Gadgetory

so what I'm gonna do today is compare the setup of the Nike Fuel and the Fitbit and now in keeping with the spirit of our show I thought that I should come up with a sufficiently extreme method for testing these two devices so against my better judgment I've decided to train for a half marathon and I found myself the water to wine marathon in wine country here in Northern California on August 12 2012 at least everyone at the end anyway let's start with a fuel ban let's see how I go about registering downloading the apps and getting it all set up so my first step here is to download the desktop software note that it's not compatible I have to say I already wished that this was a website and then there's firmware updates of course there are so definitely not a clip-on and go oh login with Facebook I know this is how Facebook takes over the world but I like it opening Nike+ Kinect okay I am not digging the software situation at all okay so I'm successfully logged in I have done nothing oh no one I'm like halfway through the day okay I gotta go have a little tip story no no just house shopping thanks a lot thank you now I'm going to sink my fuel bands with the iPhone app so now it's your Fitbit / we have the Fitbit ultra oh good more software download ooh one strike against Fitbit no Facebook integration Oh it'll say my name okay I like that bonus point so I am going to install the Fitbit app on my iPhone I do like that with the Fitbit app I can track all of my activity and enter my food because I was a big fan of the MyFitnessPal app so that's kind of cool Oh neat I like the little animations data bar that Fitbit is cool done seriously it is making me sweat just trying to like do all the registration and the software installations and the firmware upgrades this should all be on the web or just on my phone and it should not be this hard I know I'm never gonna have to touch these things again but oh my god I hate setup so one thing I don't like I know I can use the cable but it's obviously easier to plug the Nike FuelBand directly and like this but then it's such a stiff little thing that it pushes on the delete button although it's not nearly as clunky it's trying to pull the Fitbit off this thing without feeling like you actually destroyed it alright so I have my fuel band on I'm gonna clip on my Fitbit it is now time to exercise wish me luck okay I'm starting my half marathon training today I have to do three miles I have my neck fuel band and my Fitbit so I'm gonna go my three miles I'm gonna sync at the end and see which one makes me feel better about all this hard work dude I'm already at 2,300 boom okay I just finished a four mile training run forgot the Fitbit yeah I just finished a four mile run yep if we got lost I picked it I just finished a seven mile run just kidding so I danced around wash my face and dance around brush my teeth all trying to hit that magical goal alright I've been comparing the Nike Fuel band and the Fitbit ultra for about a month now and I am ready to declare a winner first though I'm gonna compare and contrast these guys I will say that as motivational devices if you're looking to get off the couch or improve your kind of overall fitness both of them really work they make you want to do more in fact I signed up for a half marathon just so that I could test them appropriately and I'm up to eight miles which I feel pretty good about all right let's start with the Fitbit ultra for one thing it's very unobtrusive you can see it's really small it clips on snug so it never falls off and wherever it is you kind of don't feel it you can collect so much information with the Fitbit and then it spits out these beautiful charts so you really get this awesome narcissistic picture of how much you're working out the downside though is that if you get a little bored or fed up with all that data collection then this becomes sort of a clip-on paperweight also the clip-on factor a bit of a downside because it's really easy to forget in fact I've had a problem where I've changed out of my street clothes into my gym clothes and left this clipped onto my jeans but the biggest downside of the Fitbit for me is that it does not sync wirelessly you actually have to plug it in to a base station which just feels totally early two-thousands all right pros and cons of the Nike FuelBand I gotta say the biggest pro of this thing is the simple convenience it's so unobtrusive and so easy to wear that I almost never forget to put this guy on and the LED displays are kind of futuristic and cool the other thing I love is Nikes gamification every time I get a new goal or I get a streak going or I exceed my goal by a certain amount I get this adorable little animation that stuff seems small but it really works and it makes this a lot of fun the other plus is that this syncs wirelessly with the iOS app I don't know why Fitbit doesn't have that alright downsides to the FuelBand first it is expensive it's a hundred and fifty dollars and then finally the fuel band is part of this whole Nike family of products and they don't talk to each other like this can't talk to the shoe pod and it can't talk to the nike GPS running apps but those are all the cons I can think of so when it comes down to declaring a winner in this road test for me