Most modern-day smartwatches now come with wear detection to know if you’re actually wearing the watch. This helps it accurately measure your heart rate vis-a-vis false detections and also turns off certain features when you’re not using the watch. In this article, let’s see how does wear detection work on a smartwatch.
What is Wear Detection and How Does it Work?
When you try to measure your heart rate or blood oxygen level without wearing the smartwatch on your wrist, it may show an error asking you to wear the watch properly and try again. This is due to Wear Detection feature which allows the watch to check if it’s worn in your hands or kept on a table.
Wear detection does not need any special sensors on the smartwatch. In fact, most smartwatches use the optical heart rate sensor‘s PPG technology to check whether the smartwatch is worn on the wrist. When the IR light emits from the sensor and does not receive any reflection, it recognizes that the watch is not worn on the wrist and shows the error.
For instance, the Apple Watch uses the accelerometer and gyroscope along with the heart rate sensor for more accurate wear detection that also locks the watch as you remove it from your wrist.
Benefits of Wear Detection on Smartwatch
There are several benefits of the wear-detection feature on a smartwatch, as shown below.
- Prevents False Data Tracking
- Locks the Watch When Removed from the Wrist
- Saves More Battery
- Shows Error if the Watch is not Worn Properly
How to Check If Your Smartwatch Has Wear Detection?
You can easily check if your smartwatch has a wear-detection feature or not. You must place your smartwatch on any object or surface or keep it in the air. Then open the heart rate or SpO2 monitor and wait for a couple of seconds.
If wear detection is present in your smartwatch, it will show an error to wear the watch properly on your wrist and try again. This error will also come up if you wear the watch loosely because the sensors are not making proper contact with your skin.
And, if your smartwatch does not show any error and directly yields the readings on the screen, it does not have wear detection.
Wrapping Up
This was what wear detection on smartwatches is and how it works. It is a useful feature with several amazing benefits, like avoiding recording any false data which may alter your daily averages. Check your smartwatch to see if it has the wear-detection feature, and tell us in the comments below. Stay tuned with WearablesToUse for more helpful articles!
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