AUSTIN, Texas — Just call me Taylor Swift.
For the past year, my relationship with “wearables,” the increasingly popular category of tech products that includes fitness wristbands, has been a little dramatic. I keep dating them with an open mind and heart in hopes I’ll fall in love while they improve my life and health.
And then stuff happens.
And then we break up.
And then I write about it.
Like the pop star, I’m thinking maybe I should just leave all the drama behind — to shake it off, as it were — until the perfect suitor comes along. Will that be the Apple Watch, due out early next year? Maybe, but I’ve been burned too many times to be too optimistic.
I know I won’t enter into a lasting union with the new Microsoft Band, a $200 fitness tracker/smart watch that debuted hastily in late October. This was after the company accidentally leaked information online about its new Microsoft Health initiative and, probably not coincidentally, a short time after Apple took the lid off its own watch plans.
At first blush, the clumsily named Band (you mean it’s not Microsoft music software?) is striking and beautiful. It’s got a gorgeous, bright rectangular touch screen with clearly labeled, easy-to-navigate icons. It has roughly a gazillion sensors in it, all the better to track heart rate, steps, sleep patterns, GPS-enabled running, even how much UV energy you’re getting out in the sun.
It seems to deftly straddle the line between a Bluetooth fitness tracker — basically a pedometer with lots of body-tracking data features you can access on a smartphone — and a smartwatch, for stuff like email notifications, Facebook and using your voice to access the Web.
So far, so good, right?
And then I put the Band, which comes in three sizes and one color, institutional black, on my wrist. And that’s the moment the relationship began to sour. My first impression, one that didn’t go away for days, was that the Band felt awful. Uncomfortable and clunky and heavy and not designed for human wrists.
Then I read online that the Band should be worn with the screen on the inside of the wrist. That means nobody will see the Band’s face; instead, anyone looking at my hand sees an ugly clasp with the Microsoft Windows logo on it instead. And it also means the plastic bezel around the screen is more likely to get banged up and collect scratches. And that it does.
Even turned around, the Band is still no ergonomic wonder. The beautiful screen is not curved. It sits like a flat slab on the wrist, unyielding and balky, and only small portions of the wristband are flexible. It juts and prods, begging attention. Wearables should be a joy to wear, comfortable and built to our human form. This thing felt like a handcuff. It took nearly a week for me to stop noticing I was wearing it.
A Microsoft rep offered to trade me for a larger size, but I don’t think it’s the size of the device that’s the issue, it’s the shape and unyielding materials.
After two nights of trying to wear it to track my sleep patterns, I decided the Band itself was adversely affecting my sleep, skewing the data. And as a final insult, I also developed what felt like an itchy rash the size of a quarter the first few days. It turns out it was from wearing the Band too tightly; it was pinching my skin. I stopped wearing the Band and then committed to wearing it more loosely a few days later. The skin irritation went away and didn’t return.
So why would I stick with the Band after all that? Two reasons. The first is that the software is pretty great. Maybe I’m just a sucker for Microsoft’s neat Windows Phone-style tiles and its clean fonts. I tested it on an Apple iPhone (it’s also compatible with Android phones and, of course, Microsoft Phone) and I found the accompanying app, Microsoft Health, to be easy to use, if a little lacking in complexity.
I loved the “guided workouts” feature, which allows you to pick fitness routines from Gold’s Gym and Men’s Fitness among others and sync that workout to the Band. Only one workout can be on the Band at a time, but it’s a start.
The voice command option, dubbed “Cortana,” seems neat, but it only works when paired with a Microsoft Phone, which, let’s face it, only the geekiest of the Microsoft faithful are toting around these days as their primary mobile device.
The second reason I stuck with Band for a few more weeks is that Microsoft has a rich history of introducing clunky products (see the original Zune, the original Xbox, the original Surface tablet) and quickly improving them until they become competitive. Well, at least it happened with the Xbox and the Surface. The Zune never really had a chance.
Band feels like a fairly solid 1.0 version of a much better product we may see in a year or two, one that fits better and gets me more motivated to exercise instead of running out of battery in under two days. Once when that happened, I lost a large chunk of a day’s fitness data because it couldn’t reconnect to my phone and had to be factory reset.
I could see a future with a better version of Band, but as for the 1.0 edition, sorry, but we are never, ever getting back together.
Coffee talk
If you’re considering buying a Keurig 2.0 500 coffee maker as a Christmas gift, here’s the quick-hit version: It makes great coffee quickly and easily, including a new option to make a whole carafe of coffee at a time. It’s got a pretty touch screen and a welcome option to make a stronger brew.
On the other hand? Those plastic K-Cups create a lot of waste. Keurig has removed the more eco-friendly option of using a “my K-Cup” plastic reusable filter to brew your own ground coffee with its 2.0 brewers. And it limits you even more by blocking the brewing of K-Cups not officially made to work with 2.0 brewers. The inexpensive H-E-B brand K-Cups I buy, for instance, do not work with Keurig 2.0 machines.
Good coffee machine, with perhaps too many trade-offs even for fans of Keurig’s last generation to upgrade.
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