By Jared DiPane
Over the course of the last year we have seen a number of fitness trackers come to the market and each of them seems to promise something a little different. The problem for consumers becomes that each of these does one thing and not another, and it becomes overly confusing. Withings has been around in fitness accessories for a few years mainly with their WiFI enabled scales that did more than just track weight and this year they introduced the Withings Pulse.
Finding the correct fitness tracker for myself has been quite a struggle, I started with the Fitbit Ultra, then went to the Fitbit One. For my birthday this past year I grabbed a Nike Fuelband, and then I recently received a Withings Pulse to review and see how it stacked up. With a concept that offers new features and a familiar design I thought the Withings Pulse would be a great device for myself. Let’s hit the break together and see how it stacked up.
Design
The Withings Pulse has a pretty standard design when it comes to fitness trackers and at first glance it looks like a pretty simple black rectangle. The unit itself has a micro-USB port on the bottom, and a single button on the top side which allows you to move between screens on the device. One unique thing about the Pulse is that it features a touch screen, but this was something that I found to be rather useless in day to day usage of the device.
On the back side of the device there is a scanner to read your heart rate. The problem with this is that it is not easily accessible during activity or daily use.
The Pulse itself does not have a clip or anything built in, and instead it fits inside of other included accessories for daily use. For the daytime it comes with a belt clip that it slides into, and the fitment for me has been rather snug. I noticed that clipping the actual clip onto the belt is not an easy task, but it also kept it secure and I never had the feeling it would become lost.
For the nights to monitor sleep the Pulse comes with a wristband that velcros around back onto itself. I found the first few nights that it worked perfectly, and then after about a week it fell off almost every night at some point. This could be because I am a rather rough sleeper, but there is definitely room for improvement on the design of the band.
Functionality
When it comes to basic functionality most fitness trackers are about the same. They will almost all count the number of steps you took, approximate the number of calories consumed, and the rest is where they all differ. In addition to this the Pulse also calculates the change in elevation throughout the day, your total distance for that day, as well as monitoring your sleep.
Starting with the steps I found that the Pulse was pretty accurate to what my Nike Fuelband was reading but some days I found that the Pulse was anywhere from 300 to 600 steps ahead of my Fuelband. While 300 steps may not seem like a lot, it actually is for someone like myself who has an office type job that doesn’t move all that much during the day until the evening when I can be active.
Counting the number of calories that are burned during a day is something I never really trusted a device to do as the readings have always varied from each device. The Pulse doesn’t seem to calculate many calories burned during sleep but my Fuelband does which leaves me questioning which one is more accurate. During activities I found the Pulse to calculate calories burned pretty spot on with other things such as Nike Running, RunKeeper, and other online sources.
Seeing the change in elevation throughout the day was nothing special for me, the area I live in is rather flat and I don’t run up many hills regularly. This functionality is something that people who take the device hiking or mountain biking will certainly enjoy, but those who are just using it in a more basic fashion are likely to glance over it without care.
Monitoring my sleep was something I thought I would see little value in, but the information is actually pretty neat once you have some data built up. It was interesting to see when I was in a deep sleep, how many times it believed I woke up, and how long it took to fall asleep. I began noticing some trends and was able to make some minor changes to accommodate a better nights sleep. Entering the sleep mode required navigating to the screen, tapping on the moon, and then sliding your finger across the screen.
Having to do this process to enter the sleep mode, and then a similar process to exit the sleep mode was a process that quickly became an annoyance. Between the task it was to enter sleep mode, and the wristband not staying on my wrist overnight was enough to prevent me from using it much during sleep after the first week or two.
The biggest thing that set this device was one of the features I found to be the hardest to even use regularly, the heart rate monitor. On the device the monitoring sensors are on the back side which is the only real placement for them due to size, but this means that when it is in the belt clip it is unusable.
Having a heart rate monitor would likely be most useful during a workout, but this would mean that you have to pause to remove it from the belt clip, then stay still to get a reading, then put it back in the holster and then continue the activity. This process is something that few people would remember to do during a run or a bike ride, and odds are that at the end of the event when you actually remember to use it the rates will be almost at a normal level again.
Syncing the data to an Android or iOS device was a pretty simple process, but the process itself could take some time depending how much data needed to be synced. Simply pressing the button and holding it for about three seconds would activate the sync between the device and your phone.
Once the Health Mate app was launched it would show that it was transferring data on a pop up on the screen. The pop up could be minimized if you wished but it showed the progress of step data and sleep data separately which was a bit odd. Once all the information was transferred you could better analyze your workouts and sleep patterns.
Overall the Withings Pulse definitely does everything that it is advertised to do, and does most of them rather well. The battery lasted about a week on average, depending of course how many times the device was synced or how often you looked at the display.
Checking the battery life was a bit cluttered too as you needed to scroll through all the screens first to get back to the one showing the time and battery indicator. The build quality of the Pulse was definitely top notch, and while the touchscreen was slightly inaccurate, and the resolution was low the display gave you all the information you needed to know.
For someone interested in getting their health back in order, and looking to make some positive changes for yourself the Withings Pulse can definitely be a great first step. Sure it isn’t perfect, but no fitness tracker really is at this point.
Coming in at the $99 price point, it is right on par with other devices, and it adds a built in heart rate monitor which you won’t find on most of the other devices.