Wear OS variometer
Hear the air.
AIR³ Vario Watch turns your smartwatch into an instant acoustic variometer for paragliding and hang gliding. It reacts the moment you enter lift, and it finds the weak thermals other varios talk you out of. No extra instrument, no phone needed in the air — just your wrist.
A vario you listen to, not one you look at
In flight your eyes belong outside — on your wing, on other pilots, on the ground. That is why a variometer speaks. The watch reads its barometric pressure sensor many times per second and turns your vertical speed into a tone you can read without ever glancing down.
Climbing, the tone is high and broken into quick beeps — the stronger the climb, the higher the pitch and the faster the rhythm. Sinking, it drops into a long, low growl. Around zero it goes quiet and unhurried. After a few flights you stop hearing beeps and start hearing air.
Two things a barometer alone cannot do
A pressure sensor is honest but slow: it can only report a climb once you have already gained height. AIR³ Vario Watch adds two layers on top of it — one that reacts sooner, one that hears weaker air.
Instant Lift
The kick, not the consequence
Entering a thermal, you feel the surge in your harness before you have gained a single metre. A barometric vario cannot know about it yet — there is no pressure change to measure.
Instant Lift uses the watch’s accelerometer and gyroscope instead. It continuously computes true vertical acceleration, separating the movement of the air from your own turning and wing movement, and sounds the moment lift begins. You hear the entry as it happens, not a second and a half later — which is exactly the moment you need to decide whether to turn.
Weak Lift
Find the small thermals
Most of the day’s usable lift never registers as a climb. It is air that is merely sinking less than the air beside it — the fringe of a thermal, the edge of a convergence, the reason one glide ends higher than another. A conventional vario stays silent through all of it.
Weak Lift gives that band its own voice, with its own threshold, resolution and averaging. On weak days, or low over a valley floor, it is often the difference between working a small thermal and walking back to the car.
What it does
Acoustic variometer
Pitch and rhythm follow your vertical speed, with climb and sink thresholds you set yourself.
Starts and stops by itself
The vario arms itself when you launch — detected by ground speed or by altitude change — and stops once you are down.
Everything on your wrist
Vertical speed, altitude, ground speed, heading and GPS accuracy — visible at a glance, and still on screen when the display dims.
Tuned from your phone
A companion app sets every threshold, the altitude reference and the units. Configure once, then leave the phone behind.
Leave your phone behind
The watch is the instrument. Sensors, sound, GPS and automatic detection all run on the watch alone — with the screen off, your wrist down, and the phone nowhere near you. There is no Bluetooth link to lose in flight, because there is nothing being sent.
The phone app exists for one job: changing settings. Every value you set is stored permanently on the watch, so it survives closing the app, restarting the watch and flying without a phone. Configure it once at home, then fly with an empty pocket — or with your phone off entirely, which is one less thing draining a battery you may want at the landing field.
Built for the way you actually fly
Automatic landing detection is deliberately hard to fool. Losing GPS reception makes a watch report zero speed, which looks exactly like standing in a field. AIR³ Vario Watch tracks how confident the GPS is in each reading and refuses to treat an unreliable one as proof you have landed — so a dropout under your wing will not silence the vario mid-flight.
Free and subscription
Free
Altitude, ground speed and heading
GPS status and accuracy
Sound test and altitude chart
All settings in the phone app
Annual subscription
The acoustic variometer
Automatic takeoff and landing
Always-on display in flight
Getting started
1. Install AIR³ Vario Watch from Google Play — one listing installs both the watch app and the phone app.
2. Open the phone app, subscribe, and set your thresholds and units. Everything is sent to the watch as you change it.
3. Open the app on the watch before launch and let the GPS settle. From there it starts on its own.
What you need
A Wear OS smartwatch with a barometric pressure sensor — Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or later is a good reference. A barometer is what makes a variometer responsive; without one the app falls back to GPS altitude, which is far too slow to fly by. An Android phone paired with the watch is needed to configure the app and to subscribe.
Ready to fly with it?
Free to install and free to try. The full manual covers every screen and every setting.
AIR³ Vario Watch is an aid, not a certified flight instrument. Do not rely on it as your only source of altitude or vertical speed information, and always fly within your training and local regulations.