Fitness Watch Review Fraser Johnson, GUSA Events Convenor
Apple Watch, Fitbit, Garmin VivoFit, Samsung Gear Watch, the list goes on...
Almost overnight the technology market has become swamped with wearable tech which promises to change the way we live our lives. Times have changed from Primary School where a simple pedometer which counted your number of steps was sufficient.
Our hunger for more data now sees devices churning out the number of active calories we burn, tells us to stand up after sitting too long, encourages us to pause and take a deep breath, monitors our heart rate and can even track our sexual activity. The market started with two very distinct products, fitness trackers and smart watches. However, more and more, we are seeing these product lines cross to create devices which can master all of these qualities.
Now obviously all these features come with a price, at the lower end FitBit dominates the market and you ' re looking at anywhere between £ 50- £ 150 for what are marketed as‘ health and fitness wristbands’ to the higher end with the Samsung offering retailing around £ 250 to Apple in the region of £ 360 +.
The question remains then, is this just a fad and a simple case of excessive consumerism, or can these devices change the way we live our lives and actually have an impact on our health and wellbeing?
As a user of an Apple Watch Sport for just over 3 weeks now, I feel myself starting to understand why people have become so obsessed with these devices in recent years. I find myself constantly checking the number of steps I have taken, how many minutes of exercise and the number of‘ move’ calories that I have burnt. The watch sets different targets for each day that you have to achieve, and then compares this data to previous days. Throughout the day you get‘ Activity Updates’ which congratulate you on where you’ ve got to, but often remind you that there is still work to do.
I’ ve definitely found myself becoming more active as a result of the watch, simply because when you look at the Activity app on your phone, you notice the days that you have been fairly inactive. In the fitness section, I’ ve found it incredibly accurate in tracking activity levels especially during cycling and swimming, and comments on your swim stroke and evenness of your pedalling.
But what is the broader perception of fitness devices, are they really having a transformative impact on the way we live our lives, and is it just a sad turn of the times that we’ ve lost our intrinsic ability to self-motivate ourselves to get active and now rely on technology to push us further?
I did a bit of digging online and found an article, published two years ago in the Scientific American. It remarked that it was not the accuracy of the devices that were a
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