Fitbit founders James Park and Eric Friedman today announced the latest device in their wearable fitness tech line that increases the user’s heartbeat to 170 beats-per-minute and you can’t take it off and it won’t slow down.
Fitbit Storm will be the ninth product on offer from the San Francisco startup’s laboratories. The device is scheduled for release in December of 2015 and will retail at approximately $180.
“It’s pretty clear what the market wants. It’s a small, wearable device that you can strap to your wrist that artifically raises your heartrate to 170BPM and that can’t be turned or taken off.”
The device represents a departure from the company’s growing line of multi-metric products in favour of a specialised unit that, rather than graphing miles covered, sleep consistency and body temperature, serves only to accelerate the wearer’s heartrate to a near-lethal figure and then not be turned off.
“In the current turbulent market of fitness tech, a lot of users just want a product that they can rely on to do one thing, and to do one thing well. In this case –
dangerously increasing the human heartrate, possibly in pursuit of weight loss.”
Concerns arose after two demonstrators at the product launch turned on their devices and immediately fell to the floor, screaming and clutching at their chests.
In the face of critics, Park and Friendman remain confident, the former shouting over the howls of the demonstrator:
“The future is now, and you can wear it on your wrist, and it is going to excite you, dangerously excite you, and you will not be able to turn it off and you will not be able to take it off.”
