Wearable Tech Watch
Sensors, smart substrates and connected form factors.
Your Next Pair of Headphones Might Also Be a Health Tracker: Powerbeats Pro 2 and Apple AirPods Pro 3
Headphones were once passive accessories. They played music, handled calls and blocked unwanted sound. The most important upgrades involved audio quality, battery life and noise cancellation. That definition is beginning to break down. In February 2025, Apple-owned Beats launched Powerbeats Pro 2 with built-in heart-rate monitoring. Later that year, Apple introduced AirPods Pro 3, bringing heart-rate sensing directly into its flagship earbud line.
The Smartwatch Feature That Tells You Whether to Rest or Push Today: Inside Amazfit HybridCharge
Smartwatches are excellent at producing data. They can report heart rate, sleep stages, steps, workout load, stress and heart-rate variability. The problem is that most consumers do not know what to do with all those numbers. Amazfit HybridCharge is designed to provide an answer.
Your Next Robot Vacuum Might Be Smarter Than You Expect: Inside the Narwal Flow
Robot vacuums were once judged by a simple question: Can they move around a room without repeatedly hitting the furniture? The Narwal Flow represents a more ambitious generation. It uses two wide-angle cameras, infrared sensing and dedicated onboard AI processing to interpret household objects while it cleans. Narwal Robotics says the system can recognise more than 200 types of obstacle, construct 1.5 million-point representations of its surroundings and locate objects with precision down to 0.19 inches.
The Flagship Phone That Refuses to Drop the Headphone Jack: Inside the Sony Xperia 1 VIII
The modern flagship smartphone is supposed to remove things. The removable battery disappeared. Then manufacturers eliminated the microSD card slot, encouraging buyers to pay more for internal storage or use cloud subscriptions. The 3.5mm headphone jack followed, replaced by wireless earbuds and USB-C adapters.
The Health Tracker Your Cat Doesn’t Even Know Is Working: Inside Purina’s Petivity Smart Litter Box
Cats are difficult patients. They often conceal discomfort, continue behaving normally while illness develops and resist unfamiliar devices attached to their bodies. That creates a problem for pet-health technology. A wearable tracker can measure useful behaviour—but only if the cat tolerates the collar, keeps it on and moves in ways the device can interpret correctly.
The Beauty Industry’s Decade-Long Experiment in Wearable Sun Protection: Inside L’Oréal’s UV Sense and My Skin Track UV
In 2016, L’Oréal began giving away a small adhesive patch through its dermatological skincare brand La Roche-Posay. The patch contained photosensitive dyes that changed colour as ultraviolet exposure accumulated. Consumers photographed or scanned it with a smartphone and received information about their exposure through an app.