2020 Gift Guide: Wearable Technology

Gift Guides

Nov 29

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Today’s gift guide is all about wearable technology. There’s something on this list for everyone, whether you’re an avid runner or just want to start tracking your steps. I love the sleek new look of the Fitbit Charge4!

Some of these are included in Amazon’s Cyber Week Sales so don’t hesitate to pick up your favorites. They sell out fast!

Check out the other great posts in this series: Krafty Planner 2020 Gift Guide Index

Fitbit Charge 4 Fitness & Activity Tracker

If you enjoy going on long runs or hikes, or even just going to the gym regularly, a Fitbit can help improve your experience greatly by helping you keep track of important information while also acting as a stylish smartwatch.

The latest Fitbit, the Charge 4, has tons of features that fitness enthusiasts will love, making it a must-have for any gym-goers or runners.

The first and most obvious feature of the Charge 4 is that it acts as a sleek, simple watch. Through the Fitbit app, you can change the watch face to better suit your needs and style.

The Charge 4 will track plenty of basic exercise information as a given, such as distance walked each day and steps taken, to give you a good basic idea of your fitness progress.

The Charge 4 also has constant heart rate tracking, which is an important factor in fitness and health. If your resting heart rate is too high, it could be indicative of other problems, and you may have a certain heart rate that you want to achieve during a workout.

If you choose to wear this watch while you sleep, it can give you data on how well you’re sleeping, and if you’re waking up at certain hours. You sleep in stages when you get a full night’s rest, so it can tell you what parts of your sleep cycle need work.

With its week-long battery life, you can sleep in it just fine without having to worry about charging it up too frequently.

One of the defining features of the Charge 4 is that it has a built-in GPS that helps you track your pace and progress through a path or trail.

For outdoor runners and cross country runners, this can be crucial information that would be difficult to track otherwise. It can even tell you which parts of the run were more intense versus which parts were easier.

Of course, this activity tracker does have plenty of connectivity features with your phone. Whether you’re on an Android or an iPhone, this can connect via the Fitbit app and help you stay in touch by showing you your notifications and allowing you to control your music with the touch of a screen.

The Fitbit app itself is very useful and can keep track of things like how much water you’re drinking, whether or not you’re reaching your fitness goals, and so on.

Garmin Forerunner 35 Running Watch

Garmin Forerunner 35, Easy-to-Use GPS Running Watch,

Some people today can get confused by all the complex features in some smartwatches. There are ones that try to do so much in such a compact device that it starts to become a bit scrambled.

The Garmin Forerunner 35 takes things back to basics and delivers you all of the information you want to know in a simple, easy to understand package.

First off, you have the actual watch portion itself.

It gives a very clean and minimalistic digital clock, along with the date and battery charge level. At a typical glance, this is all you’re going to need to know throughout the day while you’re using it as a watch.

You can switch screens to go look at your fitness info, but while you’re just working or walking around, that’s your basic information. There are a few different fitness screens, with each one showing you some basic health statistics.

There’s also a screen for distance traveled, which includes a step counter and a distance reading. Based on your information and your distance traveled, it can also give you a calorie counter as well as information on when you were burning the most calories.

Just because this watch is basic doesn’t mean it doesn’t have fancy features. The GPS system in this watch is among the best, keeping detailed information on your runs that you can use to track your progress.

It can show you what route you took, how fast you were running, and more.

Whether you’re a cross country runner or you’re a hiker, this is some valuable information. For less experienced runners, the run/walk mode will come in handy to help them pace out their runs.

You can’t just full sprint through an entire long run, you need to pace it out. This mode tells you when you should run and when you should walk to let your heart rate come down. This can be super helpful for those who never ran competitively, and aren’t sure what pace they should be going at.

It can sync up with most smartphones in order to forward you your alerts, so you don’t have to interrupt your run by pulling out your clunky smartphone just to read a quick little text message.

Spectacles 2 (Nico)

Water Resistant Polarized Camera Glasses

One of the most unique and popular social media platforms to come about in the past few years is Snapchat.

Snapchat allows users to send and receive videos and pictures to one another as the main form of communication, and users can also post videos and pictures to their stories, which allows all of their friends to view them until the story expires.

Snapchat recently developed a whole new form of wearable technology: the Snap Spectacles. The Spectacles are sunglasses with a camera and microphone mounted on them, which allows you to film a POV video without having to hold your phone out in front of you.

They look like standard sunglasses that you would typically wear, so they don’t stand out too much. To get started, you sync these glasses up with your phone and connect it to your Snapchat app.

Then, you can press the button to capture the next 10 seconds or double-tap it to continuously record. If you hold it down, it takes a singular photo.

Whatever you select, it then gets transferred to the app so that you can edit it and finally post it or send it to whoever you want.

You won’t have to worry about the Spectacles being too fragile. They’re designed to be water-resistant, meaning if there’s some splashing or even shallow water, they’re going to be fine.

This means recording in the rain or at a pool party is no cause for concern, and they also come with a durable protective case for when you’re not using them. The camera quality is fantastic on these smart glasses.

It records at a 1216x1216 resolution, which is full HD. They also record at 60 frames per second, much smoother and more natural-looking than the traditional 30 frames per second.

This makes a lot more sense considering that they’re meant to be POV videos. These glasses have a good battery life, so you won’t have to worry about them dying out on you while you’re trying to record.

They’re charged with an included cable that connects around the left hinge of the frame. They charge fairly quickly so you’ll be able to spend more time recording and less time charging.

If there are things that you want to show off like driving a great car or doing something adventurous, the Snap Spectacles can help you do that with ease, especially since you don’t want to have a phone taking up one of your hands.

GoPro HERO8

If you like going out on adventures, from hiking to skydiving, you might be interested in getting a GoPro to record your journeys. GoPro’s can be attached to all kinds of different mounts and are highly resistant to the elements, which is very useful if you’re out in the rain or even underwater.

The GoPro HERO8 has extraordinary video capability, as it can record in 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. This is amazing quality for a standard camera, let alone for one of this size.

In photo mode, it can take photos at 12MP, which is very detailed. It can also live-stream footage at 1080p, which is very impressive. One of the advantages of the camera on the HERO8 is that it has video stabilization.

The older GoPros that didn’t have this feature would often have very shaky and hard to watch footage, but with the built-in stabilization, this GoPro footage is smooth no matter what you’re doing.

This makes for even better footage than ever before, and it’s like you’re really experiencing the adventure you had again. The GoPro cameras have always been well known for their durability, and the HERO8 is no exception.

This camera can be used underwater, in high wind, in rain, and can survive drops that would ruin other cameras. The updated design of the HERO8 has made it even more impact resistant than ever before.

It also has a time-lapse feature, which is when you have that footage over a long period of time that’s sped up. This time-lapse feature, which they’ve called TimeWarp 2.0, allows you to record long segments of video while adjusting for things like lighting or motion and letting you slow down certain parts while speeding up the rest.

Whether you’re a filmmaker, adventurer, vlogger, or anyone else who might be using a camera regularly, you’ll be impressed by all the different modes that you can swap and use with this camera. Things like upgraded microphones, additional displays, and more can all be added on to the camera quite easily, and are mostly compatible with each other.

Apple Watch Series 5

Whether you’re focused on fitness or just enjoy using technology frequently, the Apple Watch Series 5 offers tons of amazing features and a quality build that helps you really get the most out of your iPhone.

It has plenty of apps, both built-in and downloadable, which can help you improve your health and lifestyle and make things just a bit easier at all times. This watch features Apple’s signature Retina display, which has such a high resolution that you can’t really distinguish individual pixels, making it all look seamless and clean.

The display is bright and colorful and is a touch screen. The Series 5 has an always-on display that acts more like a traditional watch so that you don’t have to fiddle with it if you just want to glance down and check the time. You can turn it off if you want, but many users find it more helpful.

The Apple Watch can keep track of tons of different activity levels in your body. It tracks regular things like the distance you’ve run or the amount of time you’ve spent exercising, but it also tracks things like heart rate levels and sleep patterns.

When you have your Apple Watch connected to your iPhone, it helps you keep track of your notifications and even respond to messages and calls quickly. You can text people back straight from the watch, which actually is much easier than you might think.

It can make and receive phone calls, which you can also answer through the watch, and with Apple Pay, you can put your debit cards into their virtual wallet, and pay directly with the watch.

Many scanners accept Apple Pay at restaurants and grocery stores nowadays, and all you have to do is select the card you want to use and hold the watch up to the scanner. Apple has ensured that their service is fast and secure, so you can rest easy knowing that your information isn’t going to be at risk.