Misfit is a brand we touch on occasionally and the company has made huge strides from when we first took a look at their wearables. The Misfit Vapor Smartwatch has been announced at CES 2017 today and it is the company’s first device to sport a touchscreen.
Misfit made a name for themselves in the wearable space by producing low-cost but solid trackers. Their various wearables all had one thing in common as well, they were thin and sleek. That trend continues with the Misfit Vapor Smartwatch at 44mm which is a hair slimmer than the Gear S3. It will have a low profile on your wrist and the design leans more towards classy than sporty.
Adding a touchscreen to the Misfit Vapor brings a whole slew of new features to the table. It sports a “touch bezel” which allows you to control and access apps similar to a scrollwheel of sorts. It will have a heart-rate monitor as well so you can keep track of your fitness to a degree. Other features include GPS, 4GB of storage a mic and water resistance up to 50 meters.
As for that fancy new touchscreen, it clocks in at 1.4-inches and is of the AMOLED variety with a ppi of 326. There does not appear to be a “flat tire’ on this model either, which is a pleasant surprise considering Fossil has been a fan of flats. The battery size is unknown as is the OS while the processor will be the Snapdragon 2100. The OS is expected to be a forked version of Android, not Android Wear although things could change before prime time.
It’s nice to see another player enter the smartwatch race, even if we would like to see this one running Android Wear 2.0 when it launches. While that is unlikely to happen, the Misfit Vapor Smartwatch will be affordable at $199 when it launches later this year.