Friday 17 April 2015

Microsoft Band

The Microsoft Band falls short of fitness tracker perfection, but there's still much to like

Microsoft has kept the UK waiting impatiently for its take on the fitness tracker – the Microsoft Band made its debut in the US last year. But if, like us, you've been eagerly anticipating its arrival on UK shores, then your wait may have been worthwhile. The Band is one of the most fully featured activity trackers yet.

Truth is, one of the most common frustrations we’ve had with fitness trackers boils down to one simple moan: they just don’t do enough. Microsoft has attempted to change all that with the Band, cramming in almost every possible sensor that a fitness fanatic, or a keen beginner, could possibly ask for.



There’s an optical heart-rate sensor, which is capable of continuously tracking your heart rate 24 hours a day, and it’s also a bit of a coup that the Band has built-in GPS; other devices in this sector tend to rely on a smartphone for their GPS-tracking functions.

And it doesn’t stop there: Microsoft has also packed in a 3-axis accelerometer, a gyrometer, and an array of sensors that measure ambient light, skin temperature, UV light and galvanic skin response. There’s also a capacitive sensor, so the Band even knows when you’re wearing it.

The data pulled in by this fleet of sensors is what allows the Microsoft Band to track every facet of your daily activities: how many steps you take, how many calories you burn and your heart rate, as well as analysing the duration and quality of your sleep. Factor in the ability to display emails, calendar notifications, text messages, Twitter and Facebook updates on your wrist, as well as act as your own personal trainer, and the Microsoft Band is as multitalented as fitness trackers come.

For all its many talents, the design of the Microsoft Band is a curious mixture of the functional and the downright ugly. Finished all in matte black, with a glossy, rectangular 1.3in display in the middle of the strap, the Band is a plain, utilitarian-looking device – imagine a futuristic wristborne ASBO tag and you’re halfway there.

The Band fastens to your wrist in one of two positions: you can mount the display on the inside or outside of your wrist. In either orientation, a plastic latch locks the strap in place, and as it’s necessary to squeeze two buttons on each side of the latch to release it, it’s borderline impossible to release by mistake.

Microsoft offers the Band in small, medium and large sizes, but adjusting it to your wrist is simple; the ratchet mechanism clicks tighter notch by notch once it’s locked in place.

The 1.3in colour touchscreen is a touch on the small side, but it has an ample 106 x 320-pixel resolution, so onscreen text and icons are well defined, and it’s bright enough to remain legible on sunnier days. The presence of a light sensor, meanwhile, means that there’s no need to fiddle with the screen brightness -- unless you want to, of course.

Microsoft Band review: interface and handset compatibility

Thanks to an ARM Cortex-M4 processor beavering away behind the scenes, the Band’s interface feels pretty smooth and slick.

It’s easy to use too. Tap the power button and the homescreen displays the time and a secondary statistic alongside – tapping the action button cycles between steps taken, calories used, your current heart rate and the date, so you can quickly check your progress at a glance.

Swipe right from the homescreen and three little icons display the battery and Bluetooth status, and whether the 24-hour heart-rate tracking is enabled. Swipe left, and there’s a sideways-scrolling list of tiles that provide access to all the various “apps”.

There are dedicated tiles for tracking runs, bike rides or workouts, as well as tiles for checking received text messages, calendar alerts, missed phone calls, and Facebook and Twitter alerts. Pressing the tile activates the app, while a physical action button next to the power button starts and stops the various tracking features, or engages the reading mode in notification apps, which ticks through messages and emails one word at a time for easier legibility.

Microsoft Band review: device compatibility and Cortana

When it comes to device compatibility, Microsoft has it nailed: the Band has support for Android 4.3, Windows Phone 8.1 and iOS 7.1 or newer. Install the Microsoft Health app on your phone, pair the Band via Bluetooth, and uploading all your step, exercise and sleep data is as simple as firing up the app and allowing the Band to sync the data across. 

Not surprisingly, only Windows Phone 8.1 devices with Update 1 installed get to take advantage of the Band’s Cortana support. But hook up a compatible handset and you can take advantage of the Band’s built-in microphone to take voice notes, create reminders, set alarms or ask Cortana basic questions. Ask anything too complex, though, and the Band will tell you to reach for your phone.



Another nifty feature restricted to Windows Phone devices is the virtual keyboard: this places a tiny Qwerty keyboard onscreen and lets you tap out replies to text messages directly on the Band itself. Swiping left lets you switch between the different keyboard panels, while swiping right lets you check what you’ve already written. Make a mistake, and tapping the word provides three autocorrect options, or you can delete or insert another word. We’re not convinced that it’s any easier than just whipping your phone out and typing a message, but it is slightly more discreet.

Microsoft Band review: Microsoft Health app and third-party applications



The Microsoft Health app is the hub that gathers all the data from the Band – it’s here that you can get the lowdown on your workouts, sleep quality and all the other data the Band has captured. It’s possible to customise which tiles are displayed in the app or on the Band itself. You can remove the tiles you don’t want or need, as well as customise the data displayed during exercise, such as distance covered, pace, heart rate and so on.

It’s incredibly simple to use, with recent activities summarised across a stack of rectangular tiles, and tapping on each lets you dip into each discipline in more detail. This makes it easy to analyse weekly step or calorie-intake trends, check your heart rate and speed over the course of each workout, and get an overview of your recent activities.



It’s also from within the Microsoft Health app that you can set your step and calorie goals as your fitness improves, or download the various workouts and workout plans to your Band. Regardless of whether you’re an experienced runner looking to train for a half-marathon, or a couch potato looking to plod to 5K, there are workout plans that you can download to the Band to get you on your way. These tell you when to exercise and how long for, and provide weekly schedules for you to follow. For people looking to get fit, and who can’t be bothered to find and follow their own training schedule, it’s a great feature.

Microsoft Band review: testing the Band

Beginners will doubtless appreciate the sheer simplicity of the Microsoft Health app, but advanced users may not be so enamoured. For example, while it’s possible to connect to third-party apps such as RunKeeper or MapMyRide, big names such as Strava are conspicuously absent.

Although we’d hoped to circumvent that limitation by exporting the saved GPS and heart-rate data to Strava via the RunKeeper app, the Microsoft Health app uploads only a summary of your exercise to RunKeeper, rather than the complete set of captured data. If you want to review your workouts, you’re stuck with the basic Microsoft Health app, and there’s no recourse to export all the data in popular file formats such as GPX - at least not directly from Microsoft Health, that is.

All is not lost, however. One of our commenters (thanks Eric!) brought attention to the existence of third-party apps, such as Unband, which add the ability to install custom wallpapers and, most excitingly of all, export the captured data in GPX format. Once our Band has returned from its loan to one of our sister titles, we'll update this review with our impressions of how well those GPX files work with Strava; we suspect the lack of features such as auto-pause may throw up other issues, but we're cautiously optimistic.   



There are other niggles, though, primary of which is the accuracy of the heart-rate monitor. This isn’t peculiar to Microsoft – we’ve noted that optical heart-rate sensors aren’t as accurate as chest straps such as the wireless ANT+ ones we use on a regular basis – but it can be frustrating when you’re relying on the Band as your sole source of heart-rate data.

The main issue we experienced was a noticeable lag where the Band took time to register spikes in our heart rate, and sometimes the measured heart rate was clearly far too low for the perceived exertion – for instance, on several occasions, sprinting flat out up one of our local hill climbs saw our heart rate plateau at 150bpm, a figure that, given our lung-bursting efforts, was simply way too low.

This inconsistency also presents other problems: should you want to maintain an exertion level based on pre-calculated heart-rate zones, the combination of unreliable readings and a small display make the Band a frustrating workout companion.

Microsoft Band review: comfort and usability

Unlike some of its peers, it’s tough to forget you’re wearing the Band. The lack of a curved screen and the bulges in the middle of each strap (which we assume conceal the Band’s batteries) mean that the Band is far bulkier than other fitness trackers we’ve used. Where other models, such as the Sony SmartBand Talk or Samsung Gear Fit, slip neatly under a shirt cuff, the Microsoft Band is far too big to do so.



And while it’s mostly comfortable in everyday use, we often found it necessary to readjust the strap during heavier workouts and extended runs or bike rides: what starts as a comfortable, snug fit soon becomes overly tight once the blood starts pumping in earnest. We’d much prefer a wider strap to help spread the pressure over a wider surface area – other sports watches we’ve tested are much more comfortable as a result.

There are some other basic design issues, too. Unlike Samsung’s Gear Fit, for instance, there’s no option to switch the display to a vertical orientation. This makes it necessary to twist your arm around rather awkwardly to read onscreen messages, or to glimpse at exercise-related data such as your current running pace or heart rate.

The small size of the display doesn’t help here, either: it’s difficult to read while running, and borderline impossible to read safely while cycling. Trying to keep an eye on your heart rate while rattling along on a club run at 20mph, inches from the wheel in front, is likely to result in a nasty pile-up. If you’re thinking that the Band will replace a dedicated exercise watch with a larger, square LCD display, or a handlebar-mounted cycle computer, then you may be disappointed.

Another disappointment is the lack of waterproofing: the Band is only splash- and sweat-resistant. We got thoroughly soaked on one of our morning club rides and, while the Band survived the ordeal (although it inexplicably ran out of battery power after about 60km), the heart-rate sensor stopped working for the duration of the downpour – no matter how tight we cinched the Band, the combination of sweat and water running down our arm left the optical sensor unable to lock onto our heart rate.  

 

Microsoft Band review: battery life

After spending almost a fortnight with the Microsoft Band, battery life has been a relatively strong point. It certainly helps that it only takes around 35 to 40 minutes to top up the Band’s battery to 80%, and it takes around an hour and half to charge completely. That done, we never got less than 24 hours out of the Band.

Indeed, while we fully expected GPS tracking to suck the Band’s battery dry in no time at all, the Band often defied our expectations: over 24 hours, with the display set to time out rather than constantly display the time, we recorded more than four hours of GPS-tracked cycle rides, received notifications all day and used the sleep tracking, and we only got a low-battery notification just before 10am on the second day. Turn off GPS tracking, and Microsoft’s claimed battery life of 48 hours will be right on the money.



The only black mark by the Band’s name came during the downpour we mentioned earlier. After charging the Band completely the previous afternoon, it only survived one night of sleep tracking and 60km of a sodden GPS-tracked cycle ride before running out of juice. Our suspicion is that the terrible weather may have been making the Band work harder than usual to struggle to maintain a GPS lock, but it’s impossible to say for sure.

Microsoft Band review: verdict

We had huge hopes for the Microsoft Band. With every sensor under the sun packed in for a quite reasonable £170, we were ready and poised to consign our other GPS computers and exercise devices to the scrapheap. The reality, however, is a device that has huge potential, much of which – at least for our particular needs – falls frustratingly short of the mark.

The design needs work, clearly, both in terms of long-term comfort and the display legibility; it simply doesn’t provide the at-a-glance information that we’ve become accustomed to getting from dedicated running watches and cycle computers.

There is hope for the Band, however: with third-party applications such as Unband delivering the features which Microsoft omitted, such as GPX export, there is every possibility for the Band to develop into a competent fitness tracker. And as we have a Band on long-term review, we'll be updating this review with our experiences and impressions as time goes on.



Ultimately, if you’re willing to both forgive and work around its limitations, then the Microsoft Band has plenty to offer. We loved the guided workouts and workout plans – for the more reluctant athlete, this may deliver just the push required to get out there and get fit – and the simplicity of the Band’s interface and Microsoft Health app are equally appealing.

However, Microsoft needs to deliver some much-needed tweaks if it’s to ace the fitness-tracker formula. The Microsoft Band is good, but it could be so much better.

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