Have you ever looked at the countless motivational fitness adverts and pictures online or on TV and wondered if it would be worth giving it a shot? Well for those who answered yes, we have the perfect device to get you started. The fitness market has evolved from your standard Polar watch and smartphone app to a dedicated device, designed to give you a detailed breakdown of your fitness activity. This brings us to Jawbone, a wearable tech company who has been on the forefront of wearable fitness tech and style.
The Jawbone UP Move is the first of the Jawbone wearable device family sold at a reasonable price from about R600. In the box you get a rubber clip and strap (that would house the UP Move tracker), a battery and key. The battery will last 6 months and the device is pretty easy to assemble, with videos available on the Jawbone site to to show you how. You then download the companion, sign up for a Jawbone account to input your details and goals. Once the App and the device are linked (there are videos for that too) you can begin walking.
Design and Comfort
The UP Move tracker, when housed in either the strap or clip, is held firmly putting your mind at ease about losing this small tracker. For this review I wore the UP Move watch strap as I found the watch to be more practical to tracking both my sleep and activity.
The strap is a standard rubber that secures easily with the pin and feels like a watch, which is a good thing for a device you‘ll wear 24/7. It is quite a stylish device and noticeably different from a watch as I would receive the odd question of “œwhat is that you‘re wearing?“. The clip is functional but I would recommend the strap for an all-round tracker use.
Battery Life
The battery on the UP Move uses a non-rechargeable coin-cell battery, which will last between 4 to 6 months. Not having to charge the UP Move on a weekly basis is great. Your life continues and the fear of your device not being charged and missing that charge to record today’s workout and puts your mind at ease. You can buy a pack of 5 of these batteries for R31, making it an affordable replacement.
Activity and Sleep
The UP Move tracker uses an accelerometer to track your fitness activity and sleep. Designed to calculate steps and use the information you‘ve logged on your account, like age, height and weight, it then uses this information to calculate the amount of calories you are burning based on this.
The UP Move tracks your calories burnt, steps taken, time active, the time spent being idle, distance traveled throughout the day and the resting calories being burnt. For someone who wants to know how there fitness has progressed, this is a trove of information you may never have been able to have access to until now.
There is an activity mode, Stopwatch, which will help you track any intense training from running, hiking and the odd gym class. The tracker will also give you a notification after it feels you have been “œexcessively“ active, when you forgot to activatate the stopwatch mode. After going for a run and coming to a rest, the app will ask you if you had just worked out and will log your recent activity for you.
One great aspect about this UP Move tracker that its siblings (the UP2 and UP3) does not have, is the ability to keep you up to date without taking your phone out. Simply pressing the tracker face once will get a light which will move around the face like an arm to give you a percentage of your steps goal you‘ve achieved so far for the day. For example; if it stops at 6 o‘clock on the face, you‘ve done 50% of your step goal for the day. If you press the tracker twice in quick succession, the tracker becomes a watch and tells you the time. It must be noted that the time is not exact, as there are no numbers on the face. The face will illustrate a few more options and yes, there‘s a video that will show you how to activate all of them.
The sleep tracking function on the Jawbone devices are all pretty accurate. Though this is a cheaper device compared to the other UP devices, one thing is for sure; they did not skimp on the tech. The tracker records your sleeping pattern from light sleep, sound sleep, the time it took you to fall asleep and the amount of times you woke up during the night. It does this once you activate the sleep mode and can tell how long you are in sound sleep or light sleep by tracking your movement while you sleep. When you move you are in a state of light sleep, while a deeper and sound sleep can be tracked by the lack of movement.
The downside with the sleep mode is that you need to activate this before you go to sleep, though this is not always the case. The app is still there for you and will do the same as it does with the activity tracker, by asking you if you were sleeping between certain times of the night and logging it.
Companion App
It is probably the best app interface for a fitness tracker I‘ve seen compared to the Sony, Samsung fitness app and Fitbit app. The interface is simple to understand and detailed, but will not give you stats that throw out numbers to confuse you. The UP Move tracker syncs seamlessly with the app after a few button presses and the app automatically will update itself. On the occasion it does not sync, the app will let you know that there is a problem and you need to update it.
A great added extra is a Smart Coach, which will applaud you for your progress and advise you of small things to do to improve on steps taken and the amount of sleep you get. I do love how integrated this app will become for those of us who take this “œfitness“ thing seriously. You are able to link the app with other apps like MyFitnessPal, meaning that what you eat will be synced to your UP app as well. This gives you a great overall view of what you are doing on a complete fitness scale. The app will allow you to duel with other Jawbone users and connect with friends, creating a fitness community. For a beginner, this is a great option and motivation. The Jawbone community on Facebook is strong, so the motivation is always there.
The App is highly intuitive and sometimes surprises you as it gets to know you better over the time you‘ve used it. I would be amazed to see how well it knows you after years of use. This is a great companion app and does elevate this device from plastic to a solid piece of tech. I love that the information it gives you is necessary without it being a burden to decipher.
Conclusion
Overall the UP Move is an affordable option and gives you the same amount of information the more expensive Jawbone devices give you, while worrying about your pocket at the same time. Jawbone does exactly what you expect it to do and though the device I tested had a few sync issues, it worked well.
This problem allowed me to test the support for the device in South Africa. At first I got some troubleshooting steps (which you can get off the site), and then some emails straight from the support team. It was brilliant seeing how they dealt with my questions and kept up with probing to help resolve this issue. I was then transferred to a local distributor who advised I could return the device for another if the problem could not be solved. I admit that the customer service experience after purchase seems to be great and should put your mind at ease.
All-in-all the UP Move is a great starter device for your fitness journey, and will give you the knowledge to succeed at your goals. Even though I had experienced some problems with the device, it felt reassuring that I could get support and have an issue resolved. At an attractive price and a “œnot so bad looking“ style accessory, the only thing missing is a heart-rate monitor. I totally get why this device lacks a heart-rate monitor and to save the cost, I‘m willing to forgive them for this.
