There's been an explosion of smartwatches over the last month, but Emvio, a new Kickstarter project, certainly has a unique take on the market.
Pitching itself as the first stress detecting smartwatch, the Emvio keeps tabs on your vitals, and is designed to interpret when you're getting too hot under the collar.
Essential reading: Best fitness tracker
The Emvio monitors your heart rate to decipher how stressed you're feeling, and if it senses an increased pulse, it will send an alert via a gentle buzz. If you're too stressed for too long, it will try to coach you into managing it better.
The idea is to inject some calm during life's trials and tribulations. If someone cuts you up on the motorway, or have a family argument, Emvio will bring you back to earth, and prompt you to take a step back.
Emvio is releasing four watches – a standard version made of plastic and a supercharged 'elite' version constructed out of chrome steel. Each version will come in Romeo and Juliet sizes, for men and women.
It's a solid idea, but it remains to be seen how effective heart rate sensing alone can be in interpreting stress.
However, its aim is to reveal stress levels over long periods of time, which can be dangerous, rather than focusing on flashpoints, which is the major cause of long-term health risks. The app stores your stress levels, and enables you to monitor trends over time.
As well as stress monitoring, the Emvio also serves as a fitness tracker, keeping tabs on steps and activity goals – which should aid long-term use. However, there are no notifications, which makes its 'smartwatch' claim somewhat of a stretch.
Read this: Stress beating tech
Stress monitoring wearables have become a big trend, and devices such as the Muse headband as well as Spire.io and Olive band have all gained attention over the last year.
It's certainly a noble cause and one that resonates with users, but it certainly feels like in the long term, stress detection will be absorbed into smartwatches and fitness trackers, rather than becoming a headline feature in itself. After all, if all that's required is a heart rate sensor and an algorithm, it's only a matter of time until mainstream wearables become stress detectors in their own right.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.