Take charge of your health

Electronics have made a couch potato out of many. Now they can also keep you fit.

Nike+ Fuel Band,  approximately Rs 7,500

Under the brand Nike+, the fitness king is out with a beautiful wearable band it calls Fuel, which is replacing it’s clumsy Sportband. It has a built-in three-axis accelerometer that measures the user’s motion through whatever task they are doing. It sports a dot-matrix display with 20 LEDs, which fill up from red to green as the task reaches it’s pre-set goal. So, whatever be the activity—walking, dancing, running, it can be tracked using parameters like calories, time, steps or in a custom unit that is called NikeFuel.

BodyMedia FIT, approximately Rs 8,500

BodyMedia FIT does all the things that other bands do, like monitoring sleep, counting calories burnt, etc. But more than those, it has special in-built sensors that monitor how much you are sweating, what your skin temperature is, how much temperature your body is losing, and depending on these, gives a pretty accurate idea of how your workout is going. It has a very sophisticated online dashboard which calculates your activity levels and gives you suggestions accordingly. But since the dashboard has a subscription model, it can get a bit expensive in the long run.

Jawbone UP, approximately Rs 4,900

UP is much more than a fitness device. It’s an amazing piece of wearable tech the user is supposed to wear every waking moment, helped by the fact that the water resistant band lasts 10 days on a single charge. It mainly tracks eating, sleeping and exercising habits of the user. The inbuilt vibrator works as a silent alarm clock, and the precision motion sensor tracks your activity. The sensor is so sensitive that it can detect the number of hours you slept, and whether it was deep or light. The band comes in three attractive colors (red, blue and black) and syncs only with an iPhone.

Fitbit Ultra, approximately Rs 4,500

If wearing a band around your wrist all the time makes you feel like a jail inmate, you can go for this light-weight, clip-on USB device lookalike. Fitbit Ultra does everything that Jawbone UP does, like tracking your activities like exercise, sleep, eating etc. But it also has a beautiful display, an altimeter to count the number of steps you mounted, and monitors your sleep. It’s so lightweight, it can be clipped to a shirt or dropped in your pocket, and will keep recording your activity without interruption. The best part is, whenever it’s near your computer, it wirelessly syncs the data so you can check activity. And it doesn’t need an iPhone like the UP band.