Wearable Gadgets for fitness in CES 2014

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is turning out to be a blockbuster—and with good reason. Last year's attendance topped a record 150,000, and every indication is that this year will match or exceed that number. And you would think that with Mobile World Congress looming in February that we'd see little action in the mobile space, but that's not the case.

CES is not only a good indicator of what's hot, but it's also indicative of what's dead. So what’s the new trend in CES 2014? Manufacturers aren't giving up on smartwatches yet; it was pretty clear 2013 was a trial run, and better designs are definitely in store for 2014. And while hybrid tablet and laptop designs are all the rage this year, conventional laptops and desktops are few and far between.

There are a lot of wearable gadgets for fitness this year. Now here we will introduce two kinds for you.

The LG Lifeband Touch and heart rate monitor earphones aim to help you keep fit. It is a fitness band with a swipe-friendly OLED touchscreen that displays physical activity info and calories burned. Naturally, it pairs up with Android and iOS devices to get incoming calls and text information, but if you want to make the most out of it, you'll need to pair it with the company's second CES wearable: a pair of Heart Rate Monitor earphones. Aside from functioning as normal earbuds, they can track heartbeats by measuring signals from the inner ear.

Razer’s Nabu, a smart band is half fitness tracker and half smart watch. According to its CEO Min-Liang Tan, "It's not a smartwatch," he said. "It's not a fitness band. It's what we're calling a 'smart band.'" The device is actually an odd combination of both, featuring the bio data-tracking features of fitness products, while also dispensing notifications via two small OLED displays -- a small 32-pixel square that displays notification icons, and a larger 128 x 32 panel that ticks off texts, emails and other personal data. By positioning the screens on opposite sides of the user's wrist, Razer hopes the second screen will act as sort of a privacy screen, keeping folks from reading your texts by glancing at your wrist. The band can also track a user's location, altitude, steps walked, sleep data and everything else one needs to quantify their body. All of this, Min adds, works right out of the box, for both iOS and Android.

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