Lumia
TL;DR The Lumia 2 is a pair of smart earrings that track blood flow to your head in real time, offering insight into energy, focus, and brain fog.
The tech lives in a tiny earring back called the Lumia Core, which attaches to Lumia’s own jewelry or your existing earrings.
Pricing starts at $249 for the device, plus $9.99/month for a membership.
Smart rings may be one of the trendiest fitness tracking form factors of the moment, but one company is making the case that health tracking belongs on your ear. Lumia today announced Lumia 2, a smart earring that tracks blood flow to your head in real time. According to the company, the device offers insight into energy, focus, and mental clarity. It’s a bold pitch for what Lumia calls the “world’s first smart earrings,” but it’s also one built on clinical roots rather than consumer fashion.
Lumia originally developed its sensing tech alongside researchers at Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Harvard to help patients with chronic blood-flow disorders. Now, the company wants to make that same technology more accessible by packaging it inside a jewelry-like earring back it calls the Lumia Core. The Core houses an optical sensor and other health sensors, plus a processor and battery, and attaches to a visible earring front that is interchangeable. Lumia sells modular hoop and stud options in gold, silver, and clear finishes, but a patent-pending SwitchBack mechanism also lets the Core attach to most push-back earrings you may already own. Lumia also sells a cuff version of the device for people without pierced ears. The whole package weighs less than one gram.
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Like most wearables, the Lumia 2 tracks sleep, temperature, menstrual cycle patterns, and readiness metrics. Unlike other options, though, it does so from the ear, a location the company says is closer to both the heart and brain, and claims is therefore better suited for continuous measurement. Whether that proves accurate outside of a research setting remains to be seen, but Lumia cites an encouraging correlation between its blood-flow readings and ultrasound measurements during clinical studies.
The device is also designed to be comfortable for all-day wear, including in the shower, while exercising, and even to sleep. The Lumia 2’s new locking system is meant to prevent accidental loss, and a swappable battery pack should allow users to recharge without missing out on recording data. Each battery pack is rated for five to eight days of use. Notably, the Core only attaches to a single ear, but the company’s earrings are sold in pairs, so users don’t look lopsided.
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