Catapult Sports is finally giving wannabe Zlatans and Ngolo Kantes an opportunity to see how they measure up against their teammates and professional footballers - by launching its Playertek smart vest for players, at any level, to wear and track performance.
The smart compression crop top features a small tracking pod that packs in GPS, an accelerometer, magnetometer. There's also a 500mAh battery, which should be good for recording seven hours of game time and an 8GB storage on board to collect 1,250 hours of data.
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The pod is able to track players on the pitch, whether that's during a match or in training. It'll record data on distance covered, sprint distance, sprints completed and sprint distance. It'll even generate heat maps, so if you're not putting a shift in or you haven't been tracking back like the coach asked you to, you'll know about it.
If you regularly clock in a full 90 minutes of football, you can also compare stats from the 1st and 2nd half to see if your performance drops and whether you need to work a bit harder in those training sessions.
All of the data is synced over Bluetooth to the companion iPhone app (sorry Android phone owners), and to keep things competitive you can see how your output fares against Premier League players and build world and friends leagues to climb up the table. If your performances have been strong enough, you can secure a sport in the Team of the Week.
The analytics company's tech has been the go to solution for a whole host of sports teams across football, american football, rugby and aussies rules football. In the Premier League, current champions Leicester City use Catapult's elite tracking setup as do Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur who are battling it out for the title this year. Catapult acquired GPS tracking tech company PlayerTek last year that powers the setup that's available for everyone.
The Playertek setup is available to pre-order now for £199, which includes the tracker pod and the vest. If you need a spare vest, that'll cost you a pretty reasonable £25.
Unsurprisingly, this isn't the first football (or soccer for our US friends), friendly wearable we've come across here at Wareable. Adidas launched its MiCoach speed cell sensor a few years back that can be worn on compatible Adidas boots and measures metrics like distance, speed, speed zones and number of sprints.
Zepp whose devices already track golf, tennis and baseball, recently launched the Play Soccer. The connected module slips into a calf sleeve that can be worn inside a pair of football socks and promises to track a host of metrics including distance covered, sprints, average speed, kicks (passes and shots differentiated by kicking speed) and shot conversion rates.
The big difference here is that Catapult's tech is being used by a lot of elite sports teams right now. So if you want to train like the pros, you and your teammates need this connected crop top in your lives.
Source: Wired
How we test
By Michael Sawh
Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.
He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.
Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech.
Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.