The coolest Technology of 2017

vinci Smart Hearable

Headphones generally aren’t the most interesting gizmos in the room, but Vinci Smart Hearable wants to change that. The Indiegogo-backed cans pack a touchscreen computer running a full-blown operating system, including apps like Spotify and SoundCloud. Amazon’s Alexa assistant is built in — you can ask the Vinci to play a song, answer an incoming call, or read a text message with a simple voice command. An integrated heart rate monitor, meanwhile, adjusts the tempo of your tunes on the fly.

There’s more to the Vinci than meets the eye. A proximity sensor automatically pauses the music when you take the headphones off, and a SIM card slot lets you stream music without Wi-Fi. There’s 16GB of storage for apps, music, and more. And a special mode taps the Vinci’s twin microphones to create binaural 3D audio recordings.

The $100 Vinci is nothing if not ambitious, but there’s work to be done — in our brief time with the headphones, we couldn’t get Alexa to work properly. Company reps assure us, though, that the software is a work in progress.