Technologies

We’re All Stressed, and Your Next Wearable Will Know It

Your wellbeing was a big focus at CES. Companies showed off smartwatches and fitness bands aimed at tracking your mental health.

Wearables can already track a dizzying number of bodily statistics, from heart rate to blood oxygen levels and skin temperature. If the new devices shown at CES 2023 are any indication, the next wave of smartwatches and wristbands aim to gain a better understanding of your alertness, fatigue and stress levels, too.

Watchmaker Citizen and smaller brands like BHeart and Nowatch have all announced new wearables that claim to pay close attention to your mental wellbeing. The shift toward stress tracking isn’t necessarily new, as I wrote in September when covering Fitbit’s Sense 2 and the Happy Ring. But the announcements at CES suggest that tech companies are interested in monitoring other factors that play into mental wellness.

The launches come as stress has been on the rise in the US because of factors like political divisiveness and inflation in addition to the pandemic, according to a survey conducted by the Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association.

«Modern life was hard enough with constant technology and ever-present communication and the pace of life,» Dr. Debra Kissen, CEO of the Light On Anxiety Treatment Center, which specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy services, previously said to CNET. «And then throw in a pandemic, and I think it really brought mental health concerns that were always there undeniably to the surface.»

This recent interest in exploring the link between physical and mental wellness also comes as annual smartwatch upgrades aren’t as pivotal as they used to be. Now that smartwatches have matured and the problems that plagued early devices have been addressed, companies large and small are searching for what’s next.

Citizen says its CZ Smart watch can gauge alertness and fatigue

Citizen says its new CZ Smart watch uses tools built based on research from the NASA Ames Research Center Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory to assess fatigue and alertness levels. One of the biggest features that separates it from other wearables is its Alert Score, which it generates after you take the Alert Monitor test in Citizen’s YouQ wellness app. That test is based on the Psychomotor Vigilance Test that NASA has used to assess astronauts’ alertness.

The watch also wants to help you understand whether you’re a morning or evening person by analyzing your sleep patterns and Alert Scores. The overall goal is to combine these readings with more traditional metrics like heart rate and activity to make suggestions about how to address fatigue and increase your alertness. The «casual» finish starts at $350 (roughly 290, AU$520), while the «sport» edition starts at $375.

The BHeart band is a stress tracker you can attach to a regular watch

Health tech company Baracoda’s BHeart band grabbed headlines for its self-charging design that the company claims uses motion, body heat and sunlight to power itself. But the wristband is also another example of a new wearable attempting to provide mental health insights in addition to tracking physical metrics.

It claims to calculate stress management readings using heart rate variability. The app may suggest that users take a walk or do some yoga to relax based on those readings. Since it’s a watch band and not an actual watch, you can also wear the BHeart strap with any standard watch that has a lug width of 18 to 22 centimeters. The band starts at $100 and launches in April.

The Nowatch claims to estimate stress and cognitive performance

If you couldn’t tell from the name alone, the Nowatch isn’t a watch. It’s a screenless wellness tracker that claims to measure stress and cognitive performance.

The company worked with Philips on sensors that can measure electrodermal activity — or changes in sweat — to estimate stress levels. Fitbit uses similar technology in its Sense and Sense 2 devices. Users can also press the crown on their watch to mark specific stressful moments so that the watch can log it within the app. That sounds a bit different than Fitbit’s approach with the Sense 2, which can automatically flag potential signs of stress in addition to performing on-demand stress readings.

But one of the Nowatch’s more unique offerings is its Predicted Cognitive Zone feature, which the company says can provide insight on the wearer’s cognitive performance based on their physical state.

The Nowatch starts at $499, although the company is temporarily selling it for $369 until Jan. 9.

The next step for wearables

It took years for smartwatches, smart rings and fitness bands to turn sleep and activity data into meaningful insights that actually feel useful. Now, companies are seemingly setting their sights on addressing other factors that impact our health like stress, burnout and lack of sleep.

In addition to the new devices at CES, Fitbit debuted the second generation of its Sense smartwatch last fall — which doubles down on the stress tracking tech it introduced in the first model. Polar also announced the Ignite 3 watch in November, which claims to pinpoint the time of day in which you’ll be most alert based on your sleep cycles. Biogen announced in 2021 that it was collaborating with Apple on a research study to investigate the role that the Apple Watch and iPhone could play in monitoring cognitive performance.

Of course, it’s important to remember that these are just claims for now. It’s impossible to know whether these tools are accurate or useful without using them. The devices also arrive at a time when there’s increased awareness and scrutiny over the amount of data that tech devices gather about their users.

Dr. Charles A. Odonkor, assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, also previously told CNET that changes in bodily markers like heart rate, perspiration and blood pressure may not always indicate stress and could be a sign of other conditions.

Still, the arrival of devices like these suggest that the next frontier for wearables could be about much more than just motivating you to hit the gym.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 22, #425

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Nov. 22, No. 425.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a diverse one today. As a Seattle resident, I got a kick out of the purple category. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Gridiron numbers.

Green group hint: The Garden State.

Blue group hint: Guarding against scores.

Purple group hint: DC, or the Evergreen State.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Football defensive stats.

Green group: Teams that play in New Jersey

Blue group: US soccer goalkeepers.

Purple group: Washington ____.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is football defensive stats. The four answers are hurry, interception, sack and tackle.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams that play in New Jersey. The four answers are Devils, Giants, Gotham and Red Bulls.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is US soccer goalkeepers. The four answers are Howard, Naeher, Scurry and Solo.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Washington ____. The four answers are Capitals, Huskies, Nationals and Spirit.

Technologies

The iPhone 17 Pro’s Cameras Take the Fight to the OnePlus 15, and There Are Bruises

Camera showdown: The OnePlus 15’s camera should have surprised me, but it really didn’t. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro keeps on delivering in terms of photography.

The OnePlus 15 impressed my excellent colleague, David Lumb, with its superb battery life and excellent performance, especially for gaming. I wasn’t as thrilled with the cameras in my early testing, but the proof of its photography prowess comes down to how it stacks up against the competition. In this case, the iPhone 17 Pro is one of our favorite phone cameras and indeed one of the best camera phones you can buy in 2025.

For years, OnePlus has partnered with the iconic Swedish camera maker Hasselblad to work on color science and image calibration for OnePlus phones. But that partnership has ended, which puts a lot of pressure on the Chinese company to impress with its camera suite on the OnePlus 15. Throughout all these changes, Apple released the iPhone 17 Pro, which has a brand-new 48-megapixel 4x telephoto camera and carries forward the company’s reputation for excellent photography.

I headed out to the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, to test both phone cameras in a variety of situations. It’s important to note, though, that what I consider «better» might not be what you agree with. Photography, like all art, is subjective. While, as aprofessional photographer, I prefer more natural, true-to-life tones, you may prefer imagery with more pop and colors. Take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Note, too, that all images were taken with each phone’s standard camera mode in JPEG format, and all images have been resized using Adobe Lightroom, with no additional edits or sharpening applied. Small print done with, let’s dive in.

Straight off the bat, I’ll admit a small mistake in the photos above. I took this shot using one of the iPhone’s Photographic Styles. I think it was Gold, and so it’s no surprise that it’s given the image a more vibrant, warmer look that suits the scene incredibly well. I only had the style active for this example and the ultrawide version below.

However, I noticed that the iPhone’s exposure is broadly better, while the OnePlus’ software processing had worked so hard in reducing image noise that a lot of the texture in the floor had been lost.

Switch to the ultrawide lenses, and things do change a bit. The iPhone’s exposure above looks preferable to my eye, but the OnePlus’ shot definitely has more detail overall.

This example above is quite classic of the problems I have not just with the OnePlus 15, but also with most of OnePlus’ phones. The image is quite heavily saturated, with an electric-blue sky and vivid greens that look unnatural to me. The iPhone’s image has a much better handle on color here.

My other problem with OnePlus’ phones is how hard they go with their HDR processing, brightening up shadows and pulling back highlights, resulting in images that quite often lack depth and believable contrast. The image above is a prime example where the deep shadows under this bridge have been maintained in the iPhone’s shot, but where the OnePlus 15 has tried to lighten them so much that the image looks very overprocessed.

And to prove it’s not a one-off, this example above is a real low point for the OnePlus. It really tried to eliminate any kind of shadows in this scene, while pulling back the highlights in the sky outside far too much. The image looks fake, overprocessed and exactly what people would think of if you told them a photo was taken on a phone. By taking a far more subtle approach, the iPhone’s image is much more to my liking.

The OnePlus hasn’t gone as hard with its vendetta against shadows in the image above, but it does look like it’s ramped that saturation way up. It’s not that I don’t like vibrant colors — I do — it’s just that I want to add in that saturation should I want to, rather than having it forced on me by default.

The images above show a more muted scene and a good effort from both phones. Although taken just nine seconds apart (I checked the metadata), I do think the sun may have slightly peeked out from behind a cloud a little more in the iPhone’s shot, as the front of the building does look quite a lot brighter. Or maybe the OnePlus is going hard on the HDR again. Who knows? Either way, good details on this image from both phones.

The same scene in ultrawide does arguably look a little muted from the iPhone, at least when compared with the bold blue of the OnePlus’ shot above. Somewhere between the two would be my sweet spot. After I zoomed in on the details, the iPhone’s shot is certainly clearer, but at full screen — or on your Insta feed — that difference is negligible.

That brightness and color difference persists when taking each phone to its maximum default telephoto zoom, so maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the sun and clouds after all. Colors aside, the iPhone’s shot above is also clearer, and its details look sharp without being overly digitally sharpened. The OnePlus’ image does have something of a «crunchiness» to it from its software processing that I don’t like as much.

Peeping close up at the pixels on each phone’s telephoto zoom shot, I definitely think the OnePlus has gone too hard with its sharpening in the image above of a person in a window.

I’m slightly more torn on this nighttime scene. The OnePlus shot above has yet again gone big on the saturation. Look at the overcooked green on the grass — it looks like it was taken at midday in the spring. The iPhone’s colors look way more natural. However, the OnePlus’ sharpening works in favor at night, delivering a shot with crisper details throughout.

And in ultrawide, I flat out prefer the OnePlus image above. Those vibrant tones look much better here, especially as they make the oranges of the building in the background stand out more.

And if we peep at those pixels again, it’s clear that the details on the OnePlus’ shot (left) are far better. Finally, a win for the OnePlus.

This final indoor low-light scene is a bit more of a mixed bag. The OnePlus’ image above is unquestionably brighter — especially the people nearest the camera — but its noise reduction has gone a bit too hard in some areas, reducing textures on clothing and hair that the iPhone hasn’t done. Overall, though, I’d say this example is a close fight.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. OnePlus 15: Which camera is better?

For me, it’s an easy victory for the iPhone 17 Pro. Almost across the board, its images are more natural looking with realistic colors, saturation levels and exposure. The OnePlus 15’s reliance on heavy-handed image processing has resulted in often garish-looking photos that are almost the opposite of what I look for in my photography. However, as I said at the beginning, that’s just my opinion.

As a photographer, I want my camera — any camera — to be able to capture the best-looking image straight out of the camera that I can then apply more edits to if I want to. But maybe you don’t want to do that and instead want a vibrant, punchy-looking shot that you can immediately share to social media. If so, maybe the OnePlus will be fine for you.

At the end of the day, deciding which phone to buy will come down to more than just the camera, so make sure to read CNET’s in-depth reviews of all of 2025’s best phones to decide which is the one for you.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 22, #895

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Nov. 22, #895.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle has a fun mix of categories. If you know your unusual foods, you should get the blue group easily enough. If you need help sorting the answers into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Not a lot.

Green group hint: Like Popeye.

Blue group hint: Yum!

Purple group hint: Let’s Make a ____.