Sony released a new kind of wearable in Japan a few years back and now finally, the rest of the world, or at least Europe, will be able to experience it for themselves. The wena (Wear Electronics Naturally) strap is now available for pre-order in the UK and it will appeal to those who still want to use their traditional un-connected watch but would still want a small amount of connectedness. No news yet though if it will be available anywhere else, specially the US.
Wena is actually not a smartwatch per se but it is a smart strap that you can attach to the existing watch faces that you may have. They also sell their own watch faces that you can attach to the strap if you don’t own any of those traditional watches anymore. Their watch faces have mechanical, solar, and quartz movements. There are two types of straps: metal or the wena wrist pro and silicone or the wena wrist active. The 20mm wena wrist pro is available in silver and black while the active is only in black.
The wena strap has a small display built into the buckle which can show you some of your alerts as well as activity tracking. It also supports NFC so it an actually handle contactless payments. You don’t even have to twist your wrist to pay. Just tap the strap onto whatever machine the store uses and voila, you’ve made your payment. It is also water resistant up to 50 meters so no problem if you get caught out in the rain or if you’re too sweaty from your workout.
What you get is pretty basic, but when it comes to the pricing, it’s almost the same as an actual smartwatch. The active strap is at £349 while the pro strap is at £399. Prices of the watchfaces vary from £100 to £400. But if it’s something that you think you’d like to have, you can already pre-order from Amazon, TH Baker and Sony Centres, but again it’s only in the UK. We’ll update you if ever it will come to the US and other territories.
SOURCE: Sony
