Jawbone Up review

Back in July, Jawbone did something surprising. The corporate, best known for its Bluetooth headsets, announced it was cooking up a wristband called ” Up ” — a wearable device that will track the wearer’s sleeping, eating and exercise habits. On the time, we didn’t know way more than that, but given the company’s expertise in wearable tech, we assumed it’d a minimum of have a Bluetooth radio, tying it along with all of the other products Jawbone sells.

Because it seems, the wristband doesn’t sync your vitals wirelessly and for better or worse, it doesn’t work quite the best way we thought it can. To apply the wristband, you would need an iDevice — no other platform is supported, and there’s not even a mobile website to which you’ll be able to upload all of your data. On the other hand, it does things other fitness trackers don’t: it monitors when you find yourself in deep or light sleep, in order that it might wake you if you find yourself just dozing. And since it’s waterproof as much as one meter and promises as much as 10 days of battery life, it’s low-maintenance enough for you to wear it daily, which can be secret to meaking some healthy lifestyle changes. So how did Jawbone do, stepping to date outside its comfort zone? And will you concentrate on this over identically priced fitness trackers similar to the hot Fitbit Ultra ? Let’s have a look at.

Design and fit

There is not much to Up, that is an excellent thing considering you’re alleged to wear it day in and outing. The band, available in three sizes, is made from springsteel wrapped in thermoplastic, hyperallogenic rubber. Most significantly, it’s waterproof as much as one meter (3.3 feet), and dries quickly, that is what means that you can wear it continuously for days at a time. Compared, you’d have to remove your Fitbit each time you are taking a bath.

Unlike most wrist candy, the band doesn’t fasten but instead has open ends that curl around your wrist — not unlike a snap bracelet. One end is topped off with a metal piece that you may press each time that you have to let the band know you are going to sleep, getting off the bed or beginning / ending a workout. (There is a vibration motor inside and in addition an LED light that flashes different colors, so you will get various feedback confirming you’re within the right mode.) At the other end, there is a metal cap covering a three.5mm headphone connector, which you’ll be able to want to sync the band along with your iDevice and in addition re-charge via your computer’s USB port (the band comes with a small USB adapter specifically for this purpose).

The wristband is thinnest on the edges, though for the foremost part it’s about as wide as those ubiquitous Livestrong bands. Still, it’s discreet enough that it could pass for a suitable bracelet (a rugged, slightly masculine bracelet, but a bracelet nonetheless). Additionally it is available in seven colors, though if you’ll indulge us for a moment as we dole out some fashion advice, the black goes with more outfits and calls less attention to itself on days that decision for dressier digs. As for fit, Jawbone has a printable ruler for you to use to measure the circumference of your wrist. According to that single measurement, we ended up with a bracelet that fit snugly, but didn’t come with regards to removing our circulation. And that is just fine with us: the very last thing you would like is a bangle sliding down your wrist and hitting the palm rest each time you peck away at your laptop.

Setup and charging

To establish and use the wristband, you will need to download the free, corresponding app from the App Store while you haven’t already. Then, just plug the band into your iDevice’s headphone jack, open the app and follow some onscreen instructions — primarily, entering your name, email address, height, weight and sex. Within a minute or so, then, you have to be up and running.

And that, friends, about describes how you may be using the wristband daily (minus the part where you enter your weight, needless to say). You would need to plug the band into the headphone jack each time you must sync it. In actual fact that Up has a rated battery lifetime of ten days, which means that you can actually spend the simpler a part of per week wearing this thing 24/7 and never syncing it. Still, we quickly fell right into a pattern of syncing our vitals once or more an afternoon, if only because we were curious to work out how well we slept this time.

Similarly, we chose to charge most days, however we did not have to. After 18 hours of use, we were still at 87 percent capacity; after about two days, we were right down to 35 percent. So perhaps Jawbone’s claim of ten days was exaggerated, but you’ll be able to at the very least use this for some days uninterrupted. Ultimately, though, we’re at our least active when we’re sitting in front our PC, so we do not mind going under the radar for a short while and letting a couple of burned calories go unrecorded — although we aren’t running low on power.

Also, we must always let you know that although we didn’t lose either the proprietary USB charger or the cap covering the top of the bracelet, we needed to exit of our way to not. We got into the habit of placing both the cap and dongle in a clean corner of our desk whenever we weren’t using them, but we are able to see where a less meticulous person could lose them inside the first week. That’s bad, because that bracelet becomes lots less comfortable (and more conspicuous) once you remove the metal cap to show the male 3.5mm headphone jack connector. Jawbone is quick to show that although a wireless radio would have eliminated the will for wired syncing, it’s going to have made for a thicker bracelet, and shorter battery life. So on the end of the day we are able to live with the tethered setup, though it’s pretty clumsy.

iOS app

The app organizes your data by day, after which in line with three overarching categories: sleep, activity and food intake. Whilst you launch the app the very first thing you will see may be a bar graph for the present day called the “Me screen,” which features three vertical, color-coded bars arranged side by side, representing the hours you’ve slept, the variety of steps you’ve taken and the way many energizing meals you’ve consumed. On the bottom of the chart, you’ll also see some basic stats, including how long you slept and the way many steps you walked. Even without those numbers, though, you may tell at a look roughly how well you have been doing. As an example, the blue sleep bar would be taller if you could have seven hours of shut-eye other than five. put that every one in context? Swipe that chart to the suitable and you may see yesterday’s graph. You cannot pick an afternoon from a calendar; you simply keep swiping until you reach the day you wish.

With us to this point? Good. By default, Up has certain daily goals in mind — say, seven hours of sleep per night. You’re able to change these to whatever you like; the purpose is, each day’s bar chart will show percentages above each category. So, while you slept five hours and 44 minutes in place of seven, you will see a grade of 82 percent for the day. Exceed that goal and you will see a halo effect across the bar, a subtle but clear reward for a role well done.

Possible dig deeper into those charts, but not much. In case you tap the bar chart, it’ll become an extended-form graph called the Live Feed, you could only view in landscape mode. Here, the bars are smaller and the info is more granular, however the idea is identical. You will see color-coded bars on a horizontal axis, representing the hours within the day. Swipe through it and you will see up-to-the minute stats on what you ate, how that food made you’re feeling, what number steps you took and whether you were awake or in deep or light sleep. Up tosses in a couple of extra pieces of knowledge on the bottom of the screen, including your mileage, calories burned and time spent doing something active. In relation to sleep, that implies seeing a breakdown of the way much time you spent in deep versus light sleep. You can not filter the Live Feed in step with date or the kind of data. And the info itself isn’t a lot more detailed that what you will see at a look at the home screen. It’s in no way materially different than the stats Fitbit collects.

Social feed, challenges and other features

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As well as hosting all this info in pretty charts, the app is home to a handful of alternative features. It’s from here that you’ll be able to take a photograph of your meal or set an alarm to wake you up if you find yourself in light sleep (more on either one of these in exactly a chunk). You may as well set the wristband to buzz as a fashion of reminding you to stand up and move if you have been sitting “too long,” whatever that suggests for you — it may be every fifteen minutes or every hour, counting on how sedentary you’re.

And what would a fitness tool be and not using a little social networking? The service lets you befriend other Up owners, at which point all in their activity — everything from their sleep quality to how what they ate — will appear in an inventory, aptly called the Feed. You may create so-called teams with groups of individuals, and in addition pose challenges to them. In truth, in case you are more private that you may pose challenges to simply yourself in case you are the modest type — e.g., “How much sleep am i able to get this week?”

Activity tracking

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Like Fitbit and other fitness products, Up packs a pedometer, allowing it to gauge your activity levels by tracking the variety of steps you’re taking. (The second one-gen Fitbit Ultra does it one better, though, with an altimeter that monitors what number flights you’ve climbed.) All told, our mileage counts seemed a chunk generous, but in spite of this, we had the identical complaint about Fitbit. As an example, on an afternoon after we didn’t exercise session, it said we walked 4.26 miles. That feels like a stretch for the reason that on that specific day, all we did was walk to the subway (about 880 yards), from the subway in Manhattan to our office and back (another three-quarters of a mile in total), and from an apartment in Brooklyn to a close-by park (one mile, roundtrip). Nonetheless, we do appreciate that after we worked out at the elliptical machine, which requires you to make some pretty sloppy, ill-defined steps, the band did an outstanding-enough job approximating our mileage.

If you find yourself beginning a workout, you could press the tip of the band once to let it know you’re about to exercise. (Likewise, it is advisable to press it again if you are finished.) The assumption is to differentiate between normal moving about and a concerted workout, but given how limited the information selection is, we do not really see the purpose. Whether we call it a workout or not, the band knows what number of steps we’re taking, and in either scenario, it doesn’t account for metrics along with pace or heart rate. The sole time we felt compelled to set the band to workout mode was after we set a private challenge wherein we would have liked to look how much time lets spend exercising in a given week. Otherwise, you will not lose any credit in case you forget to send the band into workout mode, that is actually all too easy to do.

Food diary

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Up claims to trace what you eat, but it surely will be more accurate to assert that you just track what you eat — while you you’ll want to. Whereas the wristband has sensors which can monitor your sleep and activity patterns, the food tracking bit is predicated completely on input from you — specifically, photos you’re taking of your meals using your iDevice. a pair hours once you eat said meal, you will see an alert in your device asking you to rate the meal using one among five emoticons — a spread that comes with options like stuffed, sleepy and OK. The assumption isn’t to trace your calories or to shame you into eating healthier, but to trace the way you feel once you eat certain foods, after which, through the years, offer you credit for eating meals it’s learned are energizing. (By this metric, then, you are able to game the system in order that it thinks Big Macs are nutritious.)

We see a couple of problems here. One, even after wearing the band for several weeks, we frequently forgot to photograph our food until we had two bites of food left. Secondly, even if we did remember, we were hesitant to be That Guy within the restaurant, snapping pics of our meal with a mobile phone. It’s one piece of the Up regimen that just doesn’t feel natural, that’s ironic, because the bracelet itself is designed to blend in and never call attention to itself as you keep on together with your daily routine.

Most significantly, though, this cutesy food diary ultimately couldn’t persuade us to put off the pizza, cookies and bagels, although they invariably leave us feeling sleepy, unsatisfied and a tad sheepish for eating like a five year-old. Having used both Up and Fitbit, we found it more useful to work out a listing of our daily caloric intake against the calories we were estimated to have burned that day. Now it’s true, Fitbit’s food tracking system is sorely wanting a makeover: at once, it requires you to make a choice your meal from a listing, that’s mostly populated with items from specific cookbooks and restaurant chains. Still, as annoying because it is to pretend your bagel and cream cheese came from Friendly’s, it still supplies some approximation of ways much you’re consuming. That’s all we wish, really. We do not need photographic evidence of that cheeseburger that’s only going to pad our behinds.

Sleep analysis

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Like Fitbit, Up uses sensors to trace your sleeping patterns, though Jawbone goes a step further, recording how much time you’ve spent in deep versus light sleep. Which brings us to 1 of the band’s marquee features: it doubles as an alarm, sending vibrations through your wrist when it is time to start the day. Setting this up throughout the app is easy enough: just select the time in addition to the times of the week you would like it to head off (e.g., Monday through Friday). Once you are prepared to retire, send the band into sleep mode by hold down the sting of the band until it vibrates and a blue LED light flashes. If you get off the bed within the morning, hold the tip of the band again until it vibrates and flashes green.

But here’s the twist: Up wakes you within half an hour of your alarm, reckoning on for those who happen to be sleeping lightly (and therefore easier to awaken). Indeed, there has been one morning after we were already sleeping fitfully, and the band began vibrating half-hour before we wanted to get off the bed. And though we were none too cheerful about this 6am interruption, we need to admit we weren’t terribly groggy either. On all counts, then, this selection works as advertised, though just wait until it wake you up 20 minutes late and you’ve got to describe to the boss that you simply were tardy because your bracelet has a mind of its own.

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The difficulty is, whilst you don’t urgently must stand up, it is all too tempting to snatch your mobile phone, set a brand new alarm and doze for an additional half-hour. What’s more, those vibrations are fairly easy to disregard, because the wristband falls silent after a minute or so. It might be helpful if the band could use its step counter to detect if you end up off the bed, after which turn off the vibrating motor — almost like how your bedside alarm won’t shut up until you hit dismiss (or not less than snooze). Ultimately that day, we did what a lot of you’ll have done: we nodded off for one more half hour. Because it happens, though, we went directly to have the type of spazzy morning where we mistook body wash for shampoo, so perhaps Jawbone was directly to something by waking us when it did.

As well as tracking your sleep states, the wristband collects data on how long you took to doze off and the way many hours you slept in total — data that it uses to spit out an overall sleep quality rating. Fitbit does this too, even though it actually tells you ways long it took you to go to sleep; Up’s iOS app shows a slim bar at first of your sleep graph, illustrating how long you were awake, but that length of time isn’t actually visible. Maybe Jawbone will throw that into version 2.0. Not a deal-breaker whatsoever, though we’re naturally excited about such things.

On the other hand, relating to sleep tracking, Up’s data is more accurate and in addition, thorough. Fitbit, for example, will inform you what number of times you awoke in the course of the night, but that tally seems to be according to activity detected by the accelerometer, this means that possible, in theory, fool Fitbit into thinking you’re asleep when really you’re watching the ceiling, worrying in regards to the day ahead.

Reports of breakage

Soon once we began our testing, we started hearing grumbling from early adopters, who reported their wristbands had suddenly and mysteriously stopped working properly (hit the links on the bottom of this post for examples). Sure enough, after under two weeks with ours, the vibration motor became unresponsive, making it impossible to use that smart alarm feature. (Fortunately, the device continued to gather data, so although the band didn’t vibrate after we put it into sleep tracking mode, it still came back the following morning with stats on how much shut-eye we’d gotten.)

Jawbone sent us a brand new band, and was issuing free replacements to everyone who’s reported issues with their devices. After we received it, all we needed to do was plug it into our iPhone and conform to sync our existing account with this new band. A minimum of that part’s painless. Still, within 24 hours we noticed the vibration motor had over again looked as if it would stop working. This time, it didn’t register any data.

This apparent pattern is troubling for a pair reasons. For one, Jawbone owners was reporting a disturbing range of issues, including difficulty syncing with iOS and sharply depleted battery capacity. Travis Bogard, vice chairman of product management and strategy, said he suspects these myriad problems might all stem from the battery not being charged enough. In spite of this, he admits the company’s engineers haven’t yet diagnosed the underlying problem. Which brings us to our second concern: until Jawbone is ready to explain why its devices are malfunctioning, it can’t deliver any style of long-term fix. Offering replacement devices makes for smart customer support, however it sadly won’t do much good if these secondary (and even tertiary) devices eventually brick too.

Wrap-up

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It is a shame the Up wristband is breaking all over, because it’s otherwise a promising idea for a gadget. Jawbone’s on track with the hardware: the band is comfortable, waterproof and doesn’t call much attention to itself. It may tell if you end up sleeping deeply, rather than lightly dozing — something competing fitness trackers can’t do. Sure, we want the Up band charged wirelessly, but we appreciate that by nixing a Bluetooth radio, the corporate was ready to make the battery life as impressive because it is. All told, it is the style of device we are able to easily see ourselves wearing day in and time out (and we must always know: we tested this for weeks).

Where Up really needs work is in its app: as slick because it is, it feels more shallow than Fitbit’s website, and it is not quite as fun to take advantage of either. It will even be nice to peer Up expand beyond iOS to Android and other platforms. The excellent news, though, is this is exactly this sort of thing Jawbone can keep engaged on, even now that the Up has begun shipping. The corporate says it is going to release an app for Android. And it will most definitely improve the present app in order that early and later adopters alike can have the benefit of additional features.

But all which means little when the device routinely malfunctions. Though the corporate says a minority of users have reported breakage, it’s telling that either one of the units we tested during the last month have bricked — one among them within 24 hours. Worse, Jawbone hasn’t yet diagnosed the basis explanation for these problems, a set of maladies that run the gamut from a rapidly draining battery to a silent vibration motor. We still feel that the Up has promise, but until its engineers iron out the kinks, we won’t in good faith recommend it.

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This post is tagged: bluetooth headsets, exercise habits, healthy lifestyle, lifestyle changes, low maintenance, wearable device