AURA Strap replaces your boring Apple Watch band with more health sensors

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What you need to know

  • AURA Strap was first announced at CES 2019.
  • Now it's back at CES 2020 and launching soon.
  • It replaces your Apple Watch band with sensors.

AURA first announced the AURA Strap last year but things have been quiet ever since. Now it's back at CES 2020, and it's going to ship in April. The strap replaces your Apple Watch band with new sensors that are capable of measuring anything from hydration to heart health.

Apple gave Apple Watch enough sensors to keep tabs on what your heart is up to, but AURA Strap claims to take that a step further, monitoring things Apple Watch just can't. Combined, the two have the potential to be quite the team.

AURA Strap colors

AURA Strap colors (Image credit: AURA)

The new strap and companion app (for Apple Watch and iPhone) help users to measure their body composition (fat/muscle percentage) and hydration levels, track fitness/diet progress and get personalized insights to improve their lifestyle and change health perception. Bioimpedance is the core technology enlarging Apple Watch's health monitoring abilities. Analyzing the upper body, we can track lung performance and changes in breathing, compare them with pulse data and then assess risks of heart failure and notify the user, his/her doctor, or insurer about it if the user authorizes data transfer. AURA Strap will transform your Apple Watch into an ultimate health tracker, not just a beautiful accessory.

AURA says that the app syncs to your Apple Watch via ultrasound and that you can expect up to six months of battery life at a time. The band is also just as water resistant as Apple Watch itself, so there should be no concerns about wearing it in the shower or pool.

AURA Strap will be available in four different colors, but the Coal color is the only one available initially. Buyers can pre-order it now for $99, with orders expected to begin shipping in April.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.