Hasta La Gadget!

Having a svelte design is paramount to the success of any fitness accessory — a desire to avoid hassle often prompts those of us who opt for purging calories without the convenience of a climate-controlled gym to leave smartphones, and even watches at home. That means nifty contraptions like Garmin’s new Fenix all-in-one wearable don’t make it to the jogging path, making a compact dedicated running watch a more desirable pick instead. That’s the idea behind the Forerunner 10, which Garmin is pushing as a dead-simple GPS-equipped wristwatch for runners, joggers and walkers. Water resistant to 50 meters (for ocean-floor sprints?), the gadget tracks essentials like pace and calories burned, while also keeping tabs on your coordinates, letting you download stats like distance and speed through a USB adapter and Garmin Connect.

We weren’t able to go for a jog, sadly, though we did spend some time with the Forerunner 10 in an office setting. The watch seemed very straightforward, which you’ll find to be quite helpful as you push to match a pre-set pace, without worrying about distractions. It comes in black, green or pink, and while the company suggests that you can wear the watch for non-exercise purposes as well, both colored designs seemed a bit too bright and flashy for regular use. The Forerunner 10 is rated for up to five hours of battery life in training mode, or five weeks in power-save mode (for regular time-keeping purposes), and is available to purchase for $130. You can check one out for yourself at Garmin’s Chicago retail location, or you can take a peek in our hands-on photos just below.

Continue reading Garmin Forerunner 10 is a GPS watch designed for outdoor fitness, we go hands-on

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Garmin Forerunner 10 is a GPS watch designed for outdoor fitness, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So you just sold your entire videogame collection and you’re swimming in money. You already bought the Space Invaders wristwatch, but you’re still Scrooge McDuck! What to do? I suggest you add the official Pac-Man watch to your shopping list.

Romain Jerome – the same company who made the Space Invaders watch – teamed up with Namco to make four ever so slightly different Pac-Man watch designs each limited to just 20 pieces. I’m not sure why they didn’t just make 80 of the one above, because the other three variants all look inferior to it on account of having fewer Pac-Man characters. But I guess if all of them have parts made of “steel fused with parts of the Apollo 11″ and “low oxidation silver fused with moon rocks”, 8-bit icons are just a quirky bonus.

The watches will be exclusively launched at the Colette store in Paris starting September 3, followed by a wider availability on September 10. Each watch will be sold for $17,900 (USD). Wakka-wakka-WHAT?!?

[via Romain Jerome & Perpetuelle via HiConsumption]

This watch probably costs the equivalent of all the money I put into arcade games as a kid. Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome helps you once again recall your video-game addicted youth with a limited edition luxury watch. RJ started mining our nostalgia veins with the Space Invaders watch that we covered here and now Inky, Blinky, and Clyde have their day on your wrist.

Romain Jerome uses a fancy technique that layers the dials in a matrix to create a high-resolution three dimension dial that looks like it was made out of pixels. Game play from PAC-MAN is displayed on four dial choices. Each have Pac-Man and the ghosts in (nearly) living color. You can opt for two versions with cherries on the dial as well. The watches are 46mm wide and in black coated steel. The case are actually part of the brand’s Moon Invader watch collection, and are said to contain some trace metal elements from the Apollo 11 moon lander.

The Romain Jerome PAC-MAN watches will be limited to 20 total pieces with a hefty price of $17,800.

I like to know the exact time, since most of the time I’m either running late or trying to get somewhere at a specific time. However, that doesn’t mean that I always need to know the time, right down to the millisecond. Despite its minimal display this futuristic watch will tell time in minute intervals, which should be enough for most of us.

The Sci-Fi Inspired concept watch was designed by a guy named Alan, and his concept is inspired specifically by two films: 2001: A Space Odyssey and TRON:Legacy. You can readily see both influences in the design.

The square LED face is set into a metal case and has segmented metal band to go with. The outer circle tells the time in 5 minute blocks while the middle circle represents the hours. If you need to get a more exact reading of the time, the middle blocks are each for 1-minute, so the watch can be precise when it needs to be.

For now, this watch is a concept, but head on over to Tokyflash to vote for it, if you like it. If it gets enough support, it just might get made by the Japanese studio.

The next time someone asks you for the time, you might want to flip a switch. Wait a minute here, you say, what do you mean by “flip a switch”? Aren’t most, if not all, timepieces supposed to tell you the time at but a glance without the need to press a fancy button? Not so with the $99.99 Wall Switch Watch, where it will sport an old school switch that you will need to flip in order to tell the time.

There will be digital LEDs in a shade of red which light up whenever you flip said switch, so that your eyes will be able to see what figures have formed, and the chemicals in your brain successfully puts two and two together, leading you to blurt out the current time to whoever asked for it. Coming in a black silicon strap with stainless steel buckle, this is definitely far from a refined Swiss timepiece, but at least it offers something that is dramatically different from your regular watches. The LEDs will help conserve energy by turning itself off after 5 seconds of inactivity.

[ Wall Switch Watch copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]