On the Wrist
The most crowded shelf in the catalog, and the one with the strongest opinions about fit.
- Listings cataloged here
- 27
Five places on the body
Forms
Where a device sits decides more about it than any specification does. It sets the size of the cell, the sensors that are possible, and whether you are still wearing it in a month.
On the Finger
No screen, no strap, no adjustment. The trade is very simple and very final.
- Listings cataloged here
- 7
In the Ear
The only place on this list where fit changes what you hear, not just how it feels.
- Listings cataloged here
- 12
Around the Neck
A collar-shaped device with moving parts, worn under whatever else you have on.
- Listings cataloged here
- 8
On the Face
Every other form in this catalog points at the wearer. Two of these point at everyone else.
- Listings cataloged here
- 3
Why the location is the specification
A place on the body is a volume budget. A ring has room for a cell the size of a grain of rice and no room at all for a screen, which is why both ring listings in this catalog state a figure in days while nine of the ten smartwatch listings state no figure at all. Nothing about that is a statement of engineering quality. It is a statement about how much space there was.
The location also decides what can go wrong. A wrist device fails at the strap. An earbud fails at the seal. A ring fails at the size you chose before you owned it. A neck fan fails at the one thing in this catalog that spins. None of those failures appear in a specification list, and all of them are the reason a device ends up in a drawer.
And it decides who else is involved. Four of these five places point the hardware at the person wearing it. The fifth points a camera at everyone standing in front of them, which is a different product with a different set of questions attached to it.
What each of these pages covers
- What is actually worn there, drawn from the listings rather than from the category name.
- How it sits, and the specific way fit fails in that location.
- What gets in the way: sleeves, hair, glasses arms, cold hands, hoods.
- How the listings word their sensors, recorded as wording and never restated as a finding.
- The limits worth stating plainly, including the ones a product page has no reason to mention.