Quitbit Lighter Helps Curb Your Smoking Habit

LAS VEGAS—Sin City isn't the first place you think of when you think about kicking a nicotine habit. But the Quitbit lighter definitely caught my eye at the Consumer Electronics Show. It's a smart lighter designed to help you quit smoking. It'll light your cigarettes for you, but it also keeps track of your smoking habits to make it easier to put the pack down for good.

The first thing you should know about the Quitbit is that it's an actual lighter, though it doesn't use an actual flame. Instead, it uses a powerful heating element similar to a car lighter, so there's no need for gas or butane. That's pretty convenient, but you'll need to charge the battery every 100 lights, or roughly once a week.

Physically, the Quitbit looks like something of a cross between a Zippo lighter and the face of Samsung smartwatch. Beyond the actual lighter element, the Quitbit has a built-in display that shows information like the amount of cigarettes you've smoked for the day, your goal amount, and the amount of time since you last puffed. It automatically tracks every time you have a cigarette, and it doesn't record multiple smoking events in a few-minute time window, so it won't count relighting your cigarette as smoking a whole new one. It works as a standalone product, with all of the above information displayed on the Quitbit itself, but you get a much more detailed look by connecting it to an Android or iOS device.

This Lighter Can Help You Quit Smoking

The Quitbit wirelessly syncs your data via Bluetooth, allowing you to view how much you smoke across a graph, which makes it easy to see what parts of the day, week, or month you smoke the most. You can also use the app to customize how the Quitbit works, setting new targets and goals as you go along. And if you don't actually trust yourself to stick to the plan, you can even set limits for how often or when the device can work as lighter. There's a social aspect as well, that allows you to share your progress with others, as well as the Quitbit community.

The US$99 Quitbit is available for preorder and is expected to ship in March. That's a pretty steep price to pay for a lighter, but Quitbit points out that even if you start smoking one cigarette less a day, it will pay for itself in a year. I've used my fair share of activity trackers, and they've definitely made me more conscious about the number of steps I take per day. I can see how this same sort of logic can be applied to smoking, but I'm curious to see how well it works. So for all the smokers out there: Let me know if you think this might help more than the patch or e-cigs in the comments below.