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Heart-rate monitoring and bio-sensing wearable specialist Salutron added a new line of life trackers to its portfolio, beginning with the launch of the Brite R450.
The wearable device takes a holistic approach by integrating multiple aspects of health and fitness into a wrist wearable for daily life.
The R450 provides 24/7 fitness-tracking, including heart rate, sleep, calories burned, steps taken and distance traveled, and also comes with a customizable smart notification feature to help users reach daily goals for activity and light exposure, and keep connected to their friends and family
The Brite R450 is available for preorder for $129.99 from the company’s Website and will be available at other retailers starting Oct. 15. The LifeTrak app can be downloaded on iOS and will be available on Android in December.
The device features on-screen notifications from incoming calls, missed calls, emails, texts, Instant Messagin, news, calendar reminders, and as well as from certain apps, including LifeTrak’s own apps.
In addition, iOS and Android app smart notifications enable users to keep in touch with other users, and the company has put an added emphasis on battery life. The Brite has an average battery life of six months, the company said.
The R450 also includes LightTrak, a built-in monitor that tracks both ambient light and blue light exposure simultaneously.
According to certain reports, blue light has been singled out for its beneficial properties for enhancing mood, boosting energy and improving sleep.
Adjusting the levels of blue light exposure is a user-friendly experience using LightTrak, as all white light contains some blue waves—the Brite R450 is designed to help users get the right amount by alerting them if they’re not getting enough light in the morning, or too much before bedtime.
This new ambient light management feature can also help users recover from jet lag by delivering the optimal recommendation for light exposure based on the user’s time zone.
“The scientific and medical communities have proven that our biorhythms are synchronized to blue light. It tells our bodies when it’s daytime, and to be alert and energized, and when it’s bed time,” Leon Wong, Salutron’s vice president of marketing and business development, told eWEEK. “Because we’ve become an always-on society, working inside during the day and having lights on all night, until bedtime, it’s affected our sleep patterns, energy levels and mood. Getting just the optimal amount of blue light in the morning and reducing light exposure at night really helps ones’ health and wellness. Brite R450’s LightTrak feature aims to do just that—enable you to properly manage your light exposure.”
The R450 features automatic sleep detection, monitoring sleep quality and detecting when the user wakes up.
The technology is based on SleepTrak 2.0—SleepTrak plus vibrating alarm based on the user’s sleep quality and blue-light monitoring.
Also included is advanced calorie tracking, where calorie burn is integrated with heart rate and activity data, resulting in better accuracy; an ECG heart rate function, which can facilitate heart rate detection with a press of a button; and 24/7 automatic tracking, which includes sleep, calorie burn, steps and distance.
“Health apps are very important to us. We make our API available so that our customers can have a choice of our LifeTrak app or their favorite app with our trackers. We’ve been building our ecosystem ever since our inception,” Wong said. “We certainly plan to integrate with Apple Health Kit, Android Wear as well as other major partners. What health apps really need are accurate trackers because, without accuracy, value provided by the apps is limited—how do people improve their fitness if they have garbage in?”