smart glasses that lie somewhere in the middle. And they have some funky ideas.

Sharge’s Loomos.AI glasses, for example, look similar to the Meta glasses except they use ChatGPT and can shoot 4K photos and 1080p videos. They also add a bizarre neckband battery to account for the massive battery drain. Rayneo was back with smaller, more refined X3 Pro AR glasses. I could list dozens more, but to be frank, they were mostly iterations of the Meta glasses.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Of the myriad smart glasses I saw, three stood out: Halliday, Even Realities G1, and the Rokid Glasses. All three feature a discreet design, with a hidden green monochrome heads-up display. Halliday projects its single display from the frame by shining a green light into your eye; the other two feature microetched displays on both lenses that are nigh invisible when viewed from the front. (All three companies told me they use green light because it’s easiest on the eyes, has the best contrast, and is less likely to get washed out in bright ambient lighting.)

There are slight hardware differences between all three, but in my demos, it was clear that, philosophically, they’re much more geared toward all-day productivity. They have AI assistants, can be used as teleprompters, and offer live translation. The Rokid Glasses even have a 12MP camera for taking photos and video.

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

In this vision of the smart glasses revolution, these devices are more like all-day companions that help you use your phone less. The display is something that’s only occasionally glanced at when it’s relevant and is done mostly in a productivity context. They offer more smarts than the very use-specific Chamelo and Nuance Audio glasses, but they offer more practicality (and wearability) to the average person than what Xreal and Vuzix are pursuing.

The smart glasses era

The more I talk to the people behind these products, the more it becomes clear that everyone believes smart glasses are the future. It’s also apparent that no one agrees on the best way to get to that future.

“We’ve chosen to optimize for something that is, we think, a great feature geared towards the actual use case of glasses,” says Chamelo CEO and cofounder Reid Covington. “You’re wearing them to see. You’re wearing them to block out light. A lot of the more forward-looking smart glasses have interesting features, but they’re not optimized for, you know, actual usability.”

But even among companies pursuing simpler smart glasses, function isn’t always the reason they choose more discreet or stylish designs. Smart glasses are “something that you need to feel are part of yourself,” says Davide D’Alena, global marketing director for Nuance Audio. Function is nice, but doing all the things isn’t worth it if you have to wear something hideous on your face. “For us, it’s just not enough to put out an ugly product, even if it’s working perfectly from a functional point of view. It must be something that is also a self-expression.”

Meanwhile, some longtime veterans in the space contend it isn’t a choice of form and function. It’s a split between AR and AI.

“I actually see two different directions going forward. One is AR glasses which will handle a lot of the XR content. The other one will be the AI glasses as a major kind of all-day wearable smart glasses,” says Chi Xu, Xreal founder and CEO. Xu says that everything will converge at some point — though we’ll be waiting a good while before it does. Right now, it’s a matter of every option being developed at once as companies try to figure out the best way to draw people in.

Xu isn’t wrong. While some companies like EssilorLuxottica and Chamelo are committed to one approach, others are happy to dabble. Rokid, for example, may have come out with AI-first smart glasses this year, but its array of more Xreal-like AR glasses was actually the bigger portion of its booth. Meta, apparently, is working on glasses with a display, too, targeting later this year — my colleague Alex Heath reports that the company will add its own twist to the formula by shipping a neural wristband that can be used to control them.

But for all the fragmentation, every company I spoke to said the same thing: they’ve seen renewed interest in this space within the last year and a half — and with that comes investors aplenty with deep wallets. The vast majority emphasized how rapid advancements in technology and AI have made things possible today that were impossible just two or three years ago. And every single one said that interest from the general public, not just first adopters, is also higher than in previous years.

This, they all say, proves that smart glasses are inevitable. It’s just a matter of getting everyone else to see the vision. And that’s sort of the problem. With smart glasses, you have to see it to believe it.

AI is the big buzzword in health tech at CES 2025. Everywhere you look, there are AI algorithms, AI health recommendations, and AI chatbots. The thing is, AI’s got a reputation for making things up — and when it comes to health, the stakes for accuracy and privacy are high.

That’s why smart ring maker Movano wants to make one thing abundantly clear about its new chatbot, EvieAI: this one has been post-trained exclusively on peer-reviewed medical journals.

EvieAI was designed to be a more accurate alternative to something like ChatGPT. The difference is, unlike ChatGPT and other similar generative AI assistants, EvieAI theoretically won’t be pulling from vast repositories of public data where health and wellness misinformation runs rife. According to Movano CEO John Mastrototaro, it’s been trained on and will be constrained to over 100,000 medical journals written by medical professionals.

All the data the LLM has access to comes from accredited sources that have been referred to by a medical advisory board, Mastrototaro says. That includes FDA-approved journals, practices, and procedures. EvieAI is a bounded LLM, which means it will only speak to data from the “post-training” phase after it’s been initially created. In this case, that means medical data. The data is then cross-referenced with organizations like the Mayo Clinic, Harvard, and UCLA. The LLM does this by referencing this outside data before answering and making sure there isn’t a conflict.

The result, according to Movano, is 99 percent accuracy, though we weren’t able to test EvieAI for ourselves before CES. The company says this is possible because anytime you query EvieAI, the LLM is tracking to see if the information given in the conversation is consistent and accurate compared to the data it’s been trained on.

Achieving that level of accuracy is a tall order and a bold claim. Most chatbots don’t make reliably accurate statements, and some specifically steer clear of health and medicine precisely because the stakes are so high. When I ask about AI’s tendency to hallucinate, however, I’m firmly told that Movano isn’t afraid for EvieAI to tell users it doesn’t have an answer.

“If you ask it ‘What do you think about the election?’, it’s not going to respond,” says Mastrototaro. “It’s not going to tell you because it doesn’t have any information about that.”

“I think that it’s okay to say no if you don’t know the answer to something,” he adds. “And I think sometimes, with the other tools out there, they’re gonna answer one way or another, whether it’s right or wrong. We’re just only gonna give an answer if it’s right.”

EvieAI is meant to be a conversational resource that gives clear and concise answers to health and wellness questions, with an emphasis on women’s health (much like the company’s Evie Ring).

Even so, health, wellness, and medicine are an ever-shifting landscape. Even peer-reviewed studies can present contradictory findings. Doctors don’t always agree on emerging science. By and large, health tech has also steered clear of anything that could be considered diagnostic or medical advice — something that would require FDA oversight.

Image: Movano

To that end, Mastrototaro says the LLM is updated monthly with new approved documents such as medical journals and articles detailing breakthroughs. He also emphasizes that EvieAI is steering clear of anything diagnostic. The AI will not get into treatment but act more as a guide that asks clarifying questions to steer you in the right direction. For example, if you suspect that you might have diabetes, it may ask clarifying questions about whether you have experienced low vision or weight gain as well as inquire about your diet. But if you tell it you’ve chopped your finger off, or express that you’re experiencing suicidal ideation, it’ll direct you to the ER or to the number to call an appropriate hotline. The hope is that EvieAI can help people better research and prepare for a doctor’s visit in a way that’s more natural and supportive than, say, falling down a WebMD rabbit hole.

As for privacy, Movano says EvieAI will follow industry-standard encryption standards in storage and transmission and that any chats can’t be traced back to individuals. Mastrototaro also says conversation data will be periodically deleted and won’t be used for targeted ads, either.

It can be easy to roll one’s eyes at promises of privacy and accuracy in health tech. Movano has thus far shown a dogged dedication to adhering to medical industry best practices and standards. It recently gained FDA clearance for its EvieMED ring, an enterprise version of its ring aimed at remote patient monitoring and clinical trials. Movano also recently relaunched the consumer version of its Evie Ring to better address initial feedback from customers, like improved sleep and heart rate accuracy.

In the future, Movano hopes to eventually further incorporate individual health data collected by its smart rings. But for now, a beta version will roll out starting on January 8th to existing Evie Ring users within the Evie app at no extra cost.

Nanoleaf is best known for its colorful smart home lighting. But at CES 2025, it’s expanding into new territory: beauty tech. Specifically, a $149.99 LED face mask.

The Nanoleaf LED Light Therapy Face Mask is made of medical-grade materials and has received FDA Class II device certification. (This doesn’t mean the FDA has given Nanoleaf’s mask a stamp of approval; it just means this is a moderate-risk device that meets FDA safety standards.) It has seven different modes for specific concerns, based on color. Those include white, red, blue, purple, yellow, cyan, and green.

Image: Nanoleaf

This isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. These types of at-home masks are massively popular among skincare enthusiasts to address a range of issues like acne, fine lines, and uneven skin tone, as well as boost collagen production. LED light therapy is also a treatment offered by dermatologists and estheticians.

That said, you should keep in mind there’s a definite difference between the light therapy you get at the dermatologist and at-home gadgets like this. The ones used by medical professionals are usually stronger. Plus, while red, blue, and near-infrared light therapy has been cleared by the FDA, other colors haven’t. In this case, the Nanoleaf mask’s Class II certification is more of a sign that the company has put in the effort to ensure a degree of safety.

In any case, when you think about it, it makes sense that Nanoleaf might be interested in this market. After all, what’s an LED Light therapy mask but a smart bulb by another name?

The LED Light Therapy Face Mask is available now for preorders.

When it comes to reproductive health tech, wearable makers tend to focus on one of two things: period tracking and fertility windows. But at CES 2025, health startup identifyHer wants to shake up that narrative with Peri, a wearable designed to help people track and manage perimenopause symptoms.

Perimenopause refers to the transitional period before menopause when the ovaries gradually stop working. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone begin to decrease, which, in turn, can lead to mood changes, irregular periods, hot flashes, and night sweats. Perimenopause symptoms can vary widely from person to person and last four to eight years on average — though it can be as short as a few months or as long as a decade.

Peri’s press release notes that the device will provide “objective data on perimenopausal symptoms, lifestyle, and sleep, as well as actionable insights and encouragement to better understand the changes their bodies are undergoing.” In official pictures, the device itself appears to be pill-shaped and adheres to a person’s torso as opposed to their wrist or finger, like most other health trackers.

“We will keep the specific sensors confidential until we open pre-orders,” says Peri cofounder Heidi Davis, though Davis acknowledges that none of the sensors in the device are new or proprietary. “Our breakthrough lies in the digital fingerprints we have identified through three years of R&D, collecting sensor data from women experiencing perimenopause.”

Davis says those “fingerprints” were then used to develop algorithms that provide continuous data on hot flashes, night sweats, and anxiety in perimenopausal women. One surprising finding, Davis says, is that body temperature isn’t a reliable indicator of hot flashes. Extra effort was also put in to ensure the algorithms weren’t swayed by things like exercise or warm weather, which could affect heart rate, sweating, or increase body temperature.

Image: Peri, identifyHer

Davis says identifyHer also intentionally decided to forgo a limb-based tracker.

“During the early stages of development, we tested our sensors on the limbs but found that we could not identify the digital fingerprints for some of the typical symptoms of perimenopause,” Davis explains, noting that the torso delivers the most accurate readings and is where hot flashes and night sweats are strongest.

As promising as this all sounds, none of Peri’s tech is proven just yet. We’ll have to see how Peri fares when it launches, which is expected to be in mid-2025. That said, its mission to bring further clarity to women’s reproductive health — a historically understudied area — is one wearable makers and researchers alike have widely pursued in recent years. Oura, for instance, has conducted its own study on pregnancy prediction, while Apple also launched its own long-term, large-scale Women’s Health Study using the Apple Watch. It’s just finally nice to see some traction on a less-studied stage of reproductive health.

CES 2025 is officially underway, and the adrenaline of a day of running around Las Vegas is fading fast. Yet I cannot fall asleep. Probably because I’ve been replaying the same three product teaser videos over and over and over. One opens with the familiar frenetic strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concerto, panning to a CGI desert, where grains of sand blow in undulating wisps. The words “Rare by Ultrahuman” emerge on a stark black background. Then, from the depths of a CGI dune, emerges a smart ring.

The other two videos are carbon copies, except in one, the desert is a golden pink. In the other, a wintry silver.

I check the press release. The rings range from £1500 to £1800. I immediately pull up Google. That’s roughly $1,900 to $2,200. I rack my brain. The most expensive smart ring I can remember is Oura’s collaboration with Gucci, which I described in my writeup as an eye-watering $950. I double-check that my tired brain hasn’t goofed the conversion. It hasn’t. My eye twitches.

Rare, the Ultrahuman press release says, is meant to be a luxury smart ring. It will come in three colors: desert rose, dune, and desert snow. Or, you know, rose gold, gold, and silver. They are apparently thusly named because the collection “captures the essence of nature’s most captivating phenomena. From the intricate fluid elegance of wind-sculpted dunes, each piece embodies the harmonious blend of beauty and resilience found in these arid landscapes.”

The desert rose and dune rings are made of 18-karat gold “sourced from London Bullion Market Association.” These will cost $1,900. Meanwhile, the desert snow ring is “meticulously crafted from pt950 platinum, a metal of exceptional purity and prestige.” It will cost $2,200. While I think of how that’s around my monthly mortgage payment, I read more purple prose about the symbolism of harmony between nature and technology, the wind’s gentle caress of a dune, and the rarity of snow blanketing the desert.

I squint at the press renders of these rings. They look like ordinary smart rings.

Spec-wise, Rare is the same as the Ultrahuman Ring Air. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is a great smart ring and came this close to beating the Oura Ring in my smart ring battle royale last year. That ring costs $350 — a standard, reasonable price for a smart ring. The Rare series is roughly five to six times that price. According to Ultrahuman, this is the price of the artisanal craftsmanship and complex engineering — and a lifetime membership to UltrahumanX, the smart ring maker’s extended warranty subscription. You also get access to all of Ultrahuman’s PowerPlugs, features that you buy a la carte on Ultrahuman’s platform such as period tracking, vitamin D tracking, and smart alarms. That includes any future PowerPlugs. Is that worth $1,900 to $2,200?

I go back to my inbox and reread the FAQ Ultrahuman sent me for the billionth time. Under the question, “Is there demand for this” and “who is the target buyer?” there’s an impassioned plea. People have been using the Ultrahuman Ring Air — which I vehemently maintain is a great smart ring — for engagements and gifts for loved ones. Rare, the FAQ says, is a natural evolution toward jewelry becoming smart like everything else. The ideal buyer? “Rare speaks to those who seek exclusivity and purpose in the choices they make.”

The more I read, the more this feels like a fever-dream pitch from Jony Ive, because it’s the same doomed approach Apple took for its Watch Edition.

I don’t know what time is anymore, but I look at the Oura Ring 4 in brushed silver on my finger. Then I look at the desert snow ring render on my laptop screen. My eyes dart back and forth several times. Hm. Hmm.

Image: Ultrahuman

At some point, I don’t know when, I realize I have become The Verge’s very own Gollum. I am sleep-deprived, dark circles forming under my eyes. My reflection in the hotel mirror as I grab some water scares me. But I can think of nothing else. We must see our precious $2,000 smart rings in person. Yes. We wants it. We must seek it on the show floor because Rare will only launch in London and Paris at “select premium retail locations” to start. Yes, we must see this, we must feel it on our finger if only to answer the one burning question: what would make a $2,000 smart ring worth it?

I wanted to love Shokz’s OpenFit 2, the company’s latest open-ear wireless earbuds debuting here at CES 2025. While Shokz made several improvements to the overall design and function, the sound can still be a tad hollow.

I tried the OpenFit Air a few months back, and they ticked off almost everything I was looking for in a pair of open-ear running buds. While not perfect, bass was decent. Volume could also be quite challenging in certain environments — again, something understandable for open-ear design. The problem was the ear hook design didn’t fit well if I wore my eyeglasses. (That, and the touch controls were finicky to use.)

Shokz sent me a pair of the $179.95 OpenFit 2 ahead of CES. Based on the updates, I was very hopeful. For starters, Shokz added an extra speaker to each bud for a total of two: one dedicated to bass, the other for mids and highs. It’s an approach that worked fantastically well with the OpenRun Pro 2 bone conduction headphones that include an air conduction speaker to improve the bass. (My colleague David Pierce and I are diehard OpenRun Pro 2 converts.) Volume has been slightly improved. The ear hook design has also been tweaked so the curved portion over the top of the ear is thinner. Physical buttons were added to each bud for simpler controls. Battery life also improved to 11 hours, up from the seven hours on the original OpenFit and the OpenFit Air’s six hours. There are also four EQ presets!

And in my testing, I immediately noticed many of these improvements. It’s still not ideal, but the thinner ear hook is easier to use with my glasses on days when I don’t want to wear contact lenses. Loud highways and super noisy environments were still challenging but outperformed the OpenFit Air. While getting these hands-on pics, the bustle of the Vegas Strip didn’t drown out my music or prevent me from hearing my colleague Antonio G. Di Benedetto’s photo cues. I got about 10–11 hours on a single charge. When I wanted to pause or skip tracks, the physical buttons were easier to use (though my butterfingers still occasionally struggled, especially when wearing press-on nails.)

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Unfortunately, I also couldn’t help but notice the sound quality. While better than the Air, it wasn’t quite as good as I’d hoped. On “Unfair” by Stray Kids, what should be rumbly baritone vocals sound muddy. Vocals, in general, can sometimes sound distant even with the vocal EQ. At higher volumes, bass-heavy songs occasionally sounded distorted. My issues were most apparent when I was running outdoors. However, if you’re listening to a podcast or in a relatively quiet room at a lower volume, it’s much less noticeable.

All of this is somewhat expected from open-ear buds. It’s more that the effect of having dedicated speakers for bass versus treble and mids wasn’t as impressive as the OpenRun Pro 2. When I first tried the latter, my jaw dropped and I said, “Oh.” With these, it’s more of an appreciative nod. This might be because the OpenFit 2 are traditional headphones using air conduction. The OpenRun Pro 2 use air conduction for bass and bone conduction for treble and mids.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Whether the sound quality is a deal-breaker depends on how you intend to use these buds. I mostly use open-ear buds for running and found myself wanting to reach for the OpenRun Pro 2 instead. But while puttering around the house or strength training, the lack of a wraparound neckband makes these infinitely more comfortable, especially for exercises like chest presses or leaning back in my chair.

The OpenFit 2 are available starting today for $179.95 in black and beige.

Amazfit may not be a household name, but it’s been crushing it in the budget smartwatch space for a long time. And at CES 2025, the company is trying to outdo itself with the $99 Amazfit Active 2.

I was a big fan of the company’s GTR 4 watch — it wasn’t a looker, but it packed in an incredible amount of value for $200. I liked it so much that it’s sat comfortably as the top overall pick in our fitness tracker buying guide for two years. Compared to that watch, the Active 2 has even more functionality for half that price.

It’s got a bright 2,000 nit OLED display, upgraded health sensors, revamped heart rate and sleep algorithms, and the Zepp Flow AI assistant. There’s also a smarter strength training mode that can auto-detect sets, reps, and rest, offline maps with turn-by-turn directions, and personalized training plans via the Zepp Coach integration. For people with periods, there’s also a mini app in collaboration with Wild.AI, which delivers diet and exercise recommendations based on hormonal and menstrual cycles throughout a person’s life (i.e., reproductive years, perimenopause, and menopause). The watch also works in tandem with the company’s recently launched Helio smart ring, similar to how the Samsung Galaxy Ring optimizes sensor accuracy with its Galaxy Watches. European users will also get contactless payments via Zepp Pay, a feature that was notably missing from the GTR 4.

You almost never find this kind of feature set for under $250. It’s bonkers that you can get it for $100.

Amazfit’s Active line, which launched last year, effectively replaces its popular GTR lineup (though you can still easily find GTR 4 models online). Style-wise, you can see that in how the Active 2 switches from the original Active’s square, Apple Watch-esque design to a more classic 44mm round watchface. The standard model comes with a tempered glass screen, stainless steel case, and a 20mm silicone sport band. The premium model costs $129 and upgrades the screen to a more durable sapphire glass and includes an additional leather strap. Compared to the Active, the Active 2 also adds more advanced hardware like a barometer, a gyroscope, and an ambient light sensor. Battery life isn’t quite as good, dropping to 10 days with normal use compared to 14 days. (That said, 10 days is still impressive compared to the competition.)

On paper, the Active 2 feels like it ought to have some kind of catch. However, I’ve been wearing the premium Active 2 for the last few days, and it’s quite nice. So far, performance has been zippy, it’s lightweight on the wrist, and I’ve already gotten several compliments from coworkers. Sometimes budget devices can look chintzy, and while no one would mistake the Active 2 for a luxury watch, it doesn’t look or feel as cheap as a $100–$150 smartwatch could. I’m still testing out the health and fitness features, but so far, it’s held up well on a handful of treadmill runs, and in the last three days, I’ve only used about 25 percent battery. I wish the touchscreen were a bit more responsive, but it’s nothing too egregious thus far. It’s too early for me to make a definitive call on the Active 2, but so far, it’s looking like it could be a compelling option for folks who want a simpler smartwatch without breaking the bank.

The Active 2 is available for preorder in the US now and will launch globally in February.

L’Oréal is hoping its latest beauty gadget can demystify skincare. At CES 2025, the company announced Cell BioPrint, a device that’s designed to analyze your skin and give personalized advice on how to slow down signs of aging.

The device is the result of a partnership with NanoEntek — a Korean startup that specializes in chips that can read biofluids. A person essentially takes a facial tape strip, sticks it on their cheek, and then puts the strip in a buffer solution. That solution is then inserted into a cartridge for the Cell BioPrint to analyze. Once that sample is processed, the device takes images of your face as you answer a few short questions about skin concerns and aging.

From there, L’Oreal says it uses proteomics, or the analysis of protein structure and function from a biological sample. In this case, the Cell BioPrint is designed to determine how well your skin is aging. It’ll then give personalized advice on how to improve your skin’s appearance, as well as predictions of how responsive your skin may be to certain skincare ingredients.

It’s an attractive claim, but as with most beauty tech, it’s difficult to properly evaluate L’Oréal’s methods without peer-reviewed studies or experts weighing in. L’Oréal also claims the device can help predict future cosmetic issues before they manifest. For example, it may be able to determine if your skin is prone to hyperpigmentation or enlarged pores.

Image: L’Oréal

Skincare became massively popular during covid-19 lockdowns, sparking a shift in beauty trends toward self-care and the rise of “skinfluencers.” On the flip side, that virality has since turned skincare buying into an extreme sport. Hop onto TikTok, and you’ll find dozens of skinfluencers egging you into dropping $80 on a vial of vitamin C serum, debating the moisturizing properties of glycerin versus hyaluronic acid, or wagging a finger about this or that retinol cream. (Some, may even convince you to buy a wand that zaps your face to increase the efficacy of said ingredients.) It’s confusing, expensive, and maddeningly, what works for one person may not for another. The most the average consumer can do is cross their fingers and hope that the latest potion they bought will actually work.

The Cell BioPrint’s appeal is it claims to use science to cut through that noise. Maybe every skinfluencer says you need to start using retinol when you turn 30, but this device will purportedly tell you based on your own biology whether retinol will actually work for you. Personalization has always been a major theme with CES beauty tech, but it’s particularly compelling with skincare, which is highly dependent on your individual biology. But again, right now there’s no way to know how reliable the Cell BioPrint’s science and recommendations are.

L’Oréal says the Cell BioPrint will be easy to use, with the process taking only five minutes. It also says people will be able to repeat tests, enabling them to monitor changes and progress over time. That said, it might be a while before something like Cell BioPrint is available for consumers. L’Oréal says the device will first be piloted in Asia later this year but otherwise didn’t have a concrete launch timeline or price.

If you’re health-conscious, chances are your feed for the past year has been flooded with influencers evangelizing hormone balancing as a hack for easy weight loss, lowering stress levels, and even reversing symptoms of hormonal conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). So it’s not at all surprising to see Eli Health announce Hormometer, an at-home hormone-testing system that uses your spit and your smartphone’s camera to measure hormone levels.

Like many at-home tests, Hormometer requires you to take a sample of bodily fluid. In this case, it’s saliva. It consists of a thin cartridge that you stick in your mouth for 60 seconds. It looks similar to a pregnancy test, with a window where you can view results. Once collected, the Eli app uses your phone’s camera to assess the test’s results based on criteria like color intensity and sample patterns. Depending on the test and results, Eli Health says the app will then provide personalized trends and recommendations related to stress, sleep, athletic performance, and fertility.

To start, Eli Health says it’s offering two types of hormone tests: cortisol and progesterone. Cortisol is commonly known as the stress hormone and plays a critical role in regulating fight or flight response, blood pressure, blood sugar, metabolism, and sleep cycles. Long-term imbalances, both high and low, are often linked with negative health outcomes including Cushing’s syndrome, unintentional weight gain / loss, fatigue, Type 2 diabetes, and abnormal blood pressure. Meanwhile, progesterone is a reproductive hormone. Abnormal levels can result in irregular periods, fertility problems, and depression.

Image: Eli Health

Eli Health’s tests are a reflection of recent health and wellness trends. Connected at-home testing kits, for example, saw a rise in popularity at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. Though expensive, smart over-the-counter PCR tests like Cue Health became a major part of some tech companies’ return-to-office plans, thanks to their convenience and accuracy.

Similarly, a big part of Hormometer’s appeal is its portability and accessibility. Traditionally, hormone tests have to be sent to a lab and are often taken at a doctor’s office. That can take several days or weeks. They can also be messy if they’re urine-based or invasive if blood-based. The advantage of this type of test is it doesn’t require another party and can turn around results more quickly. As far as cost, Eli Health says Hormometer will come with a subscription plan, starting at $8 monthly with a 12-month commitment. That’s competitive with other at-home hormone tests, which can range from roughly $30 to $250 and require people to mail in samples.

Meanwhile, balancing hormone levels, particularly cortisol, has become a viral wellness trend. Tips to fix “cortisol face,” for example, ran rampant on TikTok throughout 2024. However, experts have decried hormone balancing as both misleading and potentially harmful — hormones can’t truly be balanced, as they’re dynamic and naturally ebb and flow throughout the day. That said, these tests could help people with official diagnoses of chronic hormonal or reproductive health issues monitor their conditions.

A lot of that will depend on accuracy. According to Eli Health, the Hormometer is FDA registered. To be clear, this is different than clearance or approval. It doesn’t mean the FDA has reviewed or cosigned Eli Health’s claims. That said, the company claims that its cortisol and progesterone tests had a 97 percent and 94 percent agreement with gold-standard, FDA-approved lab tests in third-party testing, respectively.

Eli Health says Hormometer will begin beta access this month in the US and Canada. A full release is expected later this year. And while Hormometer is currently limited to cortisol and progesterone, the company says it’s already developing testosterone and estradiol tests for the future.

Withings is back at CES with another futuristic health tech concept called Omnia. It’s a smart mirror that can measure and display your health metrics, offer feedback from an AI voice assistant, and then potentially set you up for a telehealth consultation with a doctor.

In a nutshell, Omnia has a base that can measure weight, heart health, and metabolic health. It can also pull in data collected from other trackers like smartwatches, blood pressure monitors, or even a smart bed. Withings says the built-in AI voice assistant will offer real-time feedback and could potentially give motivational pep talks or guidance. In addition to virtual consultations, the company says the mirror could also send data to doctors for review.

Image: Withings

The most interesting thing about the Omnia concept is how it rolls up a bunch of existing health tech trends into a single package. Connected smart mirrors capable of displaying information, making video calls, and playing sound are not new — all of those components existed in Lululemon’s ill-fated Mirror and other copycats. Likewise, smart scales that can measure heart rate, take EKGs, and discern body composition have been around for ages. Meanwhile, AI chatbots embedded in existing health tech was an emerging trend in 2024 — and something well-known players like Oura, Whoop, and Fitbit are tinkering around with.

More cynically, you could see this as an ecosystem play — a proof of concept for what a single person could do if they went all in on Withings’ myriad gadgets. After all, Withings makes plenty of smartwatches, smart scales, connected blood pressure cuffs, smart thermometers, and even a noninvasive sleep tracker that you stick under a mattress. It’s shown up at CES in the past with an at-home urinalysis gadget that you stick in your toilet and scales that can analyze nerve health from your foot. It’s also incorporated elements of telemedicine in past launches. Its original FDA-cleared ScanWatch had cardiologists review EKG results.

Omnia isn’t an actual product for sale yet. Withings says it’s “currently in development,” with no concrete timeline for when it’ll actually be available or for how much. Given the company’s track record with bringing CES launches to market, there’s a good chance it’ll be a lengthy wait before Omnia reaches consumers — if it ever does.

Withings will give demos at CES 2025, which may help gauge whether Omnia is the real deal or more CES health tech vaporware. But even if Omnia never amounts to anything beyond a concept, it’s an indication of where health tech is marching.