I couldn't sleep wearing a Basis B1 fitness watch

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only point of wearables is if you wear them.

Over the next decade, it seems likely to me that wearables will become invisible as they integrated within our homes, clothes, perhaps even our bodies.

The point is what they track is important. We won't want them to have screens on them. All that data will be crunched in the cloud and the important bits displayed on any personal screen we happen to use.

Long pre-amble to the incredibly-looking Basis B1 health tracker ($199)

It's a monster, which is fine if like the Nike and Adidas sports watches, you're using it to track activity. However, a core feature of the Basis is how it analyses your sleep.

Personally, I have enough problems wearing a Fitbit Flex to sleep and that's about the smallest, thinner tracker there is. Wearing a brick on your wrist isn't going to be conductive to good sleep, although one thing Basis has done correctly that you don't need to push any buttons to toggle between sleep/active mode.

I'd also be interested to see how accurate the heart rate tracker is compared to a proper chest strap, but that's another complaint for another time.

The wearable technology dilemma: Where's My Data?

Despite now being broken, I'm found my five months with the Jawbone Up bracelet an interesting period.

It's given me my first decent set of personal data, which is surely the point of wearable tech.

When it comes to five months of sleep data, it's not always so reliable as sometimes I forget to toggle into sleep mode, but at least I can see some broad data. September was a good month of sleep (holiday!). July and October weren't - too much travelling.

It is good to see that I've been getting more active.

Still, with my Up band now out of action, the sad thing is this data is now pretty much useless.

It's been said that the most important thing about wearable technology is that is has to be in a form that people will wear. Yet equally important is that you can get the data out of the system in a form that you can combine it with data from sensors from other companies (and even manually-inputed data). After all, over the years, we're going to be using equipment from various providers.

I think the latter will be a harder problem to solve than the former.

Neat summation: One week with Fitbit One

So one week into life with Fitbit One, and I'm enjoying it.

It works really well, the website tracking is great and I've not lost it yet (this is now my main concern).

One small but neat feature is you get a weekly email showing your data.

Of course, this being the first week, there's no trend comparison, but it's interesting to see that despite three hardcore days of sports, over the week I'm still under the 'recommended' 10,000 daily steps average.

Also, it's good to see the sleep data - something I more interested in than the exercise date. (Obviously I don't care about weight so I'm not updated that metric.)

Jawbone Up versus Fitbit One - first night's sleep

As with all big data projects, I want big data before properly comparing Jawbone's Up with Fitbit's One.

Still, here's a quick comparison in terms of one night's sleep.

The restriction with both systems is you have to manually toggle between sleep/awake settings by pressing a button. In the case of Fitbit One, pressing the button starts (and stops) a stop watch, so at least you can see exactly what's happening. In the case of Up, you're just toggling between a sun and a crescent moon LED on the device.

Another difference is Fitbit runs all its data through a website (and there's is an app), whereas Up is only available via an app. Personally, I think the website approach is better; certainly Fitbit's website is better than Jawbone's app.

In terms of the night in question, both devices tracked the same sleep patterns; 6.5 hours of 'sleep' with some 'awake' periods about an hour before I get up.

Up is better in terms of breaking out deep sleep (dark blue) and light sleep (light blue), although I'm not clear how accurate this is. Whereas One seems to be more sensitive in terms of highlighting multiple 'awake' periods, although I'm not sure I like the idea of its 'sleep efficiency' rating.

Still, I'll get a better idea of how the two compared when I've got at least a week's worth of data to play with.