Many have tried, but few have succeeded in making a successful discreet safety wearable. Compared to its keychain-like competitors Athena and Revolar, which both look distinctly like technology, WiseWear’s socialite collection is the only truly discreet safety wearable on the market. Geared towards professional women, this wearable looks like a piece of jewelry but can keep your loved ones informed in critical moments with its unique distress signal feature. This is Calder from the WiseWear Socialite Collection.
In a market flooded with wearables, it can be difficult for a designer to set their product apart from the rest. We have entered a new era where it’s no longer novel to be a wearable – but it is novel to be jewelry that just happens to have high-tech functionality. WiseWear’s Socialite Collection, especially the Calder design, is just that.
Safety & Distress
While the Socialite bracelets also track activity and vibrate for notifications, their most compelling feature is the safety feature. After setting up an emergency contact through the app, a user can use the bracelet to send a silent distress signal to them – that includes a text message and a Google Maps link with a pin dropped on your exact GPS location. For Android users, the app also places a call to the first emergency contact, and the audio from the call is recorded to the phone’s local storage. To activate distress mode, the user turns their wrist facing up, waits for the crystal (image below) to turn red, then taps the bracelet until it starts to vibrate, indicating the signal is on its way.
As a young woman who travels for business a lot, I often find myself alone in new cities. Though I have almost a decade of martial arts experience, I still feel unsafe when I’m in these situations, because I know that if something were to happen to me while abroad, my family might not know what happened. WiseWear makes me feel a lot more comfortable because I know the easy to initiate distress signal is discreet and will immediately notify my emergency contacts with detailed information about what’s happening.
Notifications & Activity Tracking
The WiseWear app offers seven tiers of notifications, ranging from one to seven vibrations to represent different types of notification. The assignment of these is configurable, but beyond that it’s not very customizable. I found that the notifications were difficult to follow and distracting, especially when I re-entered a connectivity zone and received a bunch of notifications at once. I’m used to my Michael Kors Access smartwatch, which vibrates and displays the notification, and I find the lack of screen on WiseWear makes the notification feature ineffective for me. This doesn’t stop me from wearing it though, its functionality as a safety signal makes it worthwhile – I just disabled the notifications and use it for its other features.
As for activity tracking, the bracelet seems to track steps fairly accurately, matching up expectedly with the number tracked on my smartwatch. The device is water resistant so is okay for a light sweat, but I would not recommend this device for a real workout. Just like you wouldn’t wear your designer jewelry to the gym, you wouldn’t wear your Socialite device.
The Verdict
Though WiseWear‘s features include mobile notifications and activity tracking, by far its greatest strength is as a discreet safety device. With its $395 USD price tag it’s more expensive than an Apple Watch, but comparable to designer bracelets with similar appearances. If you’re willing to shell out the hundreds for a Kate Spade or Michael Kors bracelet, why not one that can send a distress signal to your family when you’re in danger?
PROS and CONS: The app in its current stage is rudimentary, but conveys basic functionality without bells and whistles. The notification vibrations are not refined – but this device’s strength as a safety wearable outweighs its weaknesses in other areas.
For professional women and business travelers, I highly recommend this device!
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Disclosure: this device was given to me for free to review, courtesy of WiseWear. All opinions expressed are true and my own; this post does not reflect the opinions of any organization or company I represent other than Trendy Techie.
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