Most fitness trackers are wrist-worn with your progress only viewable after you are done with the routines via a dedicated app on your smartphone. That’s the norm up till now, until Recon Instruments’ Jet comes along. Recon Instruments, if you don’t already know, is kind of the pioneer in the smart eyewear arena, possibly way before the existence of Google Glass and so, these guys do know a thing or two about how to make information magically appears before your eyes, or in this case, eye. Build upon the company’s experience in design and manufacturing of smart eyewear, Jet is designed specifically for sports and outdoor recreation activities (hence the tinted lenses, which are exchangeable to suit different lighting conditions) and boasts a 30-inch equivalent screen when viewed from 7 feet away, displayed at your lower right eye.
The display projects data picked up by the onboard sensors, including GPS, speed, pace, distance, duration, vertical elevation gain, and more, and doing so in real-time as you go about your activity. If used with ANT+ compatible wireless sensors, it can even provides crucial info like heart-rate and cadence metrics too. It also touts a customizable dashboard, allowing you to tailor what to display so you can get the data that matters to you most and not a junk of info that you don’t need. The hardware is built for active outdoor use with a lightweight construction that is resistant to dust and water. Number crunching is executed by a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, backed by 1GB RAM and it has 8GB onboard storage. It also packs dual microphones, integrated speaker, a swappable lithium-ion battery good for up to 4 hours of “typical usage”, plus a host of connectivity and sensors, including GPS, Bluetooth Smart, ANT+, WiFi, micro USB 2.0 port, 3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, 3D magnetometer, pressure sensor and IR sensor.
Control to the device is achieved through a glove-friendly optical touchpad, as well as a two-button rocker button. In addition to providing sport activities-related info, it can also capture still images and video, allows for social interactions, and instant content sharing, and displays caller ID and text messages from a paired smartphone. Sure sounds like something you could use while speeding down the alps, but like many of such high-tech pieces, it does not come cheap. Expect a pair to run you back at $699, which you can preorder through Amazon.
