Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Jimmy with Jim's review room now as of 2015 it seems like nearly every activity band is jumping on the heart rate tracking craze but caught what you like I am a big advocate of heart rate tracking and training and any band as understanding your heart rate can mean the difference of just burning fat or improving your cardiovascular health now with that being said one of the very early manufacturers to offer heart rate tracking right on the wrist is Mayo global limiting the use of the chest heart rate monitor now they reached out to me and was very nice enough to let me borrow the latest Mayo alpha-2 that was just announced at CES of 2015 so without further ado welcome to Jim's review room now I have reviewed a lot of mainstream bands like those from Fitbit and jawbone now as a precursor meal for the most part has been a fitness focused company and majority of products have been dedicated to workout and sports related monitoring not all-day activity tracking the company polar Garmin and soon toe to name a few are in a similar boat where majority their bands are Fitness focused with one or two bands that's more mainstream offering 24/7 activity tracking and the reason why I mentioned this I know many of my viewers are more of the average consumer like myself it might not be too familiar with the mio brand so with that being said and keep that in mind and let's go over the physical features first now this is a size large that I'm wearing here and all sizes features a soft silicone band which is really comfortable because it's elastic offering freedom of movement and flexibility especially during weight lifting where I flex my wrist back and forth now the silicon itself does attract a moderate amount of dust and lint especially while wearing long sleeve shirts but of course this can be remedied real quick with a quick rinse and speaking of water here this band confirmed by me oh you can go swimming with this up to 30 meters in depth which is a huge plus considering that many manufacturers offer swimming capabilities now the band itself is wide and of course this is subjective but the size looks fine my opinion now it's about an inch and a half wide and just a little bit bigger than the Fitbit surge now this is a latch style band which does hold securely during runs and normal daily routines but one thing that I say is flawed though is at the end of the strap the snapping nubs are a bit too sensitive for me sometimes it catches onto a shirt sometimes it catches on to just normal day activities and then I have to resit in a total nuisance at times though but moving on to the screen meal utilizes mineral glass similar material found on some watches today as an alternative to sapphire crystal and from my testing I haven't seen any deep or even fine scratches from wearing now going over the non touch display it's really straightforward and with a screen that stays on 24/7 it's a perfect alternative to wearing a watch even at night or dark situations tapping twice on the screen will shine the backlight for viewing now the band is very simple offering just two buttons here on either side and in the middle is a light indicating certain heart rate levels which I'll show shortly now pressing on the Left button cycles you through your most recent workout and keep in mind this is not an all-day tracker so there's no indications of steps taken that some of you may be more familiar with but pressing and holding the left button lets you go through the settings menu where you can set your date/time weight height etc and now here for the right button when you hold down initiates the heart rate monitor to find your heartbeat on average it takes less than a minute to find at times as fast as 10 seconds now once your heart rate is found you can start the workout with one more press and it timer starts now your heart rate will always be displayed once you're in a workout session the screen does not go dark which is another plus as some bands require you to read tap the screen or or basically repress a button now during your run you can press and scroll through the information being displayed first up is that timer next is calories burn with distance to follow pace is also revealed with the clock being last now this will eventually cycle you back to your heart rate once again now moving to the button on the right each press will create a new lap for you to eventually compare your laps or split times now as mentioned earlier there is a little LED light on the front that blinks certain colors to indicate which heart rate on your in now while jogging you can quickly glance down and see if you need to pick up the pace or slow down a bit to achieve your desired workouts the colors are indicative to the heart rate zones set in the app which we'll see soon but let's now discuss heart rate accuracy before going deep into the app now I tested this against my in real time chest heart rate monitor the polar h6 now I typically do a straight forward run with no rest and in red is the Polar h6 with smooth lines in a consistent reading now with the Alpha 2 in blue you can see this was practically identical with the chest strap and that's very impressive for a band using optical sensors right on the wrist now more for my second test here I attempted to simulate sports related activities like playing baseball and running to first base then resting for the next play or in tennis after you score or I don't have the ball hit the net or so players return to their serving positions where the heart takes a slight rest and then you're back into the game and as you can see with both the Mia alpha 2 and polar again nearly identical the deviation from each other is very minimal and compared to all other bands that I've tested so far the Alpha tube for a wrist tracker has been the most accurate and consistent and I'm very impressed it held up that well my second test where most bands shows the most differences so the band collecting all this data let's see how it translates into the app now and see how it looks the ban of the app works for both Apple and Android powered devices if you have an iPhone 4s or higher or Android 4.3 or higher this should work now on the main page it's pretty straightforward the upper part of the screen features your current weeks total workouts performed with the most frequent heart rate zone that you're in and your average heart rate again all this data is just for this week only now more information is displayed by swiping to the right showing time distance and calories burned now one last swipe here shows numerically how long I was in my most frequent heart rate zone now you can toggle between just last weeks and this week's data on the main page as there's no further history and the app for you to explore sadly I wish there was more information such as month-over-month performance so I can visually see if I'm doing better or not throughout the year now moving to the lower half of the app you'll see a combination of me wearing the meal views and the alpha to the daily activities are from the fuse of course as it measures your entire day's activity you can see more of the fuse and they review actually at my channel if you'd like but clicking on the Alpha to work out that I logged you'll see familiar information once again average heart rate total time and set activity distance calories burned most frequent heart rate zone and how long you're in that particular zone now sliding down are all self explanatory information numerically but at the very end is your heart rate zone graph detailing a linear progression of that moment and this is where the android version is missing information compared to the Apple devices the the graph is actually missing now me Oded explain Android will have this bit of information soon through an update other than that that's about it for the app as I've stated in the Meo fuse review since then use the same program it's really limited for what mio offers right out the gate I would have loved at least a history that compares my performance week over week or month over month just to see if I'm progressing over the year or not but after addressing this lacking feature with mio they responded by stating the mio go app well down the road offer much more with updates now they couldn't disclose what or when but as of today mio is suggesting that I use third-party apps like run keeper which I already use my his pal Strava and this even works with cycling apps like map my ride but i'll mitt the apps that they're working with are very well respected it works great and better yet they're free the syncing with those apps will then provide you with a history then maps and even heart rate coaching now me also disclose they'll have their app available to sync with apple health kits and google fit down the road again no timeframe was provided so in general the meal alpha-2 is great and i think it needs to be addressed who this ban is for for to really receive credit though now it's clearly not for everyone if you're looking for an overall health band with daily life features such as all-day tracking media controls food logging social sharing message notifications etc there's plenty of other bands no question that offers that for a similar price now this band really wouldn't mean much to you then basically but for those who are more fitness focused already know their sleeping habits watches their food intake or really doesn't need an all-day tracker but a tracker for those specific moments of running while valuing accuracy this banish'd the right one for you not to mention this is one of the few bands on the market that you can actually swim with at this price range so in the end just like the Emidio fuse for what it does it does great for the average consumer is it enough let me know in the comments below so hope this video helped you in some way if you like my work add me gems review and to Facebook Twitter Instagram or Google+ as I normally post updates and items I'm currently testing before I put them on the website again this is Jimmy with gems review room you guys take care and I'll see you on the next one bye