Black Friday "Tech-ssessories”

Black Friday, the gadget lover’s favorite “holiday,” is upon us. Deals will soon abound in all major electronics stores, so you can stock up on your holiday gifts early. You’ll save so much money, that you’ll be able to get something for yourself, too. While just about every kind of gadget is going to be marked down, it’s the stuff under the wearable tech category that will be especially tantalizing during Black Friday.

Fitness Trackers

Once a little pebble-like device you would put into your pocket, these have evolved from the simplest designs (think the original Fitbit) to ultra-complex (such as the Fitbit Surge or the Jawbone Up3). To one degree or another, they are all doing very similar things: counting your steps, calibrating your calories burned, and even tallying the stairs you’ve walked. The more advanced trackers will also monitor your heart rate — both when you’re just hanging out at home and when you are vigorously exercising — as well as monitor your sleep patterns. Almost all the brands have an app or website that syncs all your data to let you mull over your stats. If you are looking to increase your overall activity level, these devices may be for you.

Smart Watches

What’s the difference between a smart watch and a mega-complex fitness tracker? Well, a smart watch — like the iWatch or the Samsung Gear —pick up where the advanced fitness tracker leaves off. Smart watches will count steps, monitor sleep, and chronicle your heartbeats—plus, they tell the time and show you text and message notifications from your synced phone. They have color displays, which show you the weather, your schedule, and more, with a mere tap. The idea is that instead of constantly pulling out your phone to see if you got a message, you can know everything with flick of a wrist. Additionally, smart watches simply look better—they are designed to be seen.

Health Tech

Think of this as a fitness tracker on steroids. Health wearables either do one thing only (track your heart rate) very, very well, giving you insight into your heart rate training “zones.” Or they are the superheroes of wearables doing everything from tracking your maximal oxygen capacity (say, what?) to estimating your recovery time from a hard workout. Some even include heart rate monitors and GPS tracking so that you can tabulate your distance, your pace, your average heart rate and more. These gadgets are for the serious athletes among us.

With these new technologies quantifying what’s happening inside our bodies while we exercise and when we sleep, “getting to know yourself” has a whole new meaning.