GoKawiilThis is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer will be taking a two-week break and will be moving to Wednesdays starting August 12th. Opt in for Optimizer here.
My For You page thinks I love “What I eat in a day” videos. Most of the time, I watch them in a bid to suss out the latest wellness fads. But they can be an illuminating look into what people perceive to be healthy (or less-than-healthy) eating habits — even if a portion of them are likely faked for clout. In the same vein, I’ve gotten many requests from Verge readers over the years for a glimpse into what I track in a day as the resident senior wearables reviewer.
I get why there’s interest! Social media has reinforced the idea that if you do the same things as the “experts,” you too can achieve success. That’s why many people want to know what their favorite influencers eat in a day. But I’m a wearables reviewer, and that can require me to self-quantify in ways that I wouldn’t recommend for normal people. I’m tracking health to evaluate products and claims. That means things like how accurate GPS is or how workout intensity impacts battery life. I’m evaluating whether the metabolic insights derived by a $600 scale from my foot sweat will at all correlate with a CGM. Or, given a device’s feature set, I’m trying to figure out what the most common-sense ways are to incorporate a particular device into your daily life. Most people are fitness tracking to improve their health.
What I track in a day also changes depending on the time of year. Winter through early spring, for instance, is usually a lighter load because the product launch season is over. Summer through late fall, I’m like a ship covered in wearable barnacles. And as health companies start branching out into bodily fluids, my tracking regimen has never been more involved. Right now is an interesting moment to look into my nutso tracking schedule because the doctor cleared me to restart training, product launch season is just beginning, and for the past few weeks, I’ve started building a digital twin for my metabolism using Twin Health, a system that incorporates continuous glucose monitors, blood tests, and an array of other health sensors. So without further ado…
The roster
I try to test in product blocks. Right now, I’m focusing on metabolic tech. Ideally, you want to have control devices. If I’m testing a new smart ring, for instance, I should test it against the Oura Ring since that’s what most people will want to compare it to. Where possible, I want to also long-term test the Oura Ring against other sleep trackers across multiple form factors like, say, a smart bed and a smartwatch. And so on and so forth.
With that in mind, the current roster is made up of screenless fitness trackers, smart scales, and sleep trackers because these are often the components in metabolic tracking. For instance, the Dexcom G7 (a continuous glucose monitor for diabetics), the Twin Health scale, the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and a Medline blood pressure cuff are a series of sensors that feed into a system that will create my metabolic digital twin. Because Garmin released the Cirqa, a screenless tracker, it makes sense for me to compare it to the Oura Ring and Fitbit Air — which are also Whoop competitors. And because Withings just released its $600 BodyScan 2, it makes sense for me to compare it to its other scales and the Twin Health scale I’m already using.
The Withings BodyFit is one of the scales in the roster at the moment. Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
So this testing block consists of:
Apple Watch Ultra 3 (left wrist; I use this for a general baseline)
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