A bracelet that marks all activity, depends calorie burn, and looks sporty? Sign me up! From one of a many distinguished sports clothes brands, a Nike+ FuelBand ($149 direct) irritated both my seductiveness and my expectations when it was expelled progressing this year. I, too, bought into a hype surrounding this sold aptness gadget, a elementary black rubberized bracelet with a retro-chic LED dot pattern display. Snap it on, wear it all day, and see all your activites, either you’re running, dancing, or stone climbing, remade into data.

View Slideshow
See all (6) slides

After a few weeks with a Nike+ FuelBand, we still adore a looks, though have grown sap of a stipulations as a aptness device. The FuelBand doesn’t lane anything some-more than suit with an accelerometer, creation it tiny some-more than a imagination pedometer with a clock—and a swoosh logo. The Web account, where we entrance your data, doesn’t embody any modernized metrics or many customization ability. You can’t submit nap information (very critical to health and fitness) or calories consumed, many reduction lane fluctuations in your weight. You can’t even enter what forms of activities you’ve done. Only suit counts, and sure, it depends differently depending on a intensity, though a miss of information leaves a Nike+ FuelBand pale in comparison to a reduction costly though data-rich Fitbit Ultra ($99.95, 4 stars), a Editors’ Choice aptness gadget, or even a pricier, GPS-enabled, MP3-playing Motorola MotoActv ($249.99 for 8GB, 3.5 stars).

Design
Despite my miss of unrestrained over what a Nike+ FuelBand can and can’t do, we still like a design. The simple, matte black, rubberized bracelet doesn’t demeanour like many during all, that we conclude in a aptness gadget, generally after a few days wearing a unsightly BodyMedia Fit Core ($179.99 and $6.95 per month, 3 stars). The Nike+ FuelBand, however, blends right in with infrequent attire.

The bracelet comes in small, medium, and vast sizes (see Nike’s website for how to measure), and any bracelet includes additional snap-in pieces to make it smaller or larger. A china snap with a Nike trademark that fastens a rope doubles as a USB tie indicate for charging a battery and uploading data.

One tactfully designed symbol that is flush with a rest of a band, isn’t even manifest during a distance. Pressing a symbol lights adult a LED dot pattern display, where you’ll find a stream day’s data: “fuel,” calories, steps, and time (you can spin off a latter dual if we don’t wish to see them). “Fuel” is Nike’s exclusive dimensions of activity, that doesn’t unequivocally tell we anything useful. Steps and calorie bake could be useful if we had other baselines to decider them against, a approach Fitbit Ultra does. Fitbit tells we a U.S. inhabitant normal series of stairs per day, as good as a daily endorsed amount, and also helps we figure out calories by assisting we see a calories we devour as good as burn. Fitbit also adds to a accelerometer readings information from a built-in altimeter to some-more accurately adjust your calorie bake when we stand stairs and hills.

Setup
Out of a box—and by a way, it’s a damn good looking box, one of a best I’ve seen from a association that’s not Apple—the Nike+ FuelBand needs to assign and refurbish a firmware. Plug it into a USB pier on your computer, and follow a prompts. A tiny downloader will install, too.

When connected, a battery turn displays on a front of a bracelet. While a rope charges, we can set adult an comment during nikeplus.com, where you’ll entrance your data, including weekly and monthly charts of your activity.

During setup, Nike+ needs to know your height, weight, sex, and either you’ll wear a rope on your left or right wrist. It also needs to know your daily thought in Nike fuel, that is an wholly deceptive dimensions during this indicate in your knowledge with a band. Most other aptness gadgets ask we for a some-more normalized number, like a aim weight or calorie expenditure (do we wish to eat some-more or fewer calories than we burn?). If we don’t wish to consider about calories and weight, and usually wish to concentration on how active we are, Nike+ FuelBand will indeed offer that purpose rather well. But many people, we suspect, wish some-more suggestive numbers.

Features
According to Nike, a FuelBand has a “sports-tested accelerometer,” that is tiny some-more than a unequivocally intelligent pedometer. As we pierce around a day, a rope keeps count. When we press a symbol on a bracelet to cycle by a data, a rope displays a tiny quarrel of colored lights next a info. The lights start out red—just one or dual during first. The some-more we move, a some-more lights are added, inching along and branch orange, afterwards yellow, afterwards green. When we strike your “fuel” goal, a full quarrel of lights illuminate, red to green, and “GOAL” appears above. It’s useful in terms of checking in on your progress, and identical to a Fitbit Ultra’s “flower” display, that grows a some-more active we are.

For an even improved clarity of your burn, you’ll wish to sync a rope around Bluetooth to a giveaway Nike+ Fuel app, so hopefully we have an iPhone. There aren’t apps for any other height yet. Syncing worked uniformly when we tested it, it usually syncs a stream day. If we haven’t uploaded information from a rope around a USB pier in a few days, it won’t seem on your app until we do.

The battery binds a assign for 3 days easily. However, a usually time we can check a battery turn is when it’s connected to your mechanism and charging. So there’s no approach to tell if it’s median or low. we never ran a battery low adequate to find out if we see a warning.

Conclusions
Because a Nike+ FuelBand doesn’t lane scarcely as many information as a Fitbit Ultra, and costs $50 more, it’s formidable to recommend. we do like that a FuelBand is a musty and sporty bracelet (the Fitbit Ultra is a clip-on), though it only doesn’t magnitude adult in terms of what we can do with it. Without a food-logging system, calorie counting becomes sincerely useless, and since we can’t tell a Nike+ website which activities you’ve finished during a day and during what times (as we can with Fitbit), people who indeed play sports won’t be pleased.

If we wish to compensate $150 for a bracelet with a swoosh that gives we some thought of either you’re some-more or reduction active day-to-day, a Nike+ FuelBand gets a pursuit done, stylishly. But if you’re critical about anticipating an inexpensive aptness tracking device, you’ll be many happier with all that Fitbit Ultra offers.

More Gadget Reviews:
•   Nike+ FuelBand
•   Fitbit Ultra
•   BodyMedia Fit Core
•   Satarii Swivl
•   Wacom Intuos5 PTH650
•  more