All of the top connected health, fitness and smart wearables we saw at the Las Vegas expo
The metaphorical lights have dimmed on the Las Vegas Strip and CES 2026, with the tech industry’s biggest show in the rear-view mirror for another year.
After a week of walking miles of carpet, dodging cleaning robots, and testing wearables that promise to fix our sleep, productivity, and health, one thing became clear: wearables are trying harder than ever to remain discreet.
This year was less about wacky new form factors or iterative smartwatch updates. Instead, we saw proactive and genuinely useful smarts built into almost every new key wearable. Whether it was in smart rings, glasses, earbuds, or the endless list of health-focused devices, 2026 in wearables is shaping up to be one that makes much better use of AI features.
This new crop is trying to pinpoint your emotional triggers, transcribe your meetings, and surface your health data in a more clever, time-sensitive way than we’ve seen in previous years.
So, with that, here are the winners of the Wareable ‘Best in Show’ awards 2026.
Xreal 1S
Xreal continues to lead the charge in making mixed reality accessible, and the 1S is their best consumer pitch yet.
Improving on the Xreal One, the new 1S bumps the resolution to 1200p and brightness to a searing 700 nits, all while dropping the price to $449. The shift to a 16:10 aspect ratio and a wider 52-degree field of view makes a noticeable difference for immersion, whether you’re gaming or working on a virtual desktop.
What we love is that Xreal hasn’t overcomplicated it, which makes sense given that its Project Aura, in collaboration with Google, is scheduled to land later this year.
Instead, 1S is a plug-and-play solution for putting a massive screen on your face, now with better specs and a lower price tag. In a world of mega-expensive headsets, the 1S is the new champion of practical, affordable face-worn displays.
SwitchBot AI MindClip
SwitchBot is officially joining the ‘second brain’ race, and the AI MindClip is one of the most practical implementations we saw on the CES show floor. Designed to clip discreetly onto your collar or pocket, this 18-gram device records your daily conversations and meetings, converting them into summaries, to-do lists, and a searchable audio memory database.
Unlike some bulkier competitors—and there were lots we wandered past at the show—the MindClip is refreshingly unobtrusive. It essentially acts as a backup hard drive for your brain, retrieving details from discussions you might have forgotten. While the reliance on a subscription cloud service is a caveat we’ll need to test, the form factor is a winner. If you want to capture your life without looking like you’re wearing a wire, this is the gadget to beat.
Speediance Strap
In a wearables market still dominated by subscriptions and screens, the Speediance Strap is a breath of fresh air. Unveiled alongside the Gym Monster 2 strength trainer, which first debuted last summer, this screen-free band is designed to be invisible.
It tracks training load, sleep, stress, and core body temperature, feeding data into a ‘CARE’ system that gives you actionable readiness scores without requiring you to check a wrist display every five seconds.
Crucially, Speediance (like Amazfit and Polar) is bucking the trend set by Whoop by offering core metrics without a mandatory monthly fee. It’s designed for the athlete who wants deep data but without the recurring cost or digital distractions.
As part of the wider Speediance strength ecosystem, it’s a powerful accessory for serious trainers.
Xgimi MemoMind
Known for their excellent projectors, Xgimi took a bold step into wearables at CES 2026 with the MemoMind brand.
Unlike Meta’s camera-first glasses, the MemoMind Memo One focuses on being an intelligent assistant. Using a hybrid OS that switches between OpenAI and Azure models, these glasses offer real-time translation, summarization, and teleprompter-style reminders directly in your line of sight.
Xgimi also showed off the lighter, monocular Memo Air Display for those who want less visual clutter. We appreciate the modular approach to design—with interchangeable temples and prescription support—making these feel like actual eyewear rather than a face computer. It’s a promising debut that prioritizes utility over gimmicks.
LumiSleep D1 sleep headband
Sleep tech usually just tells you how badly you slept after you wake up, but the LumiSleep D1 from LumiMind aims to improve your sleep in real time.
This comfortable, fabric-wrapped wearable uses EEG sensors to monitor your brainwaves as you try to drift off. It then generates adaptive audio—not a pre-recorded loop, but a responsive soundscape that shifts in sync with your brain activity to guide you into slumber.
It feels less like a medical device and more like a responsive white noise machine that actually understands your brain. By creating a closed feedback loop between your brain and the audio, LumiSleep offers a genuine solution to that frustrating ‘tired but wired’ feeling. It’s the kind of subtle, effective intervention digital health needs more of.
Dreame Haptic AI Smart Ring
Smart rings have exploded in popularity in the last couple of years, but, until now, they’ve generally remained quite passive health and sleep trackers.
In some respects, it’s great—especially for those who’ve previously found themselves burnt out by the constant glow of a smartwatch. However, it’s also meant that users are required to be very engaged with their phone and companion app to know if something is amiss.
At CES 2026, Dreame went some way to a middle ground here with the debut of the Haptic, squeezing a vibration motor into a slim 2.5mm frame. Feeling a buzz on your finger for health alerts or notifications could prove to be a game-changer for the form factor, finally allowing wearers to leave their phone in their pocket.
Dreame didn’t stop there; they also showcased an AI ECG Ring for heart health and an NFC Ring for access and payments, alongside the impressive modular Leaptic Cube 8K action camera. But for us, the Haptic steals the show. It proves that smart rings don’t just have to be data collectors—they can be communication devices, too.
Plaud NotePin S
Sometimes, the biggest innovation is just a simple button. The original Plaud NotePin was a breakout hit for its sleek design, but its haptic-only controls were frustratingly ambiguous.
The new NotePin S fixes this with a dedicated physical button: a long press to record, a short tap to highlight key moments. It sounds small, but in a device you rely on to capture fleeting thoughts, tactile certainty is everything.
Plaud has also sweetened the deal by including the previously sold-separately wristband and lanyard in the box, making it a complete wearable kit from day one. Paired with the new Plaud Desktop app—which records Zoom and Teams calls seamlessly—the NotePin S feels like the mature, polished version of the AI recorder concept we’ve been waiting for.
Cearvol Lyra
The Cearvol Lyra proves that the future of hearing aids isn’t just about amplification—it’s about style and integration. These Bluetooth-ready smart glasses hide powerful hearing technology right inside the stems.
Powered by NeuroFlow AI 2.0, they separate voices from background noise, boosting speech clarity without the tinniness of some traditional aids. Available in stylish ‘Boston’ and ‘Wellington’ frames, they also look just like regular glasses, removing the stigma often associated with hearing assistance.
Cearvol launched the Wave and Liberte earbuds for those who prefer a more traditional audio form factor, but the Lyra stands out for its seamless blend of vision and audio correction. It’s a hearing aid you’ll actually want to wear.
Vocci smart ring
We’ve seen smart rings for health, but Vocci (born from Gyges Labs) is a part of the new wave of dictation rings. Made of titanium with a single button, it lets you record up to 8 hours of audio with a single tap. While it sounds niche, the utility of capturing a meeting or a sudden idea without fumbling for a phone or wearing a lapel mic is undeniable.
Double-click to record, single-click to tag a moment—it’s intuitive and fast. The companion AI processes the audio into transcripts and summaries. While we still have questions about audio quality from a finger-based microphone in a noisy room, the ambition to turn the smart ring into a productivity tool rather than just a health tracker earns it a spot on our list.
Nirva Necklace
Nirva is tackling a metric most wearables ignore: your social environment. The Nirva Necklace (and bracelet) uses microphones and biosensors to log your conversations and physiological reactions throughout the day. It then analyzes this data to identify mood triggers and, fascinatingly, believes it can pinpoint toxic relationships.
It’s a bold, slightly futuristic concept—using AI to tell you which friends or coworkers are stressing you out. The app acts as a life advisor, offering tips to improve your mindfulness based on who you spend time with. It won’t be for everyone, but, as a tool for mental wellness and boundary-setting, it’s one of the most unique ideas we saw at the show.
Urevo AI recovery boots
UREVO has used CES 2026 to show of its ‘AI-Powered Wireless Recovery Boots’, a portable compression system that aims to deliver professional-grade leg therapy for $779.99.
While compression boots have been around for years, Urevo is leaning heavily into its “AI Smart Massage” technology to stand out. The brand says its system uses algorithms to analyze muscle condition in real time and automatically adjust pneumatic pressure across the leg.
The system is entirely wireless, powered by a 5,000 mAh battery that provides 4 hours of use—and can even double as a power bank for your smartphone. Everything is controlled via the Urevo app, which offers 32 recovery modes and provides ‘recovery visualization’ so users can track changes in muscle tension over time.
