- [Michael] What if you could mix wearable tech
with spy gear and a dash of acoustic time travel?
Well, you can't, yet.
But, this little gadget still has
some great ideas behind it.
I'm Michael Fisher and this is Kapture,
the wearable that's always listening.
The idea behind Kapture is simple.
It sits on your wrist and records.
If the green light is blinking, it's on,
recording every moment with
an omni-directional microphone that picks up
anything within about a five foot radius.
Before you start fretting about our
modern surveillance state dystopia,
understand that this doesn't mean you
finish each day with 12 hours of raw audio.
In fact, Kapture's always recording over itself.
The longest it keeps audio in storage
is 60 seconds before it's overwritten.
To save those 60 seconds, you double tap.
Kapture connects with your
iPhone or Andriod via Bluetooth,
transfers the audio file to its companion app,
and bingo, you've just saved the last minute of sound.
If your phone isn't nearby,
Kapture can store up to 25 clips locally to transfer later.
For me, most everything good
about Kapture is in the concept.
The idea of preserving acoustic moments in time
is alluring if you like taking audio notes at lectures,
or you have a lot of funny friends,
or I imagine if you have a toddler
that's just learning to talk.
As a kid who watched Home Alone two way too many times,
I used to take a Yak Bak or a Talkboy
to school to record portions of my day.
Kapture is the modern and much smarter
equivalent of those early toys.
Its app also gives you the ability to
edit, enhance and share your clips
with others if you want.
Or, you can use it to turn the Kapture
into a more conventional Bluetooth microphone.
If that still sounds creepy,
keep in mind that it's pretty tough
to stealthily spy on people with a Kapture.
For one thing, it's a pretty obvious device
especially in its more flamboyant colors.
For another, you need to really whack it to save a clip.
So hard that it's basically impossible
to be discrete about it.
There are legal considerations too.
Some states, like Massachusetts,
make it a crime to record conversations unless
both parties have given consent, not just one.
All you budding secret agents out there,
keep that in mind.
For all the simple genius of the concept,
Kapture falls short on user experience.
First off, this is a gadget that
talks to you via LED flashes and wrist vibrations,
and that interface takes a lot of getting used to.
Second, the 15 hour battery life
means you'll be charging it every night.
The charger is miserable.
Despite its magnets,
it almost never makes a firm connection,
so you have to situate it just right.
On top of this,
Kapture itself is pretty chintzy.
I've been using it for about a month,
and neither the rubber wrist band
nor the soft plastic grill are aging well.
The wrist band also has an annoying habit
of partially popping off if I accidentally
knock my wrist against a door frame,
which I do all the time.
While it is water resistant, which I like,
the overall package otherwise just screams cheap.
The thing is, Kapture isn't cheap
even at its newly discounted price.
That being said, I really want it
to do well enough to justify a sequel.
A Kapture two with better build quality,
a charger that works right,
and an accelerometer that doesn't
make you beat the hell out of it,
that would absolutely be worth a Benjamin.
Because we all have those moments
we only realize are precious in retrospect,
and Kapture is the only thing I've ever seen
that let's us go back and save them,
even if only in an acoustic sense.
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