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Wearables

Fitbit’s latest wearable sticks a heart rate tracker in a tiny shell

Pulse-taking power that’s slimmer than a stethoscope

Fraser Macdonald

Sometimes life is a little like listening to the dead air between an album’s last song and the hidden track. At least you’re doing something, even if nothing is currently happening. And there’s the promise of an event, at some point, if you can just hold it together for a while longer. There are, however, aspects of life you can control, using technology, and one of those is activity. For a marginal price bump to £130, Fitbit’s reasonably minimalist Alta tracker just got a huge usefulness upgrade in the form of an optical heart-rate sensor which makes data such as calorie burn much more accurate. Everything is still ultimately pointless, of course, but it passes the time.

Profile image of Fraser Macdonald Fraser Macdonald consulting editor

About

Fraser used to wear a Psion Series 3 palmtop in a shoulder holster. Perhaps he still does.Either way, his lifelong mission - including fourteen years for Stuff - has been to see whether the consumer electronics industry can ever replicate that kind of cyborgian joy.So far: nope. Despite a plan to combine a action camera and Olympus Eye-Trek goggles to become Man Who Sees The Vision Of A Man Three Inches Taller Than Himself.He also likes mountain bikes, motorbikes, cars, helicopters. Still thinks virtual surround is witchcraft. Dislikes jetskis, despite never having been on one.