Razer Nabu Smartband And WeChat Make Strange Bedfellows

Sure, almost all smartwatches have some sort of notification system that will alert you to the latest messages, but rare would a fitness band advertise that same capability. And yet that is exactly what Razer is doing when it revealed that its Nabu smart wearable will integrate with popular messaging and social hub WeChat.

The existence Razer Nabu itself is already a surprise. Razer is a name you quickly associate with gaming accessories, which means fitness is probably at the very bottom of the list of things you'd expect it to make. And yet at CES early this year, it revealed that not only was it making a wearable, but it was also not going to be a geeky smartwatch but a health-oriented fitness band instead. But sure, it still had some amount of smartwatch-like properties in it, which is where its partnership with WeChat developer Tencent comes in.

The Nabu has an LCD device that, as you might have guessed, can display notifications coming from the a paired iPhone or Android device. Perhaps the rationale is that gaming, or maybe even gym, buddies will be able to quickly notify each other of important things. But given the size of that LCD screen and the mass of messages that people send over networks like WeChat, it's not hard to imagine how things can quickly become a mess

That problem, however, should probably be the least of Razer's worries. The Nabu is entering the market at a time when Google's Android Wear push has formally taken off and bigger players like LG, Samsung,and Motorola have entered the playing field. But the Nabu can still make a name and take spot for itself before the market starts getting saturated. After all, the Nabu isn't competing in the exact same court, being a smart fitness band rather than a smartwatch. But it might also have the advantage of price, which is said to fall below the $100 line when it launches in the US this quarter.

VIA: Recode