The Pandemic Wearables Boom: Fitness Trackers and Rings Go Mainstream
Home workouts and health anxiety have pushed Fitbit and Oura from niche gadgets to everyday health monitors during the pandemic.
A year into this pandemic, one gadget category that’s quietly exploded is the wearable. Gyms closed, group fitness classes moved online or vanished entirely, and suddenly a lot of people who never thought twice about a fitness tracker started wanting one. Not just to count steps, but to keep tabs on resting heart rate, sleep quality, and anything else that might hint at how their body is holding up.
It makes sense. When you can’t see a doctor as casually as before, and every cough triggers a flicker of worry, having a device on your wrist (or your finger) that gives you some kind of readout feels reassuring, even if the data is more “interesting” than clinically actionable.
Fitbit’s new home
Fitbit closed its acquisition by Google last month, wrapping up a deal that had been under regulatory review for what felt like forever. That’s a big deal for the wearables space generally, since Fitbit has been one of the most recognizable names in fitness tracking for over a decade. Now it sits inside Google’s hardware ambitions alongside Pixel phones and Nest devices. What Google actually does with Fitbit’s health data and how it integrates with Google Fit remains to be seen, but the timing is notable: Fitbit lands in Google’s lap right as consumer appetite for this stuff is at a high point.
The ring’s moment
The more interesting story to me is Oura. A smart ring is a strange pitch in normal times — why would you want a computer on your finger instead of your wrist? But during a pandemic where sleep tracking and subtle physiological signals (like elevated resting heart rate or body temperature shifts) have taken on new significance, a discreet, always-on ring that you don’t have to think about wearing has clear appeal. Oura has reportedly seen a surge of interest, and it’s easy to see why: it’s marketed heavily around recovery and readiness metrics, which resonates when everyone’s daily routine and stress levels have been upended.
There’s also a broader behavioral shift underneath all this. With home workouts becoming the default for so many people, wearables have become the primary feedback loop — the closest thing to a coach or a gym check-in you get when you’re doing burpees in your living room instead of a class. Apps like Peloton, various home workout programs, and connected fitness gear all lean on the same trend: quantify what you’re doing since you can’t rely on external structure to keep you accountable.
Whether this translates into permanent behavior change once things reopen is an open question. It’s plausible a chunk of new wearable owners drop the habit once life gets busier and gyms are an option again. But it’s also plausible that a lot of these people are, for the first time, seeing what their heart rate looks like at 3 a.m. or how much deep sleep they actually get — and once you’ve seen that data, it’s hard to stop caring about it. I’d bet on the latter sticking around longer than people expect.