Epson Runsense
Epson, a company known for printers and other office-like equipment has, surprisingly, delved into the world of sport watches with two activity and heart rate trackers called Pulsense and a line of GPS running watches called Runsense.
This UK company has two models of Pulsense which offer heart rate tracking to help monitor your activity during exercise and during the day. They also can track caloric intake and monitor your sleep. The Pulsense exercise band and the watch are supposedly available in the U.S. as well as Europe, but I didn’t see a ‘buy’ button on their site. Only a ‘subscribe for updates’ screen.
For the Runsense GPS watches, there are three models that are available in the U.K. with a fourth to be released in November. The models available are: SF-310, SF-510, SF-710 while the SF-810 is coming soon. Unfortunately, there aren’t any indications as to when these will be available in the U.S.
The GPS watches are scaling in both price and features. Features of the top products include a built-in optical heart rate sensor, smart stride sensor, long battery life, an assignable tap function, water resistance, connection to your smartphone with the free Run Connect app and other traditional sensor functions like measuring pace, speed, distance, laps, calories burned, etc.
Their price range varies from $200 to $500, but as the watches are from a U.K. company, currency fluctuation might change the prices for U.S. customers once released. To check out a preview of the specs for each of the GPS watches, click here.
This move is rather surprising and just goes to show how popular the sport wearable market has become. Although, it might simply be another move for Epson to get away from printers and scanners (They also have a smart glass available that looks an awful lot like Google Glass). So who knows? Maybe they’ll be the next big thing in GPS running watches, although the competition is going to be stiff. Still, it looks like a decent start.
