If you thought the Apple Watch was the only piece of hi-tech wristwear worth having, then think again. Zing, 18 months in the making and available at a cost of £54.99, is a sleek, attractive to look at gadget that covers everything from fitness activities and games to friendship, group interaction and music. It can be worn on the wrist, as a pendant or kept in a pocket.
Ludo Chapman, a member of MvBii Ventures (the five-man team behind it) was on hand to tell us more. “It is a device that enables you to track your activity using a number of sensors,” he explains.
“We have a temperature sensor, accelerometer and microphone built into the product. Using the algorithms we take the readings from the sensors and produce what we call our Activity Score and that score gets displayed in a free app.
“One of the things we very consciously wanted not to become was a fitbit counting calories and steps and distance and so on. We want it to be more of a prompt for people who aren’t marathon runners.
“It displays it on a spoked wheel, where spokes come out of the wheel at time slots of 15 minutes telling you how active you’ve been. As the day progresses we use a coloured wheel with circles on it to display how washed out you are, essentially. So the more active you’ve been – and based on the time of day – the larger the wheel and the more intense the colour. It shows you whether you need a bit of a boost of activity.”
Zing, with a battery life of two days, doesn’t just focus on fitness, as Ludo observes: “It has a full messaging platform and you can set up messages to an individual or to a group… All you have to do is to simply connect to your phone and then blow on the device and the message will get sent out.
“It can be text, but it can also contain what we call ‘zingers’ and that’s an emoticon with sound. On future releases we’re gonna do that with videos, we’re gonna allow you to stream music and send that out as well. People love it. They just put it on their wrist, a quick blow and it sends off the message to the recipient they’ve chosen.”
Elaborating on the music options available, the Cambridge-born businessman, a former Managing Director of Grant Instruments, states, “You’ve got the ability to control your music, whether that be streaming it from Apple or your playlists on your phone or your iPod, or whatever it is you’re using…
“With your phone in your pocket you can, with a simple shake of the wrist, kick off your music and then if you want to change tracks, you just do another wrist movement and it skips to the next track. You can pause with a double shake and a single shake starts it again. You’ve got complete control of your music from your wrist.”
Zing is also a must-buy for those who like to take selfies. “Rather than having a selfie stick, you can take your iPhone, place it up to 30 metres away and then with a single shake of the wrist, take a picture or a selfie video – and the video can be up to a minute long.”
As mentioned at the start, the price for this new product is £54.99, but with December 25 fast approaching Zing will be available at a special price for a limited time only.
“We’re doing a whole load of special offer packs for Christmas,” reveals Ludo. “If you buy a family pack of four, the ‘Zing Zap,’ you can get that for what works out as £30 per unit price – and the apps are completely free.”
To conclude, Chapman reflects on the pressures of being Charles Darwin‘s great-great-grandson. “I’ve got a lot to live up to,” he admits, “but I hope I succeed…”
For more information on Zing and the company behind it, visit their official website.
