Tag Archives: Wearables

Smart Glasses Could Transform Sports. But There’s a Trust Deficit.

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For centuries, a pair of glasses has been one of the most socially innocent objects a person can wear. They exist in one of two lanes: as a quiet medical tool for correcting vision, or as a deliberate fashion statement, an accessory as personal as a watch. In either role, tool or ornament, they are fundamentally passive. They sit on the face, and in return for their service or their style, society grants them a kind of ambient trust. Smart glasses were designed to borrow that trust. They slip into the familiar silhouette of eyewear, hijacking the social permission we’ve granted them, hoping we won’t notice the difference.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The moment that quiet, passive object gains the ability to see, record, and communicate on its own, the social contract shatters. It stops being a corrective lens or a simple accessory and becomes a question mark. And in the high-stakes world of professional sports, that question is no longer theoretical. In the Indian Premier League, one of the most-watched cricket leagues on the planet, it has been answered with a firm ‘no.’ The league’s advisory body recently banned smart eyewear from all restricted match-day areas as reported by Indian Express, not because they might help a player see better, but because their ability to discreetly communicate threatens the very integrity of the game. It’s the first major institutional line drawn in the sand, a clear signal that what makes smart glasses so compelling, their seamless, discreet power, is exactly what makes them so threatening to an environment built on trust.

Which makes the current scoop from the FIFA World Cup all the more interesting. This year, cameras attached to referees have been delivering something genuinely compelling: a first-person view from the center of the match, fast, intimate, and unlike any angle a traditional broadcast camera can offer. FIFA has partnered with Lenovo to stabilize the footage, reportedly reducing blur and shakiness by up to 50%. The result is a piece of wearable camera tech that audiences have embraced without a second thought. And the reason it works has nothing to do with the stabilization algorithm or the resolution. It’s because everyone knows exactly what it is, what it records, and who controls the output. The ref cam is sanctioned intimacy, an invitation behind the official’s gaze with the entire institution of the sport standing behind it.

The problem has never really been head-worn cameras. GoPros have existed for more than twenty years, and nobody writes angry op-eds about them, because a GoPro announces itself the way a tourist in neon shorts announces themselves. Gloriously, almost aggressively obvious about what it is and what it’s doing. The same logic applies to the FIFA ref rig: dedicated broadcast hardware, sanctioned by the league, feeding a known output to a known destination. Smart glasses are slipperier. Their design philosophy actively works against that legibility, optimized to look like ordinary eyewear while quietly carrying camera, microphone, and communication capabilities underneath. That gap between appearance and function is exactly where trust evaporates.

Silicon Valley has spent years selling the idea that the best interface is the one that disappears. Ambient computing, seamless experiences, invisible technology. It’s a seductive design philosophy, and in most consumer contexts, it’s probably the right one. But sports may be quietly proving the opposite. In a high-stakes, heavily monetized environment where betting markets move in real time, the most valuable technology is often the least ambiguous. Leagues don’t just need devices that work; they need devices that can be understood at a glance, audited, regulated, and explained. The IPL’s concern isn’t really about what smart glasses are doing today. It’s about what they could be doing, invisibly, in a dressing room, on a pitch, in a dugout. Seamlessness, in that context, isn’t a feature. It’s a liability.

None of this means smart glasses have no future in sports. They might, just not in their current form. The ref cam points toward a version of wearable vision technology that could genuinely work: purposeful, controlled, institutionally transparent, and designed to communicate its function rather than conceal it. Soccer officials in other leagues are already using similar cameras for post-match performance reviews, a quiet but meaningful step toward something bigger. The path from there to a trusted live-match tool, however, runs directly through a design problem. Smart glasses need to stop borrowing the social invisibility of ordinary eyewear and start building their own visual language, one that tells players, officials, and leagues exactly what the device is, what it records, and who is watching. Until then, the trust deficit isn’t a policy issue. It’s a design failure, wearing a very familiar frame.

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Xiaomi Watch S5 46mm Review: Looking Good, Lasting Longer

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PROS:


  • Stylish and premium design

  • Bright, vibrant display

  • Excellent battery life

CONS:


  • Limited app ecosystem compared with Wear OS

  • Sleep tracking can miss naps

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Xiaomi Watch S5 46mm feels well judged. It is stylish, comfortable, and impressively long-lasting, even if the software still leaves some room to grow.

The Xiaomi Watch S5 46mm looks less like a gadget trying to pass as a watch and more like a watch that happens to be smart. That distinction matters because design still shapes how often a wearable actually ends up on your wrist. Xiaomi seems to understand that, and the Watch S5 leans hard into premium materials, a traditional silhouette, and a feature set built around daily usability.

Beyond the styling, there is a solid hardware pitch here, too. Xiaomi is promising a bright 1.48-inch AMOLED display, updated health tracking, new cycling features, and battery life of up to 21 days under light use. If those claims hold up, the Watch S5 could be appealing for people who want a smartwatch that feels less demanding and more natural to wear. I spent some time with the Watch S5 to see whether that mix of style and practicality actually comes through in daily use.

Designer: Xiaomi

Aesthetics

That design-first approach is obvious the moment you see the Watch S5. It sticks with a classic round shape, but the detailing keeps it from blending into the crowd. The slim bezel and minute markings make it feel closer to a proper wristwatch than a lot of smartwatches that still come off as generic or overly sporty. Combined with the forged stainless steel frame, the design has a solid sense of polish without trying too hard.

The lineup itself is well judged, too. The black and silver versions are the standard models, both using the stainless steel frame and a cleaner, more understated finish. The Ceramic Blue version is clearly the dressier option, with a zirconia ceramic bezel, enamel-filled markings, and a leather strap that gives it a more tailored look. The Jungle Green model I received takes a sportier approach, swapping in a forged carbon bezel and a hybrid strap that make it feel more rugged and outdoorsy. It is a smart spread of styles, and it gives the Watch S5 range more character than a simple color refresh would have.

Ergonomics

At 46mm, the Xiaomi Watch S5 is not a small watch, but it wears better than that number suggests. I used the Jungle Green version, and even on my small wrist, it never felt bulky or awkward. Xiaomi lists it at 46 x 46 x 10.99mm and 46g without the strap, so it is still very much a full-size smartwatch, but in day-to-day use, it comes across as lighter and easier to wear than I expected.

A lot of that comes down to how the watch sits on the wrist. It has enough presence to feel substantial, but it never feels clunky or uncomfortable. The hybrid strap on the green model helps, too, since it feels secure and practical for longer wear. That sense of ease carries over to the controls. The rotating crown and side button are both responsive, which makes the watch straightforward to use, though I would have liked slightly stronger haptic feedback from the crown.

Performance

A lot of the Watch S5’s appeal comes down to how easy it is to use, and the display does a lot of the heavy lifting there. It uses a 1.48-inch AMOLED panel with a 480 x 480 resolution and up to 2500 nits of peak brightness. The bezel is slimmer too. Xiaomi says it measures 2.6mm, which is 40 percent narrower than the previous generation, and that helps the screen feel more open and modern. In use, it looks sharp, vibrant, and bright enough to stay readable outdoors without much effort. That alone goes a long way on a smartwatch, since a dim screen can get annoying very quickly when you are checking the time or glancing at notifications on the move.

Fitness and health tracking are a big part of the Watch S5, even if I am not really the target user for the more training-heavy side of it. I am not someone who works out intensely or spends much time digging through performance metrics during exercise, which happens less often than I would like to admit. That is partly why I found the Watch S5 surprisingly approachable. It gives you some flexibility over what data shows up on the watch, so it does not have to feel like a wall of numbers every time you start moving.

Most of my time with it was spent on walks and a light hike rather than anything especially demanding, but I still found the tracking useful. Being able to glance down and see things like heart rate, distance, and workload made the experience feel a bit more engaging, especially during the hike when I was already feeling tired. I would not suddenly pretend this turned me into a training-focused person, but it did make the data feel more motivating than I expected.

The Watch S5 uses the same heart-rate sensor setup found in the flagship Xiaomi Watch 5, with 4 LEDs and 4 PD, alongside L1 plus L5 five-system GNSS and 5ATM water resistance. There are also more than 150 sports modes, so the watch clearly has a much broader fitness toolkit than the small slice of it I used. Sleep tracking is a bit more mixed. Xiaomi claims its updated sleep algorithms improve fall-asleep and wake-up detection by 11 percent, with sleep-stage tracking improved by 14 percent. In my use, though, it still had a tendency to miss naps. That does not make the feature useless, but it is a reminder that health tracking claims on paper do not always translate perfectly in everyday use.

Beyond health and fitness, the software experience is mostly straightforward, too. The Watch S5 runs Xiaomi HyperOS 3, and for the most part, it is easy enough to get around. The interface is straightforward, and it does not take long to figure out where everything is. Swiping down brings up notifications, though your options are fairly limited once you are there. You can dismiss them, but you cannot quickly reply to messages, which makes the experience feel a bit more passive than on some rival smartwatches.

The rest of the navigation is a little uneven. Swiping up opens widget cards, while swiping right lets you cycle through the watch faces stored on the device. Swiping left, though, does nothing at all. I found that a bit frustrating, especially since I do not change watch faces very often. It feels like Xiaomi could have made better use of the side gestures here, or at least given users the option to customize them.

Pressing the rotating crown opens the app list, while the side button brings up the control center. That all works as expected, but the software does feel more limited once you look beyond the basics. Since the Watch S5 does not run Wear OS, there is no access to the Google Play Store, and Xiaomi’s own app selection for HyperOS 3 is still quite limited. On the phone side, the Mi Fitness companion app covers the essentials and also gives you access to plenty of free watch faces, which is a nice way to add some variety even if the wider software ecosystem remains fairly basic.

Battery life may be the Watch S5’s most practical strength. Xiaomi rates it for up to 21 days of light use from the 815mAh battery, which it says is a 68 percent jump over the previous generation. In my case, with Always On Display turned on and all the health tracking features enabled, it lasted about six days. That is genuinely impressive, and it makes the Watch S5 feel far less needy than many smartwatches. Charging happens through the included proprietary magnetic pogo-pin charger, which works fine, though it does mean dealing with yet another device-specific cable.

Sustainability

Sustainability is not a major part of Xiaomi’s pitch for the Watch S5, though to be fair, that is true of most smartwatches. There is no clear emphasis here on recycled materials or repairability, so it is hard to give the watch much credit on environmental grounds alone. What it does offer, though, are a few practical touches that could help with longevity.

The 5ATM water resistance also helps on the longevity front, especially for a watch that is meant to handle swimming as well as everyday wear. The use of standard 22mm quick-release straps is another plus, since it makes the watch easier to refresh over time without being locked into one specific band. That may sound like a small thing, but replaceable straps can help a device stay in use longer, especially when comfort or style preferences change. The stainless steel frame and the more premium material options should also hold up well over time. For now, the Watch S5 feels built to last, even if it does not make much of a sustainability case.

Value

The Xiaomi Watch S5 makes a pretty strong case for itself on value. At £149.99, or about $205, for the black and silver versions, and £169.99, or roughly $232, for the Blue and Green models, it sits in a price range that feels competitive for what you are getting. The stainless steel frame, bright AMOLED display, strong battery life, and broad fitness feature set already give it a solid hardware foundation, and the more premium Blue and Green finishes do at least look like they justify the small step up in price.

That pricing also helps make some of the watch’s limitations easier to accept. The software is straightforward but not especially deep, and the app ecosystem is still quite limited compared with Wear OS alternatives. Even so, the Watch S5 is not really trying to compete as the most app-rich smartwatch in its class. It feels more like a well-rounded option for people who care about design, comfort, battery life, and fitness basics, and at these prices, that balance is easier to appreciate. For the money, Xiaomi is offering a lot of watches.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Watch S5 succeeds by focusing on the right things. It puts design, comfort, battery life, and the kind of fitness features that are useful without becoming overwhelming at the center of the experience. That makes it easy to recommend, especially for people who want something that looks more like a proper watch and less like a tiny gadget strapped to the wrist.

The trade-off is that Xiaomi HyperOS 3 still feels fairly limited once you look past the basics. You are not getting the depth or flexibility of a Wear OS device, and that will matter to some buyers. Even so, the Watch S5 gets enough right to stand out where it counts. At £149.99, or about $205, for the standard versions and £169.99, or roughly $232, for the Blue and Green models, it offers a lot without asking too much in return.

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Nudge Is the Brain-Tuning Wearable We Didn’t Know We Needed

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We’ve gotten pretty comfortable letting technology tell us how to sleep, how many steps to take, and when to breathe. The next frontier, apparently, is letting it tell our brain how to feel, and somehow, a headset called Nudge makes that sound less dystopian than you’d expect.

Designed by San Francisco-based studio Card79, the Nudge Wearable is a high-fidelity speculative prototype that imagines a near future where non-invasive neurotechnology becomes as ordinary as slipping on a pair of headphones. The concept is built around low-frequency ultrasound, an emerging method for modulating brain activity without surgery or implants, and proposes a simple, if mind-bending, proposition: the ability to intentionally shift between mental states like focus, calm, and rest, on demand.

Designer: Card79

Let that sink in for a second. The idea of tuning your cognitive state the way you’d tune a playlist isn’t new in science fiction, but Card79 is asking a different question: what would this actually look like if it existed today? Not as a clinical device buried in a research lab, but as something sitting on your bathroom counter, ready to go like your electric toothbrush. The answer they arrived at is surprisingly elegant.

The headset itself doesn’t look like a medical instrument. It doesn’t carry that cold, utilitarian aesthetic that usually comes with anything brain-adjacent. Instead, it reads as a refined consumer wearable, structured, minimal, and deliberately designed to feel like it belongs in daily life. Card79 put serious thought into the form: ultrasound emitters need precise, consistent alignment with specific regions of the brain, particularly around the temples, to be effective, so the design had to be both technically accurate and comfortable enough for extended wear. That’s a harder balance to strike than it sounds, and the fact that they pulled it off is worth noting.

The visual language here matters. By steering away from the look of medical equipment, the Nudge prototype quietly argues that neurotechnology doesn’t have to feel scary or clinical to be credible. It can be personal. It can be wearable. It can fit into the rhythm of a regular morning without demanding that you become a biohacker to use it.

Of course, the moment you accept that premise, the harder questions start surfacing. Card79 isn’t trying to sidestep them. The project openly invites conversation around agency, consent, and what it actually means to normalize tools that influence how we think and feel. If you can dial up focus before a big meeting or wind down on command before bed, who draws the line between self-optimization and something more complicated? Employers? Insurance companies? Yourself? These aren’t rhetorical questions, and Nudge doesn’t pretend to answer them. The prototype exists precisely to make abstract neuroscience feel tangible enough to talk about, which is exactly what good speculative design is supposed to do. It’s not a product manual for the future. It’s a provocation with really good industrial design.

Card79 has form here. The San Francisco studio has previously worked on projects for Neuralink and other neurotechnology ventures, so this isn’t an academic exercise from the outside looking in. They understand the technical constraints, which makes the Nudge prototype feel grounded rather than purely conceptual. The fact that it earned recognition in both the Speculative Design and Wearable Design categories at major design awards this year suggests the wider design community is taking the conversation seriously too.

What makes Nudge linger is not just the form or the technology behind it. It’s the cultural moment it’s arrived in. We’re already deeply invested in optimizing our physical health through wearables. The logical next step, optimizing our mental states through the same kind of everyday device, feels less like science fiction and more like an inevitable Tuesday morning. Whether that’s exciting or unnerving probably says more about you than about the technology itself. But the fact that a headset can make that conversation feel approachable, even desirable? That’s the real design achievement here.

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Meta Just Launched $299 AI Glasses Without the Ray-Ban Name

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Smart glasses have been trying to go mainstream for years, but pricing has been a stubborn barrier. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses popularized the category by making them feel like normal eyewear, but their entry-level price has hovered well above what many casual buyers are willing to spend on something they might not be sure they need. The market has been compelling, just not quite accessible enough for everyone.

Meta is trying to change that with Meta Glasses, its first line of smart glasses sold under its own name rather than Ray-Ban or Oakley. Developed in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the new lineup starts at $299, which is at least $80 less than the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 entry price, and it arrives in three distinct frame styles designed to cover a broader range of tastes and budgets.

Designer: Meta, EssilorLuxottica

The two base models are the Adventurer and the Fury, each starting at $299. The Adventurer leans toward a slimmer, everyday silhouette, while the Fury goes bigger with a thicker, more rectangular profile, including a striking translucent racing green colorway that reveals the circuitry underneath. Both come in standard and large sizing, and together they span 26 color and lens combinations.

Meta Adventurer

A third model called the Starfire, designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner, rounds out the lineup at $399. Its slim, oval shape sits closer to the territory of Prada or Gentle Monster than anything Meta has put out before. The most notable exclusive is the option to use Jenner’s own voice as the on-device AI assistant for everything from navigation cues to battery alerts. It’s a fashion-forward direction for smart glasses that doesn’t really have a precedent.

All three models carry the same core hardware: a 12 MP camera, open-ear audio, and a dedicated action button for invoking Meta AI or launching a preferred feature. The addition of three-way adjustable nose pads and temple tips is a practical improvement that makes them easier to wear across different face shapes. They’re also compatible with prescription lenses, which meaningfully broadens who can actually wear them all day.

On the software side, all Meta Glasses launch with Muse Spark, Meta’s newest AI model from its Meta Superintelligence Labs. Live translation now covers 20 languages, adding Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi to the existing roster. Pedestrian navigation, which debuted on Meta’s more expensive display glasses, now works on the camera-equipped models too, making the $299 pair genuinely capable of directing you through an unfamiliar city while you walk.

A Dynamic Photo feature also debuts with the launch, capturing a quick burst of frames and automatically selecting the sharpest one. It’s a small addition but a practical one, given how awkward it can be to time a single-frame capture when the glasses are on your face and you’re not looking at a screen.

The glasses are available today at Meta.com and through retailers including LensCrafters, Best Buy, Amazon, and Sunglasses Hut. Dropping Ray-Ban from the name is a quiet but meaningful move, and the lower price suggests Meta is confident enough in its own brand to see if that’s what people were actually waiting for.

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