Gadgetory

hey what is going on guys lon here from Android authority and if you're looking for a fitness tracker there doesn't seem to be any shortage of them and Sony is getting in on the craze with their own fitness tracker which we first saw back at CES but let's go ahead and take a closer look at the sony smartband and find out what it's all about the Sony smartband is the company's first product to be powered by their new core fitness tracker and in terms of design the band is comprised of two parts there's the actual band itself that's made of a textured silicone and Sony includes a small and large one in the box they're both adjustable via a two pronged metal fastener so it's made to fit virtually any wrist size the metal fastener feels a little bit clumsy when trying to put it on so I would have liked to maybe see a magnet or a clasp instead to make it easier to put on but once it's on your wrist it feels very secure and I haven't had any problems with the coming undone by itself the band does absolutely nothing but this is where the second part comes in this is what Sony calls the core which is basically the heart of the band and it essentially is a plastic white rectangle with a microUSB on one end for charging a power button on the side with three LED indicators and a sony logo on the bottom the core slips into the underside of the band and once is on your wrist it looks like a normal band nobody would probably think anything of it if they saw you wear it and it sort of reminds me of those LIVESTRONG bracelets people used to wear all the time by default the smartband only comes in black but sony is selling colored bands separately if you want to switch things up a bit or if black is just a little too bland for you it's also extremely lightweight so it's very comfortable to wear and after a while I pretty much forgot that I was even wearing it oh and if you want to wear it in the shower you can do that too as it's rated IP 58 making it both dust and water resistant in order to first start using the smartband you'll have to pair it with your smartphone via NFC or bluetooth the only requirement is that you have a phone running Android 4.4 KitKat the process takes about five minutes or so but it requires you to download three separate apps the sony smartband dap sony connect and life log it would have been nice to see Sony integrate them all into a single app but once you have it all set up it'll automatically start tracking your activity since the band doesn't have a display pretty much all of these smart band settings and activity tracking has to be viewed on your phone within the smart band app you can adjust a few different settings like Auto night mode which will automatically put the phone into night mode at the time that you specify turning off all notifications if you have notifications turned on and once in night mode it'll also start tracking your sleep you can select virtually any app to have notifications sent directly to the band but the only thing the band does is vibrate letting you know you have a new notification so you'll still have to pull out your phone to find out exactly what it is there's a couple of other features like the smart wake up which will wake you up if you're lightly sleeping and the out of range alert for when you leave your phone or tablet behind there's a few other applications that you can control from the smart band like your music player and camera but the implementation is rather clunky for example controlling your music player requires you to double tap to skip forward a track and triple tap to go back a track and more often than not when I wanted to go back a track it registered my triple taps as double taps making it easier to just pick up the phone and change the track myself if you're more interested in just tracking your daily activities the life log app can help you do that what makes it so many smart band different from other fitness trackers is that it tracks more than just your fitness activities on top of walking running in how many calories you burned it'll also keep track of other activities like social interaction media consumptions like music movies games reading browsing the web and how many photos you've taken provided you did it all on the phone that the band is paired to the app is laid out in a very clean and visual manner and the timeline at the top does a nice job of giving you an overall picture of your entire day you can also bookmark parts of the day should there be anything memorable that you want to keep track of there are some things that the smart band doesn't track that other fitness bands do like biking and hiking but Sony isn't necessarily advertising it as a full-fledged fitness tracker as it's meant more for tracking your daily activities and overall lifestyle when it comes to the battery life it's got a tiny 35 milliamp hour battery inside and sony promises five days out of it and that's exactly what I got so I think five days is pretty good for a wearable device like this and it also doesn't take long to charge either it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to charge and you'll be good to go for another five days so I was very pleasantly surprised that it lived up to its claim and I think it's quite impressive can actually last that long you can purchase the sony smartband now it retails for $100 but you can already find it for cheaper through websites like Amazon and I think it's pretty fairly priced putting it directly in line with other competitors like the Fitbit and it's certainly cheaper than something like the Nike FuelBand the sony smartband isn't perfect I do think there's room for improvement but if you're looking for a band that can track your fitness and various other activities throughout your daily life the sony smartband is a great option and with all the information that it can track it becomes more than just your average fitness tracker but that is it for this review hopefully you guys enjoyed it 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