Wearables

All about that Basslet: Wearable subwoofer thumps your wrist

All about that Basslet: Wearable subwoofer thumps your wrist
Basslet is a wearable that thumps your wrist in time with your music's bass
Basslet is a wearable that thumps your wrist in time with your music's bass
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Basslet is a wearable that thumps your wrist in time with your music's bass
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Basslet is a wearable that thumps your wrist in time with your music's bass
Basslet design
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Basslet design
Press shot of Basslet
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Press shot of Basslet
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At CES, you're always sure to see some wearables that go off the beaten path. One of the most original wrist-worn wearables we've seen this year is Lofelt's Basslet, a watch-like device that acts as a subwoofer for your headphones.

The simple idea behind Basslet: A dongle attaches to the headphone jack of your phone or music player, which you then plug wired headphones into. The Basslet device itself, worn on your wrist, then receives a signal via Bluetooth and vibrates in sync with the music's bass. While the wearable is silent to other people, the vibrating of your wrist gives your body the pound of a subwoofer.

Demoing the device at CES 2017, I enjoyed the experience. Though your music won't sound any different to your ears, the wrist vibration is similar to the body-rattling bass you'd experience in a car with a tricked-out system. My brain perceived it as being connected to the music, and it enhanced the listening experience – especially in bass-heavy hip-hop tracks.

I didn't notice any blatant latency during the demo, even in a crowded showroom with potential interference from numerous nearby Bluetooth connections.

Basslet design
Basslet design

The company says the device will last for over six hours of continuous playtime, and the wearable can be customized to fit with any standard 24-mm strap. The current version only works with wired headphones, but a company representative tells us it's working on ways for future versions to support wireless listening.

While it's currently aimed at headphone users, Lofelt sees the device eventually pairing with games and VR, among other areas.

Press shot of Basslet
Press shot of Basslet

Basslet is up for pre-order now, and scheduled to go on sale on February 7, both at Amazon (US and UK) and the product page below. It costs US$199.

Product page: Basslet

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2 comments
2 comments
CeeBee
Has anyone researched on the long term health effects of having a vibrator on your wrist for a long periods of time?
Daishi
I see some of the less useful items out of CES and think to myself "Are we out of difficult problems to solve?" It seems like there are tons of talented people in the industry sitting around going "ok, what hasn't been done yet?". Maybe they are asking the wrong questions I always see things I think still need work put into solving them before I need my toaster connected to the internet or wear a device that vibrates on my wrist to music. I could name 100 things that need to be solved but to pick one I helped my GF back up her iphone. She has limited storage on icloud so we needed to move videos to PC and NAS so it's in 2 places and photos to all 3 because there is room for them. This seems like mostly a common problem with something that's really important to a lot of people (photos) and it's something that should be simple to do at this point but instead we ended had to work around all the icrap to do it. Why don't we have better photo backup solutions yet that address things like prioritizing photos over video or moving video to local only when cloud storage is limited? It seems like a silly rant for a comment about a vibrating watch speaker but I swear I could name 100 things that are still done really badly and could use better solutions.