I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I gave up wearing my Misfit Shine activity tracker, or rather it gave up on me. It popped out of its wristband – the rubber one it came with, not one of the mesh ones I was having so many issues with (Misfit’s own version couldn’t hang on to the Shine, which kept popping out of the band; an aftermarket version held the Shine securely but the whole band kept coming off my wrist. That happened sometime between erging and bedtime, meaning the thing is somewhere in my house, but that was a couple months ago and I haven’t seen it since. (It is red. Very red. RGB 255-0-0 red. I got a red one to prevent exactly this problem, but apparently that strategy didn’t work.)
I’ve been doing without a tracker, but I’ve also been slacking off since completing the Holiday Challenge – three weeks ago now! I happened to look today, and though it’s good that I diversified my workouts, doing some weightlifting plus a little kayaking and hiking (on the few occasions weather allowed), it’s bad that I’ve only done a total of 11 workouts of all kinds in that three weeks. I need to exercise more, and I need to move more when I’m not officially exercising, and the tracker helps with at least the latter.
This week I started wearing my old Fitbit One again, and well, yuck. It’s ugly and it just doesn’t work well. Yesterday I walked from my office to a local kiosk to get coffee, did a bit of walking at lunch, and did 10km on the erg in the evening and yet it credited me with under 3000 steps. That shit just ain’t right. Today I didn’t go for coffee but went to the supermarket for lunch, another couple hundred meters past the coffee kiosk, and it’s already giving me almost 4000 steps. And I haven’t even erged yet. (Maybe it’s because I am wearing stompier boots today.) This is clearly not a repeatable system. I don’t really care if a tracker is perfectly accurate, but it needs to be at least consistent!
So I will try something else, since for obvious reasons I don’t want another Shine (or their Shine 2, which has the same shape and seems likely to have the same issues). I’ll also keep an eye out for Misfit’s new product, the Ray, which looks like it might attach more securely, and also can be worn with a watch without looking silly. I’d buy one now if I could, but it’s not available until some vague time in “Spring, 2016” – that could be 5 months away. Also, while you can already preorder the Ray, they’re not offering any of the accessories the website shows it with, except a plastic or leather wristband.
There’s also still the Holy Grail, the Apple Watch – but based on both the Ray reviewer who talked about how the Ray even looked good next to his Apple Watch, and my husband’s struggles to get his to track our distance on a hike the other day, I’m beginning to think the Apple Watch may not actually be very good as a tracker, and I don’t know that it really has any other function I care much about – especially at that price.
For now I’ve ordered Misfit’s cheapie Flash, which is similar to the SHine but is thicker and made of plastic. It’s probably just as likely to get lost, and it’s not as sleek and pretty. On the other hand, a black one currently costs $15 at Amazon – at that price I can afford to lose a couple a year. I’ll likely get a Ray once those are available – unless my Sine decides to show back up someday soon!