A review gallery post with full width featured image enabled. Anyone who bought one of Jawbone’s much-hyped Up fitness bands last year found themselves an unwitting participant in a beta test. The brand-new platform promised to get you up and exercising, help you sleep and eat better, and make you more stylish to boot — and we liked it. But there were some missing features, and some overly simple software for the device.
And then the Up started breaking. Weeks and months after being purchased, our review unit and many others simply stopped taking charges or turning on. Jawbone acknowledged the fault, offered its buyers a no-questions-asked refund (even if you just didn’t like the thing, you could return it), and went back to the drawing board.
Are you dealing in calories and carbohydrates, or points and badges?
I wear my watch almost everywhere, but I take it off when I sit at my laptop. It’s just uncomfortable having the band scratching and scraping around the palmrest, and it forces me to perch my arms awkwardly above the keyboard. That’s not a problem for my watch, which doesn’t need to be worn all the time, but I had to take off the Up as well because it caused the same problems.
Tracking your life
The Up tracks three things: activity, sleeping, and eating. The first is simple, requiring only that you wear the bracelet. Its engine turns the motion of your wrist into calories burned, steps walked, and active versus inactive time.
The Up’s vibrating motor is used for two different alarm features, both of which I’ve come to love. When you’re sleeping at night, you can set your alarm, and the Up will rouse you up to 30 minutes before that time based on when you’re in lighter sleep and will wake up feeling better.
Wrap-up
I’ve now lived with both the $99.99 Jawbone Up and $99.95 Fitbit Ultra fitness devices so you’re probably wondering which I would recommend? So am I, honestly.