Under Armour says it plans to rollout a firmware update to the Band within the next 90 days that will include better calibration, but why it’s not shipping with this is anyone’s guess. My regular 3-mile routes around the neighborhood would be measured as 3.5 miles on the Band. Outdoor runs were also logged inaccurately. There were days when my iPhone’s motion sensor counted more than 10,000 steps, and yet the UA Band would record somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 steps. Unlike the HTC Grip, which never made it to market, the UA Band doesn’t have GPS, and relies only an accelerometer to estimate distances traveled. Once you wirelessly pair the heart rate strap with the UA Record app, you can then see your heart rate in that app and on the UA Band during fitness sessions, assuming all three products are connecting and functioning properly.īut there’s also the not-so-minor issue of accuracy with the UA Band. HealthBox comes with a chest-based heart rate strap instead ($80 when sold separately). I give Under Armour and HTC some credit for not claiming to track heart rate accurately from the wrist during workouts. Generally speaking, the UA Band edges just past basic functionality for a wrist-based activity tracker. It has optical heart rate sensors, though they’re meant to record your resting heart rate, not your active heart rate. It charges fast - super fast, in less than 30 minutes - and it can last for more than five days on a single charge. The heart rate sensors track resting heart rate, not active heart rate The wristband auto tracks sleep, so you don’t have to remember to put it into any kind of sleep mode. It vibrates on your wrist when you've reached 85 percent and 95 percent (so close!) of your daily activity goal. Remember how the Nike FuelBand would sometimes grab a chunk of your wrist flesh in its clasp? Yeah, this doesn’t do that. The top portion of it is unbending, but the strap is flexible. I wore the UA Band on and off during the last two weeks of December, and consistently over the past two weeks. You can customize these fitness-specific icons in the UA Record app, which is where the band syncs its data to. This includes running, cycling, weight lifting, and walking, among other exercises. The top of the UA Band is touch-sensitive, which is how you swipe through the time, your daily activity levels, sleep, heart rate, and various fitness functions. Its underside is lined with dimpled red plastic, though you don’t see this when you’re wearing it. It’s a smooth, curved, black wristband with a snap-in railroad strap and a single physical button. (You can get a Fitbit Charge HR for $150.) Design wise, it calls to mind the Nike+ FuelBand, with a couple more features. This sells as part of the $400 HealthBox, or by itself for a steep $180. First, there’s the activity-tracking wristband, the UA Band. There are definitely still some kinks to be worked out in the data-sharing between these apps, but I’ll keep using some of them even if I don’t keep using UA and HTC’s hardware. So, if you use MapMyRun and wear the connected sneakers during a run, then that data will eventually show up in the main UA Record app as your activity for the day, and it will also show up as calories burned in the MyFitnessPal food logging app, and so on. The idea is that, eventually, they’ll all share data between one another. ![]() If you buy the HealthBox, you'll get a year-long premium subscription to some of these apps. And the company now has a whole suite of health and fitness mobile apps for iOS and Android - MapMyRun, MyFitnessPal, Endomondo, and UA Record - that offer comprehensive fitness tracking and food logging features. Under Armour is putting out a new pair of connected sneakers, the Speedform Gemini 2, which sounds vaguely like a rocket ship, but are actually comfortable sneakers. It’s the stuff that exists outside of the box, like sneakers (the most wearable of wearables?). The valuable part of Under Armour’s new stuff, for me, hasn’t been the hardware in the HealthBox.
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