Withings Activité Pop

on the surface, the Activité Pop looks like a everyday analog watch (with an old-school clock face), but the tool subtly tracks your activity and sleep. similarly to telling you the time of day, the tracker includes a smaller dial that suggests your development toward your activity dreams, from zero to 100 percentage.

And when you're equipped to hit the sack, the Pop will mechanically hit upon that you've commenced sleeping (there is no need to position it in sleep mode, as you have to do with a few different trackers). you may set the Pop's alarm to wake you up.

At round $one hundred fifty, the Pop is a extra low cost model of the enterprise's previous fashion-forward fitness tracker, the Activité, which fees $450. the two gadgets are comparable, but the Pop is made from a few one-of-a-kind substances: for example, the Pop has a silicone strap, whereas the Activité's is leather.

nevertheless, the Pop is ready the identical fee as the brand new Fitbit charge HR, however in contrast to that tool, the Pop does no longer song coronary heart rate, nor does it encompass smartwatch functions which includes caller id. however those who need to escape from clunky smartwatches won't leave out such capabilities.

in case you're looking for a fitness tracker it really is elegant and does not scream "tech geek," the Pop is probably right for you. It subtly tracks your interest and sleep, with out a whole lot of bells and whistles. other pluses are that the tool has automated sleep detection and may be worn swimming.

however, if you need to see what number of calories you've got burned or what number of steps you have walked on a wearable tool itself, you might remember looking someplace else. The Pop does not tune coronary heart rate, either, and there may be almost no way to have interaction with the tool itself, besides thru the app.

The Pop comes in 3 colours — Azure, Shark gray and Sand — and additional wristband colorations might be available quickly, the corporation says. you may also use your personal watch straps, in case you wish, because the Pop has wellknown watch attachments.

One element that disappointed me is that the Pop did not quite fit my wrist; even once I adjusted the strap to the smallest size, the tool changed into barely too massive, in order that it slid around on my wrist whilst i used to be sporting it. This in all likelihood would no longer be a problem for most of the people, however people with smaller-than-common wrists need to be aware that this tool (and the accompanying straps) may not pretty match them.

due to the fact the tracker does no longer have a digital screen, you can't see the precise be counted of your steps taken or calories burned at the watch itself — for that, you will need to down load the Withings fitness Mate app, and sync the watch together with your telephone thru Bluetooth. (presently, the Pop simplest syncs with the iPhone, however Android compatibility is coming on the cease of February.)

There are not any buttons at the Pop, both, so you additionally set the alarm, and calibrate the device palms, thru the app. if you tap the watch face, the hands of the watch will flow to reveal you the time of your alarm, despite the fact that i found this selection quite vain (due to the fact I knew what time i would set my alarm for). at some stage in the week I wore the Pop, I once in a while wished the tool was a chunk greater interactive. but once more, the Pop is meant to be a wearable this is disguised as a regular watch, so it is not aiming to be a tool that is complete of bells and whistles.

You may not want to price the Pop; it comes with a watch battery that lasts as a minimum eight months, in step with the employer.

i discovered the technique of syncing the Pop with the fitness Mate app to be pretty sincere. but, the approach for placing the alarm is a piece abnormal. The app affords you with an alarm time (around 7 a.m.), and then you definitely slide your finger up or down your telephone's display screen to alternate the time. but you can not pick the hours and minutes separately. So in case you wanted to set your alarm for a while in the afternoon, you will need to slide your finger down the display screen, and preserve sliding — going minute by way of minute — until you sooner or later reached the time you desired. This takes pretty a while. i'm guessing that Withings assumes that the majority are the use of the alarm function to pick out a wakeup time within the morning.

The Withings app has undergone a remodel on account that I remaining used it (to check the enterprise's Pulse O2 tracker), and i like the new presentation. The app now indicates your activity on the pinnacle, and then a timeline of your numerous sports all through the week as you scroll down. (the brand new layout surely reminded me of the Jawbone Up app.) if you choose a particular day, you could see exactly how active you had been at any point throughout that day, as well as your ordinary steps, distance, energy burned and elevation(vertical distance climbed), and the way close you acquire to attaining your dreams. you can additionally see your weekly averages for metrics like steps taken and hours spent sound asleep.

devices just like the Pop, which tune sleep with no need to be placed into sleep mode, are decidedly greater convenient than people who do need to be placed into sleep mode, in my revel in. I also found that this device was pretty correct at detecting while i was awake versus asleep. In reality, i was inspired that the tool could inform the difference among when i used to be just sitting quietly and whilst i used to be sincerely asleep.

The alarm vibrates pretty some times to wake you up. however if you want to hit snooze, you're out of success — the Pop's alarm does now not have a sleep characteristic. if you forget to put on your Pop to mattress, the alarm might not go off.

The default interest aim on the Pop is 10,000 steps in step with day, however I could not change my step aim. i discovered this a bit disturbing, in particular because you can't see your actual step depend by using looking on the tool, handiest the share of the doorstep intention you've performed. but the company advised me that an update in late February will allow users to set their very own desires (if they need to select something apart from 10,000 steps).

unlike quite a few different fitness trackers, the Pop (like other Withings gadgets) does truely consist of some records approximately what your stats suggest. however, this information is truly buried within the fitness Mate app. for example, if you choose an afternoon's activity and examine your sleep, you will see three small dots in the top proper-hand corner of the screen. faucet at the dots, and you may be given the option to view the assist middle. inside this center, Withings offers answers to numerous questions that surely is probably helpful to people who want to no longer simply track however also enhance their health. responded questions consist of "How much bodily pastime need to i get?", "What are the consequences of bodily state of no activity?" and "How can i improve my sleep pleasant?" All this facts is very useful, however I wish it had been featured extra prominently inside the app.

at the disadvantage, the app offers no clarification as to why 10,000 steps is the default step intention. Many fitness trackers similarly choose this default aim, although it isn't an official health advice. (In fact, to fulfill physical activity suggestions, you'll probable handiest want to stroll about 7,000 to eight,000 steps an afternoon, experts say.)

And due to the fact the Pop's hand dial shows you your progress as a percentage, the dial will move handiest a small amount whilst you've walked some hundreds steps. some humans may additionally discover this disheartening (I recognise I did). i am a pretty lively man or woman, and that i in no way reached the ten,000-step goal per day whilst I wore the tool.

in the pool

The Activité Pop is water resistant, so you can wear it in the bathe and take it swimming. however, Withings has no longer yet launched its deliberate software program update on the way to enable the watch to song swimming metrics. (The replace is scheduled to be launched on the cease of April 2015, in line with the enterprise's internet site.) I wore the Activité Pop in the course of a swim exercise besides to see how it held up.

After performing some laps and a few aquatic sporting activities, together with treading water and walking in location, I checked to see if the hobby hand at the watch had registered anything, and it had. Later, I went into the app and found that the watch had picked up my actions inside the pool and added them to my general step remember for the day. My pool time became also graphed within the app as time spent being active.

if you revel in incomes rewards, you may like that the Withings app sends push notifications to your smartphone for certain accomplishments — together with whilst you've unlocked a badge (which would possibly inform you that you've walked sufficient to have climbed the Eiffel Tower, for example). The app additionally sends you reminders while you forget about to put on your Pop.

about once or twice every week, the health Mate app presents users with an evaluation of their interest — within the form of a quick message — which the app calls Insights. The best message that I obtained throughout my week of testing became one which read, "With handiest 6,420 steps, that become the least energetic you have been in 15 days," together with an accompanying frowny face. unnecessary to mention, I did not find this very motivating. i really like the idea of presenting users with insights that get greater specific the more you operate a tool, however telling someone that they may be no longer doing nicely may genuinely backfire.

The app does have a function known as Reminders, which permits you to set memory-running messages to your self to interact in wholesome behaviors, along with weighing yourself or going for a run every day. those reminders appear as notifications in your telephone.

The app also has a feature called Leaderboard, which allows you to mission your friends to a weekly step opposition to peer who can stroll the maximum. This kind of competition may inspire some people: Withings says that people who use the Leaderboard function are 24 percent greater active, on average, than other Withings customers.