Why the Hottest New Wearables Want to Be Ignored
Why the Hottest New Wearables Want to Be Ignored
为什么最热门的新型可穿戴设备想要被“忽视”
There’s a new kind of gadget on shelves, designed for you to ignore it 99 percent of the time—it only needs attention when its battery is low. I’m talking about the screen-free wearable. You rarely look at it or touch it, yet it collects health stats day and night so you can view them later on in an app, when you get the time—if you can find the time. No pressure. 货架上出现了一种新型小工具，它的设计初衷就是让你 99% 的时间都忽略它——只有在电量不足时才需要你的关注。我指的就是无屏幕可穿戴设备。你几乎不需要看它或触碰它，但它却能日夜收集健康数据，让你在有空的时候——如果你能抽出时间的话——再通过应用程序查看。完全没有压力。
They have been exploding of late and are only set to grab more attention in the coming months, with the promise of demanding less of your attention once you actually buy one. Today there’s the Garmin Cirqa, Google Fitbit Air, Polar Loop, the Amazfit Helio Strap, and the Whoop series, the original pioneer of this category. Apple is considering its own version of the concept, according to Bloomberg. One answer to that big question of why? Many of us are sick of attention-hoarding tech and social media, not least realizing it is probably doing us no good. 这类设备最近呈爆发式增长，并且在未来几个月内注定会吸引更多关注，因为它们承诺：一旦你购买了它，它对你注意力的索取反而会减少。如今，市场上已经有了 Garmin Cirqa、Google Fitbit Air、Polar Loop、Amazfit Helio Strap 以及该领域的先行者 Whoop 系列。据彭博社报道，苹果公司也在考虑推出自己的同类产品。对于“为什么会出现这种情况”这一大问题，答案之一是：我们许多人已经厌倦了那些掠夺注意力的科技产品和社交媒体，更重要的是，我们意识到这些东西可能对我们毫无益处。
I have reviewed wearables since they went mainstream the first time around with the early waves of Fitbits from 2009 and onward. In some ways this new generation of trackers feels like a callback to those days. Back when I used the Fitbit Ultra, a 2011 tracker that clipped to your jeans, I paid so little attention to it that two days passed before I realized I’d lost it somewhere on the streets of Zagreb, Croatia. While, like many, I fell for the sub-Tamagotchi little cartoon faces of the 2012 Fitbit Zip’s screen, it—like a Fitbit Air—wasn’t something you were meant to pay attention to more than a couple times a day, max. 自从 2009 年 Fitbit 早期产品掀起可穿戴设备第一次主流浪潮以来，我一直都在进行相关评测。在某些方面，这一代新追踪器感觉像是对那个时代的回归。回想我使用 2011 年款 Fitbit Ultra（一款可以夹在牛仔裤上的追踪器）时，我几乎没怎么关注它，以至于过了两天我才发现它丢在了克罗地亚萨格勒布的街头。虽然我也像许多人一样，曾被 2012 年 Fitbit Zip 屏幕上类似电子宠物的卡通头像所吸引，但它——就像现在的 Fitbit Air 一样——并不是那种需要你每天关注超过几次的设备。
Over the last few years, though, I’ve spent most days referring to a Garmin, Samsung, Fitbit, Coros—the list goes on—dozens or hundreds of times a day. WhatsApp messages and emails buzz on their little screens and my wrist reflexively raises to see what’s up. When I wear a Garmin watch, I’m also lulled into the rhythm of checking evening and morning “reports,” and pathologically looking at my sleep score as soon as I wake up. And let’s not even get into the move alerts, an eye-rolling nag wearables have had for years now. 然而在过去几年里，我每天都要查看 Garmin、三星、Fitbit、Coros 等各种设备几十甚至上百次。WhatsApp 消息和电子邮件在它们的小屏幕上震动，我的手腕会条件反射地抬起查看。当我戴着 Garmin 手表时，我也会陷入查看早晚“报告”的节奏，并在醒来后强迫性地查看睡眠评分。更不用说那些“久坐提醒”了，那是可穿戴设备多年来一直让人翻白眼的唠叨功能。
What Wearables Have Become
可穿戴设备变成了什么样
Part of the sell-in of new-breed wearables is that they’re, in some ways, the antithesis of what other watches have grown into. Fitness watches are more smartwatch-like than ever. OLED screens are near-ubiquitous even in health trackers; hardcore running wearables let you communicate with AI assistants. And this is all even though smartwatches have never really fulfilled the original promise of a life-changing app or feature beyond what people used the first Apple Watch for back in 2015: not much. 新一代可穿戴设备的卖点之一，在某种程度上是其他手表发展方向的对立面。健身手表比以往任何时候都更像智能手表。即使在健康追踪器中，OLED 屏幕也几乎无处不在；硬核跑步可穿戴设备甚至让你能与 AI 助手交流。尽管如此，智能手表从未真正实现过最初的承诺——即提供改变生活的应用程序或功能，除了人们在 2015 年使用第一代 Apple Watch 时所做的事情之外，并没有太多实质性的进步。
Sure, Apple Watches may have saved a life or two, but that’s not necessarily what you’re buying them for. I waited years to report on smartwatch apps that would change things and instead saw entire wearable app ecosystems wither like neglected houseplants. Screen-free wearables want to hit “reset” on the entire category. 当然，Apple Watch 可能确实挽救过一两条生命，但这未必是你购买它们的主要原因。我等了多年，希望能报道那些能改变现状的智能手表应用，结果却看到整个可穿戴应用生态系统像被遗弃的盆栽一样枯萎了。无屏幕可穿戴设备想要为整个品类按下“重置”键。
The most interesting factor isn’t that bands like the Fitbit Air exist now, but why this is all happening now, in 2026. These wearables are largely a case of design subtraction. They are much like a normal fitness tracker—heart rate sensor, battery, accelerometer, Bluetooth transmitter, and whatever other sensors are packed in on a per-case basis—with the display excised. 最有趣的因素不在于 Fitbit Air 这类手环现在出现了，而在于为什么这一切发生在 2026 年的今天。这些可穿戴设备在很大程度上是“减法设计”的产物。它们就像普通的健身追踪器——拥有心率传感器、电池、加速度计、蓝牙发射器以及根据具体情况配备的其他传感器——只是去掉了显示屏。
Whoop has made screen-free wearables since its first proper release in 2015, but the shift in what Whoop considers itself to be about mirrors the change we see in the wider market. Today a Whoop band is made for just about anyone with the spare cash to pay for its $199 annual subscription. It’s a system to “help you improve how you sleep, train, and feel—starting day one,” to use Whoop’s own words. This couldn’t be further removed from the self-serious way Whoop described itself in 2015, as a “performance optimization system exclusively designed for elite athletes and teams.” What a change a decade makes. Whoop 自 2015 年首次正式发布以来就一直在制造无屏幕可穿戴设备，但 Whoop 对自身定位的转变反映了我们在更广阔的市场中看到的变革。如今，Whoop 手环几乎是为任何有闲钱支付 199 美元年度订阅费的人准备的。用 Whoop 自己的话来说，它是一个“从第一天起就帮助你改善睡眠、训练和感受”的系统。这与 Whoop 在 2015 年那种自命不凡的描述——“专为精英运动员和团队设计的性能优化系统”——简直天差地别。十年光阴，变化竟如此之大。
Even if Whoop has always been grounded in the now-common concept of “training readiness,” things have altered drastically. So while it’s tempting to say Google’s Fitbit and company are playing catch-up with Whoop, that’s not quite it. It has homed in on the “low-distraction” lifestyle selling point just as the other bigger tech companies have. 尽管 Whoop 一直扎根于如今已很常见的“训练准备度”概念，但情况已经发生了巨大变化。因此，虽然人们很容易说 Google 的 Fitbit 等公司是在追赶 Whoop，但事实并非完全如此。它们和其他大型科技公司一样，都锁定了“低干扰”生活方式这一卖点。
On at least three fronts this can be attributed—or blamed—on AI, to some extent. 至少在三个方面，这在一定程度上可以归功于（或归咎于）人工智能。
AI as the Good and Bad Guy
AI：好人还是坏人？
AI is a way for these wearable companies to upsell and make money, and on the other side, a major contributor to why a lot of us feel like we need low-distraction tech these days in the first place. While virtually every Whoop rival says it can be used without a subscription, some of these companies lean heavily on AI as an upsell. 人工智能既是这些可穿戴设备公司进行追加销售和赚钱的手段，另一方面，也是导致我们许多人如今觉得需要“低干扰”科技的主要原因之一。虽然几乎每一个 Whoop 的竞争对手都声称其产品无需订阅即可使用，但其中一些公司非常依赖 AI 作为追加销售的筹码。
Take Google and the Fitbit Air. Without a subscription, the app looks cute enough but is fairly spare. You get stats and charts, but if you want chatty explainers of what any of it means, you need Google Health Premium at $10 a month. Numbers and graph lines become paragraphs that reference specific quirks or events of the day because, to steal a line from humorist and podcaster John Hodgman, specificity is the soul of narrative. 以 Google 和 Fitbit Air 为例。如果没有订阅，应用程序看起来虽然可爱，但功能相当简陋。你可以看到统计数据和图表，但如果你想要那种能解释这些数据含义的“聊天式”说明，就需要每月支付 10 美元订阅 Google Health Premium。数字和图表线变成了引用当天特定怪癖或事件的段落，因为借用幽默作家兼播客主持人约翰·霍奇曼（John Hodgman）的一句话：具体性是叙事的灵魂。
And this is just the beginning. “The use of AI in monitoring and guiding health and wellness is still at the early stage of development but will likely become significantly more advanced as AI matures,” says Peter Richardson, vice president and cofounder of Counterpoint Research. 而这仅仅是个开始。Counterpoint Research 副总裁兼联合创始人彼得·理查森（Peter Richardson）表示：“人工智能在监测和指导健康与保健方面的应用仍处于发展初期，但随着人工智能的成熟，它可能会变得更加先进。”
I find Google Fitbit’s chatbot ramblings quite annoying, with not-that-rare dips into the condescending, and I may even prefer the subscription-free experience. But my job has pushed me through the unenviable task of learning what VO2 Max actually means, what heart-rate variability trends indicate, and so on: not the norm. 我发现 Google Fitbit 的聊天机器人喋喋不休地说话非常烦人，而且时不时还会流露出一种居高临下的态度，我甚至可能更喜欢无需订阅的体验。但我的工作迫使我完成了那些令人羡慕不来的任务，比如学习最大摄氧量（VO2 Max）到底意味着什么，心率变异性趋势代表什么等等：这并不是常态。
AI could solve that long-standing issue with wearables—people glazing over data as soon as they see anything more than their daily step count. This AI use will be better represented on the phone than the watch screen, too, making the 人工智能或许能解决可穿戴设备长期存在的问题——即人们一旦看到除了每日步数以外的数据就会感到头晕眼花。这种 AI 的应用在手机上也会比在手表屏幕上表现得更好，从而使……