I have a Jawbone UP, the first iteration that requires you to plug into your phone audio jack to sync.
That itself isn't a problem. It's probably part of the recipe for awesome, week-plus battery lives. But the band itself, while fitting fine on my wrist when brand new, started to degrade quickly.
To be clear: the electronics are fine. The rubber enclosure seems to have expanded up to the point where the button was completely covered by it. Upon "folding" the end so one could access the button, the rubber continued to extend, etc.
Finally, maybe eight months in, the button snapped out. I can't use a lot of the functions of the band now, such as exercise/run tracking; I can't even tell it _when_ I'm going to bed, although the app still auto-discovers when I was sleeping.
When the band starts to vibrate (unless it's my half-hour inactivity buzz), you can either stick with it for two solid minutes or plug it into the app.
The main reason I still wear it is that the motion-aware/light sleep estimate-cognizant wake-up alarm is the only way to live. It's the snooze button rebooted: rather than waking up to hit a button and then enjoying some more light sleep, the band will just wake you up when you're already semi-awake.
TL;DR: this band broke down very soon after purchase but even as it does a fraction of its original functions it's really really cool.
I own the UP24, which uses bluetooth and still manages a full two week battery life (with the latest firmware.)
I had the exact same experience with the 24 and the rubber enclosure warping. It's very disappointing that Jawbone has such hardware quality issues, as I vastly prefer its software to that of my FuelBand and Fitbit.
The marketing was probably put out in response to the Microsoft Band. I've been looking to replace my Jawbone band for quite a bit of time now, but I was waiting to see what Jawbone would release. If they didn't release any news, I would have definitely jumped on to the Microsoft Band.
Not announcing a date also works to their benefit since news outlets will put out another PSA when they announce the date.
The thing that sets Jawbone apart from other health wearables companies is how much Jawbone has embraced the idea of providing insights to its customers.
The next iteration of these devices (Basis Peak, Jawbone up3, whatever fitbit comes up with) will no longer be just about quantifying your physical life. With more data comes an increased ability to make inferences about your behavioral patterns, and that's going to be the killer feature of the future.
The first company that actively tries to answer how to instigate real behavioral change in its users through notifications, insights, and other motivational tools will be the first to make fitness wearables ubiquitous devices.
Of course, the band has to be actually _wearable_, too.
Jawbone is doing both of these things, faster than the competition.
Basis is _just_ starting to try and do insight work, after years of perfecting their sensor infrastructure. Fitbit is a toy in comparison, and afaik they haven't even touched doing inference work on small individual user data.
The insights I get from Jawbone now suck, but they're doing those with _just my steps and sleep_. Who knows what will become apparent with my heart rate and automatic activity identification.
Basis Peak does look much more advanced, but I wouldn't say that it has many more features that other bands don't have. In my opinion, the bigest factor for it is the design (both site and product). It just looks a little less futuristic and as something that regular people could actually use on a day-to-day basis.
I've always been a fan of Jawbone for it's design centric approach. Their UP and UP24 are both eye catchening and intriguing. But I'm afraid their new UP3 is a bit dissapointing, not to mention the price tag. Perhaps they rushed development to catch up with other players entering the market? Am I the only one here? It's pretty terrible.
Also, the puffery: The most advanced activity tracker known to man, UP3™ is packed with state-of-the-art sensors that give you the full picture of your health.
Someone in the marketing department should go back to the basics, we are now much more educated consumers and we don't fall for these cute bold statements anymore.
Plus let's face it, we'll soon be inbetween an Apple Watch or Moto 360, especially when these reach the $200-$250 price range in a couple of years. Thinking out loud here.
I'm still so confused as to why any of these pedometers cost so much. I'm really interested in picking one up, but the price is pretty prohibitive for something whose value-add I can't really judge ahead of time
I ended up buying a pebble instead for this reason. Has a pedometer in addition to customisable watch faces and apps. Also, a great conversation starter :).
One thing to note is that while Jawbone has a nice API[1] and summary data export, there isn't a way to access device/raw data.
There does appear to be some reversing of undocumented API calls that provide some better resolution, although I don't know how up to date that is: http://eric-blue.com/projects/up-api/
The Angel band (http://www.angelsensor.com/) looks like it should be out in a few months, from their updates they're doing FCC/CE testing now.
The nice difference between all the other bands is they aren't selling an ecosystem, it's designed to be fully open for people to write their owns apps to interface with their data.
(I'm not related to this apart from being a backer on indiegogo)
It's also an order of magnitude more accurate (source: testing my Polar H7 and my Moto 360) Current optical HRMs seem to peak out in intense activity, which is exactly when they're most useful.
The whole bunch seem good for general fitness, but not for athletic performance. For that a chest band still can't be beat.
And this, to me, makes them almost useless. That said, there are optical HRMs that are accurate and aimed at athletes, but ... they're aimed at athletes. Fitbit/Jawbone/etc aren't.
Agreed. It seems to have everything, but at the cost of being very bulky and uncomfortable. At first I thought the Microsoft Band was going to be an iPod moment for Microsoft, but I really don't think so anymore. After trying on a Moto 360 at a Best Buy, I realized how much more comfortable it is for all-day usage.
Frankly the technology is just not there right now for a true smartwatch/fitness tracker hybrid.
Every time I think I'm going to try a Jawbone product that isn't a headset I look at reviews and see far too many people complaining about how horrible their software is.
Is their software really this bad and if so are they ever going to fix it?
Jawbone has always been more of a hardware company to me. The issue with the software is that it's not up to par with competitor's software. FitBit, Withings, Garmin all have amazing web dashboards along with a mobile app. Jawbone? Mobile app only...
I don't foresee them improving their software in this sense since they've mostly bought companies thus far to fix their software. The food tracker software is a lot better than when it first started. People have been asking Jawbone to make a web interface for years now, and to date it's still not available.
Basically they are focused on product, design and big data. That's where the money is at anyways.
I've been using Jawbone 24, and after it broke down (button stopped working) decided to switch to Fitbit Flex (thought, software will be better). I've been using both devices with Android phone. Its terrible for either of them. In fact, Fitbit one has even more critical quirks than Jawbone (e.g. unreliable alarm synchronization). Hardware is great for both devices. Software is just pure disaster.
Their software is pretty awful but over time it has gotten some what better with my UP24. My biggest issue is the battery drain it causes on Android Devices. Why it is uploading at random, who knows. Why not be able to set times on when it uploads? I really don't need to know my current progress unless I open the app.
I own the Nike FuelBand, Fitbit Flex, and Jawbone UP24, and actually choose to use the Jawbone because of the software. I prefer the UI for food tracking, and find that the "smart insights" stuff is great on the Jawbone, showing correlations between mood/activity/sleep/food, etc.
Details are buried in the FAQs, mentions it supports AMEX only. There are some duplicate FAQs as well, wonder if that was not ready for prime time (though NFC is listed under the available sensors).
The "See full list of compatible devices" link leads to a page that doesn't list the device... so basically I'm still wondering what devices it'll be compatible with.
This comment was downvoted for some reason. I don't know who I offended by providing an unbiased, informative comment that could've saved some marketing critter a headache down the road, but whatever.
That itself isn't a problem. It's probably part of the recipe for awesome, week-plus battery lives. But the band itself, while fitting fine on my wrist when brand new, started to degrade quickly.
To be clear: the electronics are fine. The rubber enclosure seems to have expanded up to the point where the button was completely covered by it. Upon "folding" the end so one could access the button, the rubber continued to extend, etc.
Finally, maybe eight months in, the button snapped out. I can't use a lot of the functions of the band now, such as exercise/run tracking; I can't even tell it _when_ I'm going to bed, although the app still auto-discovers when I was sleeping.
When the band starts to vibrate (unless it's my half-hour inactivity buzz), you can either stick with it for two solid minutes or plug it into the app.
The main reason I still wear it is that the motion-aware/light sleep estimate-cognizant wake-up alarm is the only way to live. It's the snooze button rebooted: rather than waking up to hit a button and then enjoying some more light sleep, the band will just wake you up when you're already semi-awake.
TL;DR: this band broke down very soon after purchase but even as it does a fraction of its original functions it's really really cool.