You know, everybody struggles with something, and maybe we need to be a bit kinder to ourselves. One of those ways is to see ourselves transformed, and this groovy new smart mirror called HiMirror is a really inventive way to see yourself in a different light (literally; there are a half-dozen different light settings on the device).
Smart mirrors represent a hot trend in smart home technology, and they offer a wide variety of applications. Some will overlay makeup on your virtual face — I personally want to see what I look like as Ziggy Stardust — while other full-body mirrors will take your measurements and let you see what mail-ordered clothes might look like on your particular physique.
Now a Taiwan-based global manufacturing conglomerate, the New Kinpo Group, is rolling out a new version of a smart home mirror we’ve covered before that’s designed to provide comprehensive skin-care analysis over time and offer personalized product recommendations. There are a couple of different versions, but it’s generally called the HiMirror Slide. It comes in two models, both loaded with technology that has barely hit the market and that leaves your old bathroom mirror in the dust.
Basically, it’s a portable-ish mirror with LED lights that can provide six ambient lighting settings, enabling you to see what your gorgeous face looks like in a bright office, the shopping mall or supermarket, a restaurant, at sunset, outdoors during sunny days, or just in the room you’re in at the time. However, its most prominent feature is that it will identify changes in your skin over time, including aspects like red spots, pores, and wrinkles, assigning each face a numerical score. We also hear that its manners are impeccable. Feedback might be delivered as, “Oh, dear, it seems skin condition has slipped back a bit,” but is generally followed by encouragement and suggestions for improvement.
The basic version is the HiMirror Slide, priced around $120, which features an eight-inch panel, the ability to support four different users, and store about 2,000 photos. The more hardcore beauty box is the company’s premium product, the HiMirror Mini Premium X, priced around $270, and including all the features of the basic model but also a rotatable panel that enables users to turn the mirror 180 degrees for optimal viewing angles. The upgraded gizmo also comes with a whole bunch more bells and whistles including a wireless charging pad, 64 gigs of storage space, and the ability to store thousands more photos than the basic brand.
However, both versions offer a lot more features beyond the basics of a smart mirror. These HiMirror products are compatible with Amazon Alexa, which means owners with a Prime account can operate a lot of its functions, features, measurements and analyses via voice-only control. Smartly, the designers also designed the device to double as a limited entertainment center featuring Spotify, Pandora, Instagram, Facebook and more, enabling users to connect with friends, stream music and video, or check the weather while they’re getting their face on for the day.
Nothing stands alone these days, so the New Kinpo Group also has a couple of accessories including a smart body scale ($100) that can do the full-body smart mirror trick of providing a 360-degree personal analysis, a fitness tracker, a body index, as well as something called HiSkin ($50) which is handheld, and measures your skin’s pigmentation and hydration.
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