I’ve been trying this device for a few days. It works for some very specific use cases. It does not produce substantial EMF’s as it has no BlueTooth or wifi. It requires no smartphone or app and does not present privacy concerns with an app provider monitoring everything you do. It provides clock, steps, distance, calories, and a manual sleep timer. Note that any device that’s measuring calories without an accurate heart rate count is only giving a gross approximation for an “average” person of the gender and weight you enter and “average” walking. Even with heart rate, it’s an approximation. This device does not measure heart rate. High accuracy calorie counting requires treadmill / oxygen use testing. As such, I don’t care about the calorie counter.
I was mainly interested in step counting. If you input your accurate stride length, your distance numbers should be good IF the step count is accurate. Note that this is NOT a GPS device. The problem is that the step count is frequently NOT accurate. According to my testing with a manual tally counter (clicker), the device records steps while walking for exercise pretty well. It was accurate to within just a few steps out of 100.
But, the problem is that it’s not accurate when not exercising. WHAT? you say. It records phantom steps when it shouldn’t, and this falsely inflates the step count. For example, if get out of a chair and go to the bathroom, do my business, wipe my nose, wash my hands, dry my hands, and return to my chair, the unit will record about twice as many “steps” as it should. All that hand movement messes it up. Also, it recorded several hundred bogus “steps” while driving in my car for about 7 miles on common paved roads.
The cumulative effect is that the step count, distance count, and calorie count are way too high at the end of the day, assuming I go to the bathroom a few times and drive a few times.
So, here’s the only way I can see using this device. Say you are actually going to walk for exercise. You note the step count before starting. Go do your walking. Note the step count at the end. Then subtract the two numbers to get the net, which should be pretty accurate. Otherwise, ignore the step count during the day. The unit has no reset button, but the count resets every night. It does not keep any long term records. I’m probably going to return this and try a belt / lanyard / pocket pedometer from RealAlt.
This unit also has a feature where it turns on the display light when you rotate your wrist. That’s OK if you want to read the unit. But, my wife said it turned on during the night while I wasn’t trying to access it. Apparently, this also happens with the sleep timer on. So, this might bother you or your mate while you’re sleeping.
If the RealAlt pedometer is not as subject to false readings and / or if I can reset it on demand, I’ll probably use that instead. Based on my reading, many pedometers and fitness trackers, even expensive ones, are subject to these false measurements. If the other one also accumulates false steps, I’ll have to reset it each time I exercise, and the daily and 30 day accumulated numbers will be wrong.
Note that comparing one pedometer to another isn’t very useful. The only way to know if one is accurate is to compare it to a manual tally counter where you click it on every step. Or, you can click it on every other step and multiply by two. This tells you if it’s properly counting steps when it should. Then, you can check the pedometer to see if it gives false readings when it should not be counting steps.
If you think you can live with these limitations for this unit, it might be useful to you. Otherwise, you may wish to look elsewhere. Note that it is VERY hard to find fitness trackers that don’t produce EMF’s. The Bluetooth and / or WiFi can be turned off on some of them, but not all. Almost by definition, the smart bands and smart watches are going to be pretty dependent on their wireless functions and connection to a smartphone or tablet.
Ron
Genie - Research Bot
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