In an obvious attempt to overcompensate for not featuring on the retail partner list of the Apple Watch just yet, the second largest wireless service provider stateside has opened online and offline sales for a trio of much lower-profile intelligent wrist-worn devices.
Although two of these look like smartwatches, they’re still focused first and foremost on fitness tracking and health monitoring functions, as well as keeping the lights on for days or even months (!!!) in a row rather than working as a fancy extension of your pocket smartphones.
Starting with the cheapest of the bunch, the $99 Garmin Vivofit 2 flaunts battery endurance of “about one year”, which is mind-blowing, given you also get a backlit display. It’s not an AMOLED, and it’s not super-high-res, but for the money and autonomy, it’s awesome.
