back to article Strap on fitness finesse: Withings Activité Pop

One problem with wearable fitness trackers: you may not want to wear one when you’ve also got a watch on. This may be especially the case if, like me, you have a tracker not to monitor an aggressive fitness regime, but simply to ensure you don’t spend the entire working day parked on your arse. And you’d like it to be discreet …

  1. wiggers

    Nice hardware, shame about the app

    This seems to apply to most of the Withings 'ecosystem'. I've been using the Pulse and Smart Body Analyser (=WiFi scales) for 18months but the Android app is still, after all that time, almost unusable. They introduced a new 'Timeline' display a little while ago, but that has even worse synchronisation issues than the original Dashboard. If you report any bug their first response is to uninstall and reinstall the app. This loses all your personalisation setting so you have to go through the painful setup all over again. The bug is usually still there afterwards! Also, the web app has its own settings, some of which are reflected in the mobile app, but some have weird side effects. As the reviewer says, "...when app and hardware are both part of the 'product', a weakness in one is a fault in the other."

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Activite vs Fitbit Surge

    Which is better?

    And I agree that the problem for sleep tracking is that, while I dont mind wearing a flex to bed, I am buggered if I am wearing a proper watch :-)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Activite vs Fitbit Surge

      Can you enlighten me, what is the point of monitoring your sleep?

      I'm being serious, I'd love to know why?

      For me, if tired in morning, not enough / or crap nights sleep.

      Feel OK, decent nights sleep.

      Can't see how monitoring it would help me...

      1. Bassey

        Re: Activite vs Fitbit Surge

        Good question. It isn't about the quantity of sleep per se. It is more about the quality of sleep. Your body/brain go through two distinct phases whilst asleep (a cycle) and most people would look to go through roughly 4 of these cycles in a night. You could get a full 8 hours sleep but, if it turns out your sleep cycles are a little bit longer than 2 hours you might actually be waking up during the 4th cycle (and probably during the dreaming or REM phase, which is regarded as the most important). In which case, you've only really had 3 cycles - or about 6 hours sleep even though you've been asleep for 8 hours and might feel fine. Do that too often and you'll start to build up a sleep "debt" and feel generally shitty.

        Note - all of the above is "roughly speaking" as everyone is different. That's why a sleep monitor CAN be a good idea. Have a look at the link below for more detail;

        http://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-much-sleep-do-you-need.htm

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Activite vs Fitbit Surge

          All sounds like the sort of thing you'll do a few times and then get bored of. It doesn't really matter what it tells me as I can't get up later because I've got to go to work and get the kids to school. I can't vary my going to bed time too much either for other practical reasons.

          I also found 10000 steps a day to be quite hard to achieve. I walk 2km to the train station, another 0.5km to work and then 1km at lunch. I then walk between 1 and 2km in the evening with the dog. According to the two trackers I tried that was usually less than 10000 steps. I simply haven't got time to do more and to be honest I struggle to find time for that.

          I watched Horizon's "the truth about exercise" the other day so perhaps this is all a load of rubbish anyway and we ought to be doing intensive work over short periods and walking when we can.

          Either way I can assess my walking running routes for distance and don't need a watch or other device for that. I found I used it for about a week and now it sits in the corner and the apps have been removed from my phone.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Alarm

    "Unfortunately, with Bluetooth and/or app not working smoothly, I can’t disable it permanently"

    Large hammer. Nuff said.

  4. JDX Gold badge

    water-resistant to five atmospheres: good for splashes and perhaps the shower and surface swimming

    5 atmospheres would let you do more than that.

    1. Gordon 10

      water-resistant to five atmospheres: good for splashes and perhaps the shower and surface swimming

      5atm's is :Suitable for swimming, white water rafting, non-snorkeling water related work, and fishing.

      According to the official standard. (Source Wiki)

  5. Tromos
    Joke

    The "glass" is plastic.

    Hopefully, it's at least gorilla plastic.

    1. Gordon 10
      Joke

      Re: The "glass" is plastic.

      They could only afford Bonobo plastic. Once its scratched your'e f****d

  6. Kevin Fairhurst

    Having picked up the Withings wifi scale for £20 at tesco, I was considering one of these...

    However while the price tag is 1/3 that of the iWatch, it seems the usability side of things hasn't been thought of at all!

    And who thought that showing 100% of your goal was sufficient? What if I manage to do 12,000 steps in a day? What then??

    I think I will pick up a misfit flash for about £100 less; it will still be frustrating to use, but at least I save some cash!

    1. Henry Blackman

      A Flash is £20? Amazing, where from?

      1. Kevin Fairhurst

        Currently £24.99 from an online retailer known as Amazon...

  7. rob miller

    not for real geeks

    I searched through a bunch of these over Christmas: only SDK access to the data - if available at all - is by connecting to the website. Show me one that my code can connect to directly.

    1. Henry Blackman

      Re: not for real geeks

      Nike Fuelband has such an SDK.

  8. J 3
    FAIL

    Unimpressed

    It looks nice, but functionality-wise it seems too expensive for what it can do. I got a Fitbit Charge about a month ago, which works as a watch (show month and day too) and measures more things than the Activité seems to. And I paid $130 (note: US thaler, not sterling pound) :-)

  9. Nick Pettefar

    Communication is the problem to the answer

    I've given up on my Withings scale, can't be bothered to go through the whole setup faffle every bloody time I use it. I lost the Pulse thing somewhere too.

    Now I use Runkeeper as it just uses the sensors on my iPhone 6 and doesn't need anything else (to connect to or lose).

  10. mtp

    Bulky

    Is it just me but I find a watch 36mm wide by what looks to be about 8mm thick bulky and low tech. If I am going to be buying a high tech watch I don't want a vast hunk of plastic and metal. The thinner the better and no wider than is required to suit the purpose.

    Is this fashion over function? Maybe the next iphone should have a 5mm deeper body and weigh 200g more. Then again if my phone (actually a nexus 5) was 5mm thicker and had a 3 day battery I would be entirely happy about it.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon