Intelligent band (not entirely) for fitness

Housing

From the outside the band looks nice – we have a black, rubber strap (with a delicate texture) with a slightly bend display based on an e-ink. It looks neatly on the wrist, and what is most important, discreetly. Even when wearing it for a longer time there are no problems with comfort – basically I did not notice that I have it on my wrist. The only disadvantage is that the rubber strap attracts fluffs and dust.

The design is minimalistic and the housing is not too complicated. The usage is based on a function button (in this way we can change modes/apps’ displays, like the pedometer, the multimedia player, the calendar, the clock etc.) and a rather powerful taps on the display (they run an appropriate action like viewing mails, stopping the music player, calling a favourite contact). Additionally we can find a volume control button. On the side of physical buttons we will notice two more holes – one of them is a microphone and the second one is the speaker (the hole of the speaker can be found on the opposite side of the accessory as well). We cannot forget about the microUSB port, hidden under a rubber plug. It is worth noting that the band is dust- and waterproof, with an IP68 standard (which means that it will withstand a submergence of up to 1.5 meter for half an hour).

Display

The manufacturer decided to place a small display in an e-ink technology in the band. It is black and white, with a diameter of 1.4-inch and a 296x128 pixels resolution (192 ppi). This is a rather debatable move. The display uses only a little energy being constantly on and it is perfectly readable in the sunlight. Its disadvantages are lack of backlight and noticeable from previous pages (the so-called ghosting) – full refreshing, that is blinking the display black and then white, occurs every six pages.

It is clear that when it comes to a visual aspect and a comfort of using a display based on e-ink is far from being as enjoyable as with an LCD display with a touch panel. It is hard to get used to a different usage – instead of gentle taps and swipes we need to use the physical button and to call appropriate functions – we need to strongly tap the display.

In practice, when used outside during the day time, the display was contrast and readable enough to get from it every useful information. The problem will be for people who like running during evenings – there is no backlight that is why all information, the hour and notifications will simply be unreadable…