News By James Plafke Jan. 7, 2014 1:45 pm
Razer is slowly venturing out from the gaming industry, releasing laptops, headphones, and tablets. All of those devices, though, have a place in gaming, so Razer hasn’t yet truly ventured out from its norm. Now, though, the foremost manufacturer of stylish gaming products unveiled the Nabu, a fitness band and smartwatch hybrid — completely unrelated to gaming.
Though the recent foray into smartwatches didn’t exactly catch on, and Google Glass doesn’t yet do much for its $1,500 beta price tag, wearable smart devices are inarguably the wave of the future. The market is flooded with fitness bands at the moment, which are essentially just glorified pedometers. Razer looks to smarten up the fitness band by splicing it with a smartwatch, perhaps making both devices more desirable than their standalone brethren. The Nabu features the usual “bio-data” tracking — which gym rats will note rarely entails anything involving weights — but mixes that in with on-wrist notifications.
The Nabu features two tiny displays. The smaller, square 32-pixel screen displays simple notification icons, while the larger 128×32-pixel screen displays text-based notifications, including emails and text messages. The screen that displays text notifications will face inwards, providing a bit of privacy for when you’re sexting at the gym. The Nabu can also detect and communicate with other Nabu bands within close proximity, perhaps one day leading toward some kind of Nintendo 3DS StreetPass feature, gamifying the band. After all, Razer is primarily a gaming company.
As you can see from the above video from our sister site IGN, though the Nabu fits around your wrist, it doesn’t fit completely snug, leaving little gaps between the band and your wrist in certain areas. Though opting for a neutral black color, the gaps and rubbery look won’t help the Nabu appeal to the fashion conscious. However, its combination of smartwatch and fitness band features may appeal to some.
The Nabu will launch at a price somewhere below $100, and developers can grab a band for $50 in the first quarter of 2014. The band will be available for both iOS and Android, and have accompanying apps for each. Perhaps best of all, the Nabu will open up the avenue for jokes about Razer and wrists.
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Though the recent foray into smartwatches didn’t exactly catch on, and Google Glass doesn’t yet do much for its $1,500 beta price tag, wearable smart devices are inarguably the wave of the future. The market is flooded with fitness bands at the moment, which are essentially just glorified pedometers. Razer looks to smarten up the fitness band by splicing it with a smartwatch, perhaps making both devices more desirable than their standalone brethren. The Nabu features the usual “bio-data” tracking — which gym rats will note rarely entails anything involving weights — but mixes that in with on-wrist notifications.
The Nabu features two tiny displays. The smaller, square 32-pixel screen displays simple notification icons, while the larger 128×32-pixel screen displays text-based notifications, including emails and text messages. The screen that displays text notifications will face inwards, providing a bit of privacy for when you’re sexting at the gym. The Nabu can also detect and communicate with other Nabu bands within close proximity, perhaps one day leading toward some kind of Nintendo 3DS StreetPass feature, gamifying the band. After all, Razer is primarily a gaming company.
As you can see from the above video from our sister site IGN, though the Nabu fits around your wrist, it doesn’t fit completely snug, leaving little gaps between the band and your wrist in certain areas. Though opting for a neutral black color, the gaps and rubbery look won’t help the Nabu appeal to the fashion conscious. However, its combination of smartwatch and fitness band features may appeal to some.
The Nabu will launch at a price somewhere below $100, and developers can grab a band for $50 in the first quarter of 2014. The band will be available for both iOS and Android, and have accompanying apps for each. Perhaps best of all, the Nabu will open up the avenue for jokes about Razer and wrists.
More...
