Lumo Body Tech, the company behind the Lumo Back (or what I call the “nagging mother of wearable devices”), have moved up from your lumber to the shoulders to fight the war for better posture with a new wearable called the Lumo Lift.
The Lumo Lift is a body sensor that tracks your activity and reminds you to stand up straight. But instead of zapping your back into place, like Lumo’s first product, the Lift gently vibrates when your chest, shoulders and upper back are slouching to reminder you to ‘lift’ your head up and your shoulders back.
It looks like there are a lot of shoulder slouchers out there. Since opening up pre-orders during CES twelve days ago, Lumo Body Tech have sold nearly 6,000 Lifts and more than doubled its $200,000 goal they set for their first batch.
Like Lumo Back, the Lift isn’t just monitoring your posture. It knows when you are standing, walking or being active. In the companion app, you will be able to view your activity over time including your steps, calories burned and how well your posture was throughout the day.
To ensure that your chest isn’t buzzing like crazy all the time, Lumo has added a PowerUp mode which you can toggle on or off to control the active feedback. The app also gamifies your posture and activity, rewarding you with badges and points for when you reach your personal best. The app will run on iOS at launch with Android 4.3+ expected soon after.
The Lift is much smaller and less cumbersome to wear than Lumo Back, which required you to strap the sensor around your waist. Lumo Lift is just larger than a toonie and attaches to your upper chest using a magnetic clasp. If you aren’t keen on broadcasting to the world that you’ve officially joined the quantified self movement, Lift can be attached to your undershirt to be practically invisible. In addition, Lumo also gives you the option to accessorize the Lift and offers 10 different coloured clasps that allows you change the face of the device to turn the Lift into jewelry.
The Lumo Back is still one of my favourite and most-used wearable devices, mostly because it proactively tackles a real-life problem in a simple yet powerful manner. Lumo says that you’re able to wear the Lumo Lift and the Lumo Back at the same time as they are two distinct products, both requiring separate apps to be used to monitor and track the data they collect. This is definitely a missed opportunity. It is also indicative of problem with wearables right now, where devices continue to work in isolation from one another. It would be great to see the Back and the Lift work together to tackle the body as a whole. Hopefully this is on Lumo Body Tech’s roadmap.
Lumo has reduced the price of the remaining 400 Lift units down from $99 to $69. The savings covers the $30 international shipping fee to Canada. Lift is expected to ship in the spring. To celebrate the success of Lift so far, team has created three special edition Clasp Packs in honour of three charities. When you order one, they will donate 100% of the profits to that specific charity.
Source: Lumo
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