April 5, 2013
LinkMe is an LED smart bracelet that
connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and displays SMS and social media
updates in text that scrolls across your wrist.
Smartwatches
and smart bracelets promise convenience – it’s easier to glance at a device on
your wrist than it is to dig out your buzzing smartphone from your tightly
fitting jeans. But so far, many of them have had boring, uninspired designs.
For example, the Pebble smartwatchhas an amazing complement
of features. But it looks plastic and boring. I’d never be caught wearing that
on my wrist.
LinkMe
is unabashedly beautiful. It’s a single chrome ring that clips around your
wrist. The smart bracelet has a curved LED display that seamlessly blends in
with the rest of the device. The display streams long lines of text in red or
blue letters, like one of those big news tickers in Times Square.
LinkMe
can display anything that be relayed in a stream of text – SMS, social media
updates, flight information, personal reminders and alerts. When it isn’t
displaying messages, LinkMe defaults to displaying the time, so you can easily
use it as a watch.
But when it comes to functionality, the Pebble
outstrips LinkMe in a number of ways. With its e-ink display, the Pebble can
offer multiple watch faces and display limited graphics. It also can flash
multiple lines of text at once.
With LinkMe, you have to wait until the message or alert finishes scrolling
across the bracelet.
Still, there’s just something about LinkMe
that makes me want to have it around my wrist. Maybe it’s just another case of
aesthetics trumping functionality. Maybe this feeling will go away if/when Apple releases a smartwatch that
fuses beauty with a healthy complement of features.
