Gadgetory

well this is David the verge and this is the new jawbone up the up first came out last year but it had some serious issues it actually just stopped working for a lot of people and Java and wound up offering everyone a refund for their model Jawbone's been working on a new model since then and promises that the new one is sturdier more powerful and is basically unbreakable and having spent a week or so with it that seems to be true on the outside though it's pretty much the same thing it's a textured rubbery bracelet available in a bunch of different colors and it tracks your every move the band itself is nice-looking it's definitely something you won't mind wearing all the time but it's a little big and bulky for my taste it comes on and off really easily it doesn't have a clasp it's just rigid enough to stay on your wrist but the rubber can kind of stick to your arm and it always got in my way on the palm rest of my laptop kind of clacking around it's just not very comfortable those aren't huge problems on it definitely won't turn you off from using this device you use the up to track three things the first is your activity it measures your steps throughout the day and tracks them against a goal you've set for yourself which is 10,000 steps a day by default uses that number to track calories burned how much time you've spent active versus inactive and lots more it's really accurate and really consistent and pulls a surprising amount of data just from you wearing it on your wrist and not thinking about it the second thing I think is even cooler yeah I've actually tracks their sleep it'll tell you how long you slept how much of that was deep sleep and how much you woke up during the night it also has a built-in alarm clock which is my favorite thing it'll wake you up as much as thirty minutes before the alarm you set based on when you're in light sleep and will wake up feeling better it works incredibly well it's actually the only alarm clock I don't want to just throw out the window every morning when it goes off the third thing you can track is what you eat but that requires a lot more effort on your part if what you're eating has a barcode on its packaging you can just scan that using your iPhone's camera and the up app will automatically grab all of its nutritional information that part's pretty cool but if there's no barcode you can input it manually or use Jawbone's food glossary and they'll work fine but it's a lot of work to maintain for every cup of coffee or a glass of water or snack you eat you always have to go and find exactly the thing you had and then input information it's just a lot of work if you're willing to do all the work that the up system is pretty great that syncs to your iPhone via the headphone jack there's a port on the bracelet itself there's android app coming but it's not here yet and it makes all of your data really easy to see you can see how many steps you've taken today and how much sleep you got and see how you're doing compared to your goal you can also see a timeline of your food sleep and activity or look at trends and how you ate versus how you feel and so on and so forth there are a lot of different ways to use the data the bracelets collecting and the app does a great job of surfacing all of it now the syncing itself is a little clunky since you have to actually take the bracelet off and plug it in every time bluetooth would be a lot better but it works fine as is the up cost $129 and here's the thing it's really powerful but it's a lot more work to maintain than something like the Nike FuelBand that's also a lot more complicated with the fuel band it's all about whether you did better or worse than your goal or than you did yesterday but the up is based much more in things like calories and steps and tracking how you eat and function and feel over time there's all kinds of powerful stuff you can get out of it but you have to put a lot more time and effort into it if you really want the most and most diverse data the up or the Fitbit one is the way to go the Fitbit has wireless syncing and an Android app and a few more social features but I like the UPS Hardware and app a lot better and I like that it's a wristband and not a clip that goes on your pants and that you'll lose immediately at least I did it's really just a matter of personal preference there for the right kind of person the up could be a really great device but you'll definitely only get out of it what you put in