This week Levi x Google’s Jacquard smart trucker jacket is landing in Australia.
While this isn’t the first generation of the clothing line, it’s the first to hit our fine shores.
This is what it does, and how much it will cost in Australia.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/10/google-levis-jacket-jacquard-review/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/kjeo8gkr7hnqyqpfcisp.jpg” title=”The Google Jacket Is Smarter Than Ever (But Still Pretty Dumb)” excerpt=”I had it all planned out. On the subway ride home, I’d been futzing around in the Jacquard app, assigning actions to my Levi’s Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google. A simple double-tap to the wrist cuff as I neared my apartment, and when I walked through the door, I’d strut in to “Touch the Sky” by Kanye West. Stupid, vain, and mildly dorky yes, but I am extra and it’d have been a fun way to announce I was home to my pets and partner.”]
We have a full review from our U.S. team live already, but here are the basics.
These jackets are wearable tech that include a Jacquard dongle that has motion detection. Four different hand gestures do different things. The dongle slips right into the left sleeve of the jackets and thankfully is thankfully than the previous gen version.
Once you’ve paired your jacket up to the Jacquard app (which feels like such an odd sentence to write) you can personally configure three out of the four hand gestures.
For example, I have ‘Brush In’ set to find my phone, ‘Brush out’ set to skipping the next song in my music app of choice and ‘Double Tap’ configured to my phone’s camera.
The fourth hand gesture, ‘Cover’, is hard locked to silencing your phone.
The dongle itself also has the ability to display different LED colours for alerts, which you can also customise, though there are less options.
I have a green light for when an Uber is about to arrive, pink for a call or text notification and blue for when I’ve moved away from my phone (good for if you’ve misplaced it). We have some shots of the app below.
We’re told that the dongle itself has roughly two weeks charge time, and can be juiced up in about forty minutes. And if you need to give the jacket a wash, simply pop the dongle out, wash it in cold water and line dry it.
There are three denim jacket designs – light and dark denim which both come in at $229.95 and the sherpa style for $299.95. They’ll be available in Australia from October 3. We have the latter and will let you know how it goes in the coming weeks.