Gadget review: Jawbone UP24 band
Lovefood’s Charlotte puts the latest get-fit gadget to the test in an attempt to slim down for her summer holidays.
What does UP do?
An UP24 by Jawbone band is worn around the wrist 24/7 (except when in water) and, by connecting to your iPhone, it feedbacks on your daily activity, including calories burned and sleep gained. It’s the latest in a long line of wear-it-on-your-wrist fitness trackers, and seeing as those who love food have to try harder to keep healthy, we decided it worthy of a lovefood gadget test.
I was super excited when my UP24 band arrived – I’d noticed a fellow journalist wearing one on a recent press trip, and was fascinated by the insightful nuggets he got from it. With its built-in motion sensor, the band counts every single step you take and encourages you to take more (it can sense how able you are). There’s even a function to measure your calorie intake each day, although you have to input what you eat manually, and the list of chosen foods isn’t exhaustive.
Bedtime wise, the UP24 band can tell you exactly what time you fall asleep, how often you woke during the night, and how much ‘heavy’ sleep you attained (as opposed to ‘light’ sleep). Plus it can wake you up in the morning with a gentle buzz when it thinks you’ve had enough slumber. All these functions sound promising, especially for one who wants to get in shape for an up-and-coming holiday. But does it work in practice?
A sensitive motivator
As a pedometer, the UP24 band is fantastic. It’s incredibly accurate because you can calibrate the band so that it knows how far one of your steps covers. Of course, at £124.99 a pop you’d expect far more than a pedometer – and UP24 does deliver. After a few days walking to and from the office, a notification pops up on your phone (the band works in conjunction with the free UP app) to suggest upping your step-count from, say, 8,000 steps a day to 10,000 a day. What follows is a series of motivational tips and congratulatory messages if you achieve said goal.
The calorie count function completely passed me by… you have to enter everything you eat manually via the app, and to be frank I just couldn’t be bothered. Plus logging every crumb I ate seemed a touch too obsessive to me. Maybe one day, years down the line, the UP24 band will magically assess everything you ingest – but until then, I’ll give the food functionality a miss.
The best alarm
You can also record your ‘mood’ whenever you want, and the UP24 band will try and establish patterns between those moods and how much exercise or sleep you took that day. Another cool trick is the buzzing function of the UP24 band – it will buzz if you’ve been inactive for too long (cue a quick walk outside), and you can also set it to wake you up when you’re in a convenient ‘light’ phase of sleep. Of course, it won’t randomly get you up at 4am… you set a time frame that it’s allowed to buzz in, and then leave the rest to your band.
I enjoyed seeing how heavily I slept, and made my own connections from this data – the later I drank alcohol, for example, the less heavy sleep I got. A gentle buzzing on my wrist was a far more pleasant way to arise than a screeching alarm, and I found that even though I was often getting out of bed half an hour earlier than usual, I was more awake during the day.
Comfy and cool
Another plus is the easy layout of the accompanying UP24 app (the band only works with App Store enabled phones). Everything is presented in neat, colourful and easy-to-read graphs, and the ‘Today I Will’ memos that pop up each day are both inspirational and amusing at times. I also love how your band gets to know you – what the makers, Jawbone, call its ‘Insight Engine’. Over time, it recommends goals more and more suited to your lifestyle, and teaches how your day, night and food affect each other.
The band itself is designed to be comfortable, and that it is, if you take care to buy the right size. I hardly noticed it was there most of the time, and in any case it looks pretty cool (there are a number of colours to choose from). Visually it’s a simple looking device – there’s only one (well-hidden) button and an LED that tells you when it’s in sleep mode. There’s no display screen, which is part of the reason why the band’s battery lasts for days on end.
Is it worth it?
You could opt for the far cheaper (and older) UP band, whereby you have to plug it into the headphone jack of your phone whenever you want to download data (so for example, you’d plug it in as soon as you wake up to see sleep data). That’s £64.99, as opposed to £124.99 for the UP24 band, which transfers data to your phone wirelessly via Bluetooth. Probably worth it, because it’s far less of a faff then; but it does decrease the battery time from 10 days (for the original UP band) to seven days.
I did lose three or four pounds over the course of the month I wore my band for. But more so than weight, I felt far fresher in myself. More rested, and fitter too, because I took notice of the band’s suggestions for a longer walk here and there and was egged on by its shouts of encouragement. It’s an expensive investment, but if you’re lacking in self-motivation and need some help to get in shape, it could be worth it.
Have you tried the UP24 band, or the older version of it? Or do you think it’s a gimmick? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.
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