The Polar Balance scale is a great companion to Polar wearable activity trackers, adding your weight to help achieve a healthy and accurate fitness program.
Just hop on the scale and it syncs with your smartphone via Bluetooth with the Polar Flow app to monitor heath features including weight, diet and daily activities.
After analyzing all the imported data and your weight, the app calculates it and helps personalize your goals in various categories by telling you things like: eat more or less, or increase your activity.
There’s very little setup past unpacking. Just remove the plastic spacer to let the 3-AAA included batteries connect. Then you must pair it with your device.
Like any other scale, your weight is displayed on top. Once it syncs you’ll have your weight on the Polar app. In addition, you’ll get activity info including daily steps, distance, calories and how long you slept.
Based on your goals, the app (and web service) works with the scale to make recommendations. Obviously everyone will be different in what you are trying to accomplish, even if it’s just maintaining a specific weight or activity level. The app recommends how to burn more calories and or specific foods to help or avoid.
You app is pretty intuitive and takes a little setup to produce the data to achieve a healthy lifestyle.
The Polar Balance scale works with other Polar wearable activity devices including the A360 and the Polar Loop. If you have a non-Polar device that supports Bluetooth Smart Standard Weight Scale Profile, it should also work.
Up to 10 people can sync with the scale.
www.Polar.com $99.95, available in black or white finishes
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Marshall has always made really cool looking headphones with great performance and that’s the case with the Marshall Major II Bluetooth headphones.
They are built with 40mm dynamic drivers, providing crystal-clear audio in both ears, which have comfortable padded ear cups.
You can use them wirelessly or plug in the durable coil cord, which includes a mic for handsfree calls and a remote for controlling the audio (play, pause, shuffle and volume).
The same controls are on a integrated analogue control knob on the headphones themselves.
A cool feature lets someone else plug into the headphones’ 3.5mm port to listen in on your music when you are connected to the music source wirelessly.
An internal rechargeable battery will keep the music playing for over 30 hours. When they aren’t being used, they collapse for easy storage.
http://marshallheadphones.com $150
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The new Timp messenger bag from Lander is designed to be useful with the right amount of pockets and padding to be efficient and wear in lightweight comfort.
When I first got my hands on the black bag I thought the exterior fabric was interesting and different. It was obviously water resistant and also seemed pretty resistant to tearing.
It has a weather-resistant coated rip-stop front panel, according to their website, which protects it from rips and moisture. The backside has a breathable mesh material so when it’s pressed against you, sweating won’t be an issue.
The main interior computer compartment has a padded area for my 15-inch laptop, tablet and an endless amount of accessories. It’s rated with a 20 liter capacity, but I chose to stay away from the liquid.
The zippers are weatherproofed with red pulls attached, opening up to expose well placed pockets for everything you need.
It also has Illumaweave reflective tape in a few places, making it easy to find in the dark.
www.lander.com $99.99
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Contact Gregg Ellman at greggellman@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greggellman
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