The first of the four devices I interacted with upon waking up was the fitness and sleep tracker Oura Ring, the only one that really requires 24-hour usage. Through a chatbot on the app called an "Oura Advisor," I could ask questions such as how to structure a workout that would meet my activity needs for the day.
The ring has no buttons, and it interacted with me through an app that neatly summarized my life and sleep through reports, the most helpful of which I found to be the sleep score. Based on sensors that logged my heart rate and oxygen levels, among other stats, the report would tell me how I slept -- and also offered advice on how to improve my sleep.
The Oura Ring was the most discreet of the four devices I tested, sitting on my finger without requiring me to do much else. The other devices, which I slapped on before leaving for the day, were slightly unusual for me as someone who usually doesn't wear more than a watch.
As I arrived at the office, my co-workers gave me a hard time for looking like I had tripped through an electronics store backroom somewhere along my commute. But to be fair, if worn independently, any of these products could be easily confused for any standard accessory thanks to smaller chips and sensors.
The true technological feat came from the glasses, where Meta has somehow managed to pack five microphones, a 12 megapixel camera, and two speakers into Ray-Ban branded frames. They are thicker than your average pair of specs, but only so much so that my friends thought I simply had a preference for bolder frames.
The Ray-Ban Gen 2s have enough battery life to last about eight hours on mixed use, according to Meta, but can quickly get a charge while sitting in a neatly designed glasses case -- similar to how Apple AirPods are charged.
Amazon's Bee bracelet is a small black module on a rubber strap that looks like any fitness tracker. With just a single button on the front, it's easy to activate the bracelet's key power: a listening mode that transcribes and summarizes meetings and conversations throughout the day.
As for the Omi, it was more noticeable because the quarter-sized pendant sat against my chest without any aesthetic of jewelry (beyond being silver), making it obvious to others that I'm wearing this for some utilitarian reason. But it's still small enough to likely go unnoticed by passersby.
Like the Bee bracelet, the Omi listens to conversations and offers transcriptions and summaries in-app. The Omi is different in that it's always listening, unless the user powers it off.
You can already see the redundancy; the necklace and the bracelet are just microphones worn on different parts of the body. The makers of Omi seem to acknowledge this, and note that owners of the Bee bracelet, for example, can plug the device into their Omi app to deliver the same functionality.
The summaries were helpful to me, cataloging the many meetings and conversations I had over the course of the day. But I found that asking questions into my necklace or bracelet didn't save me more time than pulling up ChatGPT or Claude on my phone, beyond the novelty of looking like James Bond while doing so.
A similar theme emerged with the Meta Ray-Bans, which have the novelty of a camera to interact with its Meta AI. Smart glasses and headsets are clearly where Meta (as well as Snap, Google and Apple) see the tech going.
In practice, it can be cool. For example, while out buying lunch for myself, I was able to wake up my glasses with a "Hey Meta," before asking the AI to give me a caloric estimate on the glorious hot dog I had purchased from a midtown Manhattan food cart. The glasses took a hands-free snapshot of my lunch, before informing me, through the small speakers at the back of the frames, that I was about to consume about 150 to 200 calories.