As smartphones become smarter, new app-powered devices are now talking to them. And one just released new iPhone gizmo is a wristband that is aimed at dieters, fitness buffs and those who want to live healthier lives.
The Jawbone UP is a combination wrist bracelet and an iPhone app that does a bunch of different things.
It tracks your daily activity, counting the steps you take, tracking your walks or runs via GPS and, on a schedule you set. And it helps keep you moving during the workday, too, vibrating on your arm if you’re too sedentary. For example, I have mine set to give me a reminder every 15 minutes when I’m at the desk working on the computer to get up and walk around a bit.
This sounds silly but getting up and moving a bit, maybe doing a few stretches, really seems to help. Sometimes the little vibration is annoying, coming right when you are in the middle of a thought at the keyboard or engrossed in a report. But after several days of using it, I’ve come to welcome the reminder.
Again, you can set it for however many minutes you want.
The GPS feature is neat. When you activate it, it opens up iTunes on the iPhone and lets you pick music to accompany the workout.
For walking, the UP is a step-counter. You can set a goal… anything under 5,000 steps a day is considered by experts sedentary. From 5,000 to 12,000 steps is considered active. Over 12,000 is for serious fitness freaks.
For the record, you can figure 2,000 steps to a mile.
The UP says it tracks workouts. That’s not entirely true. If you jog and run, yeah, it does. If you cycle or do spinning classes or use a Stairmaster or elliptical like I do, it does not. Because you wear it on your wrist, the motion detector detects no movement.
The UP also tracks your sleep patterns and then, again based on your schedule, vibrates gently to wake you up. It’s a silent and personal alarm clock that doesn’t disturb your sleep partner.
The feature claims to wake you at the optimum time in your sleep pattern within a half hour of the time you set. They didn’t reveal how it “knows” the optimum time, though they say its motion activated. In my case, it has woken me early – from 10 to 5 minutes ahead of the time I entered.
It does track your sleep time, again letting you set a goal and then it tries to rate the quality of your sleep.
UP also makes big claims that it tracks your meals. You use the iPhone to snap a picture of each meal, then you note how you feel after each meal. Over time, you can use your responses to help discover which foods make you feel your best. To me, this is the lamest feature. There’s no place to get a report of nutrition or calories, so you can then set and keep a useful food diary. They seriously need to add that with an update.
You wear the bracelet 24 x 7. It syncs by a plug to the iPhone’s earphone jack and charges by USB cable on your computer, with a single charge lasting three or four days.
The iPhone app is free. The bracelet costs $99.
But is it worth it?
I’ve got the $99 invested and I have to say that right now, I wouldn’t recommend it. The iPhone app is erratic. It’s very hard to get from screen to screen, or even out of a screen and back where you were. That, too, can be fixed by an update. I hope.
The food tracking is laughable. I don’t need a picture of my meal. I need to get nutritional values.
And the Jawbone people here totally missed the boat on social networking. It doesn’t interface with Twitter, Facebook or FourSquare.
So, for now, I’m stuck with a $99 bracelet.
The most useful features are the step counter, the alarm clock and the activity reminder.
But, until the update, it’s not worth $99.
Here’s my video review:
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