Sony Goes For Gold With B-Trainer Smart Music Player

Sony is looking to make those painful miles spent out pounding the streets a little bit more enjoyable with its smartest wearable device to date.

The Sony Smart B-Trainer combines wireless headphones, music player and fitness tracker all into one device, providing you with what it says is the smartest workout around.

First revealed at CES back in January, the company today officially launched the B-Trainer in London, drafting in Olympic gold medallist and former world record holder Colin Jackson to show off the device to media at a training session in Regents Park.

Fit and ready

Available for £230 and coming in five colour options, the Smart B-Trainer connects to your mobile device via Bluetooth, and collects data from six sensors, including GPS, accelerometers, a compass, gryoscope and barometer, in the headphones to help make your workout more effective.

Users can create custom running routes or workouts using the companion app, available for iOS and Android devices, or use some of Sony’s pre-loaded options, such as fat-burning or endurance running.

That’s not to say the B-Trainer is just for running, as thanks to its waterproof build it is also suitable for swimming and trail running.

But what makes it really stand out is the music. By monitoring data such as your heart rate and distance, the B-Trainer is able to mould and adapt your playlist to ensure you don’t peak too early.

So for example, if you start off a run too fast, the device will queue up a slower-tempo song in order to ease you down to a manageable pace or heart rate – or if your pace falls a bit too low, it will put on a beat-heavy track to get you flying again.

Our test of the B-Trainer saw the playlist start with some sedate Taylor Swift warbling, which lasted through a number of gentle warm-up laps, before changing down to something more sedate when the pace picked up.

The device is able to store up to 16GB of music, but sadly won’t sync with services such as Spotify or iTunes for the time being.

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