Gadgetory

hi I'm Scott Stein and let's see I've walked 4170 steps today I know that because of the winnings pulse Oh two which is a fitness tracker it's currently on my wrist I'm wearing it like a watch that weddings pulse came out a year ago and when we reviewed it then I noticed that it was pretty much heads and shoulders above the fitness tracker market because of the fact that it had a heart rate monitor built in on the back which no other fitness tracker had it was also really small and cool could attach to a clip or to a little sleep tracking band that was flexible but it was missing a wristband that well this is what I was looking for and finally a year later it's here and there's also a firmware update that allows the weddings a heart rate monitor to also check blood oxygen levels that's something that's not normally available in other heartrate trackers out there for $119 you actually get the pulse o2 you also get a clip and you get the wristband all in the same package so you least you have a choice of two different ways to wear it which is lower than your average fuel band or alternative that's on the market how does it compare well I liked at the time that it was a very easy Bluetooth syncing fitness tracker and now that you can wear it on the wristband it's even easier to have it on you but there are a couple of quirks about this device first of all getting it in and out of this wristband once you get the knack it's okay but this is metal this is a rubberized finish and it feels weird sliding in and out maybe it would chafe over time it holds it tightly but as you can see it actually needs to be pressed to turn on the LED display and the matte finish here look really cool but in bright daylight this turns to basically unreadable and in order to look at the time you're going to keep pressing that button plus for the heart rate monitor you've got to take this out of the wristband and press go actually go into the submenus here to get your heart rate press a couple of times here and it takes a while now I'm pressing I'm swiping because it actually has some touch swipe elements built into the interface but not for everything and then I've got to press a heart icon and then it tells me to place my finger on the heart rate monitor and then I've got to be patient while takes my reading it's not a continuous reading like you'll see on the gear fit or Samsung's other gear watches and you know this is not for intense workouts this is for afterwards to see how you're doing now it was pointed out to me that people who have asthma or others who might want to check their pulse oxygen levels would might like the fact that this actually tells you your oxygen readings I haven't tested this with other real medical pulse oxygen trackers so I'm not sure about its overall accuracy but it tells me that I have ninety-eight percent o2 and really high heart rate but I just had coffee so that's an interesting feature the good news is that if you have one of these from last year it's actually a firmware update so you get those features plus the ability to flip your clock vertically to fit into this band unfortunately the clock is the only part that's vertical everything else is horizontal so you kind of have to twist around and the pedometer reading that's in vertical is really really small you've got to take a little microscope and read those numbers plus it has microUSB for charging but that does mean this is not water-resistant really in any capacity between that and the heart rate reader so you had to be careful if you're washing your hands certainly don't take this in the shower with you and if you were an existing pulse owner ten dollars gets you this new wristband you can swap the bands out you could put in any other type of band design you want that's fun and flexible are you on board with that and you like the Withings app which also allows you to work in a scale and a blood-pressure cuff which is useful for me because I check my blood pressure that ecosystem is nice has a lot of apps you can tap into that's what makes the winnings pulse very interesting but just keep in mind that it's no longer really the star in terms of its design anymore it feels a step behind I'm Scott Stein and that's a look at the winnings pulse Oh two now available