Tony Ray Here Comes That Girl Again
TechRadar Verdict
The Misfit Ray's unusual looks volition appeal to some, just it'southward severely limited in terms of functionality – not least because of the almost non-existent brandish – and struggles to justify its cost tag.
Pros
- +
Unusual design
- +
Slick software
- +
6-month battery life
Cons
- -
Bones features
- -
Quite expensive
- -
Doesn't function every bit a watch
The Misfit Ray is a mode-obsessed fitness tracker. It wants to be idea of as a slice of jewellery as much as a piece of tech.
As a consequence, though, it'southward fairly expensive for what is a rather basic device. It costs £79, $99, AU$135, and so while it'due south cheaper than your boilerplate Android Article of clothing watch, information technology arguably does a bit less than the cheaper Fitbit Flex.
Design and features
The kickoff thing to become your head around is that the Misfit Ray does not tell the time. With just a unmarried tiny picayune multi-colour LED on its front end, a watch face up simply isn't an choice.
Let's take a closer look at what the Misfit Ray is made of. Its body is an aluminium tube, the straps a translucent rubbery silicone.
The tube is no mere style offer, though. Twist around ane of the sides of the strap and the battery compartment pops out – this holds 3 393 cells, and takes up a decent amount of the space in the tube.
The Misfit Ray looks unlike – bold, even – but my honest get-go reaction was that it also looks a scrap like something yous might have to vesture later a stint in prison; thankfully, though, an alarm doesn't sound when you take the Ray off your wrist.
Information technology's also only halfway there in terms of condolement. Problems with wearables tend to heart around weight, skin-irritating straps and flat-out poor ergonomics. The Misfit Ray is pretty lite, and the sparse strap feels fine, but unless yous similar your watches quite loose the main 'barrel' just isn't that comfortable.
As there's no curvature to its length, no flattening-out of its lesser, the surface area that really rests against your wrist is quite small – and afterwards a couple of days it had given me a sore wrist, apparently lightly bruising the tiptop tissue.
This can be avoided by loosening the strap, merely it's a articulate sign that the Ray is ergonomically poorer than something like the Fitbit Flex or Sony SmartBand Talk SWR30, both of which are designed to follow the contours of your wrist, not actively disregard them.
Equally yous can probably tell past at present, I'm non in love with the Ray'due south blueprint. I like the bronze-inflected anodised finish to the aluminium, simply that aside it feels a lot similar strapping an AAA battery to your wrist. Nonetheless, I practise appreciate how different it is to your everyday tracker.
Specs and performance
The Misfit Ray is a rudimentary fitness tracker. It just really has three bits of important hardware at its disposal: a iii-axis accelerometer, a Bluetooth connectedness and a vibration motor.
These are at the heart of everything the Ray tin can practise – and they reveal its limitations. The Ray tin runway your steps, information technology can track your sleep, and it'll buzz you to let y'all know y'all've received a call or text.
Notation, though, that it is just calls and SMS messages on the notifications front – nil else. As someone who tends to use WhatsApp rather than SMS texting, the alerts are largely useless.
Ane of the neatest features of the Ray – in theory at least – is that it'll wake you upwards with a 'fizz' when it thinks you're in a low-cal part of the sleep design. This didn't always work for me, however. On a couple of occasions I've been woken by my regular telephone alert rather than the Ray, either considering the vibration warning failed to wake me up, or didn't go off at all.
And if I was using the tracker longer-term it'd probably end up on the bedside cabinet anyway. It'due south bigger than it appears in some photos, and bear in mind that the cylinder role sticks out from your wrist by a good inch.
The Misfit Ray doesn't have an altimeter, a middle rate sensor or GPS, which means it can't accurately track your runs or hikes, and can't differentiate betwixt you lot walking upward stairs or on flat footing.
On the fitness front, then, it's a pedometer, and picayune more. What elevates it in a higher place the sort of pedometer yous might get at Poundland is the software. Misfit has a slick-looking app (iOS and Android) that keeps track of your activity beyond the days, weeks and months.
Rather than focusing on the verbal number of steps you've washed the app has its own points organization, making you lot work up to 1,000 points each mean solar day. I much prefer looking at number of steps when that'due south the only recorded metric, and the app tells yous this too, besides every bit the estimated altitude yous've covered.
As with any wrist-worn tracker, don't expect great accuracy from the Misfit Ray. The event is obvious: we don't just move our arms when we walk/run. Trackers similar the Ray utilise algorithms to effort to disbelieve this sort of movement, but the Ray's isn't all that clever.
Equally a test I idea I'd meet how many steps the Ray registered while I was rooted by to my chair, working – in nearly twenty minutes information technology had tallied 32.
Where trackers like the Misfit Ray tin be useful is for making you a bit more mindful of when your burrow spud backside starts sprouting roots. In the Misfit app yous can set the lookout to give you a fizz when you've been sedentary for too long. Of course, y'all can go your telephone to do the same thing, just it may bear witness useful for those in office jobs who don't keep phone in pocket all day.
You can also tap the Ray to take the LED indicate how nearly your daily target you are.
For a bit more impetus to get off your behind, there's a social side to Misfit. You lot can compare your 'points' to those of Misfit-owning friends. That's only useful if you have some of those, of course, but Misfit can also hook up with Google Fit, the default Android fitness software if you take an Android telephone rather than an iPhone.
I enjoy low-level fitness tracking. It'southward fun to run into how much yous really move during the day, and how far yous really walked that Saturday you spent schlepping around the museum. Nonetheless, information technology's not useful beyond that; if you're training for a marathon (or even merely a 5K), a GPS watch offers far more useful information.
Slumber tracking, as is more often than not the instance, doesn't actually offer much across the satisfaction of curiosity either. You lot get a graphic of confined that show y'all when you're in periods of light and deep sleep, and when you woke upwards completely. The Ray merely needs the accelerometer for this, because it'due south all based on how much you motion.
Compatibility and bombardment life
One feature of the Misfit Ray yous might non like is that you have to manually sync the tracker to go an update on how yous're doing – your phone and the band aren't constantly talking to each other.
To practise this you pull down on the screen in the app. For a tracker that wants to earn some attention, it may surprise that information technology actually wants to be ignored most of the time.
This lazy approach to syncing is used because the Ray has non-rechargeable batteries rather than a more usual li-on jail cell, and they need to last equally long as possible. The iii 393 batteries are effectively trivial, but thick and stubby, sentinel batteries, and are easy to replace.
These are meant to last up to six months, and volition cost you around £six/$ten to replace. However, I'm almost certain this effigy doesn't have into account using the Ray for frequent vibrate bulletin alerts; a picayune vibrate motor will use a reasonable corporeality of energy if it's firing off 100 times a mean solar day.
Either mode, battery life is far longer than 95 percent of trackers – although bear in listen that this is a display-less, clock-less device.
The Misfit Ray works with Android phones running Android 4.3 or newer, and iPhones on iOS vii or newer – if you're running something older, peradventure upgrading your phone should be a higher priority than buying a Ray.
Source: https://www.techradar.com/au/reviews/misfit-ray
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