About a month back, the Soleus Push Activity and Sleep tracker made a quiet appearance on the Soleus website at the retail price of $39. The fitness wearables scene has been quiet with the release of 3 fitness tracker by Fitbit and subsequently the announcement of the Pebble Time smartwatch and the Apple Watch; all with activity tracking capabilities.
I thought I’d spend some time with this tiny tracker and see if it’s a diamond in the raw or a run of the mill product.
LOOK AND FEEL
The Soleus Push Pod is the size of a giant thick button. It has only one button that activates syncing and sleep tracking. The Push Pod has the Soleus logo on one side and pure white on the other. The instructions stated that the arrow should point to the twelve o’clock direction for accurate tracking.
There are no audio, vibration alerts nor screen display. So tracked stats are stored until manually synced.
During syncing or commencement of sleep tracking, the Soleus Push will flash red or blue depending on which function the user is trying to activate.
Aesthetically, this is not something I would wear on a regular basis. The missus has said this looks neither a fitness tracker nor an accessory. The main purpose of making the Soleus Push removable is simply to change from one band to another or to replace the battery.
There are two wrist bands that come in the package that should fit most if not all the wrist sizes.
Trackers in the same price range with similar functions:
FUNCTIONS AND DATA PRESENTATION
Step counting
The Soleus Push measures steps, active minutes and sleep and calories burned. Users can also set a goal to reach towards.
Over a span of 3 days, The Soleus Push was compared versus 3 other hip worn fitness trackers and this is the comparison:
- Fitbit One Activity Plus Sleep Tracker: 54115
- JAWBONE Up Move Activity Tracker: 47045
- Withings Pulse O2 : 50344
- Soleus Push : 51130
The results are similar and not too far off.
The mobile application presents the tracked stats in an easy to understand form which is available in current day, daily, weekly and monthly format. What I didn’t like is that the average stats for the month is basically all tracked data to date divided by the number of days that passed. This manner of treating data for monthly presentation seemed lazy.
Sleep Tracking
As for sleep tracking, I had to manually activate the function before sleep and when I wake up every morning.
Two short presses followed by a long press were required to activate sleep tracking. Upon waking up, a short and a long press are required to stop sleep tracking. Tedious if you ask me. You can’t blame me for being lazy as I’ve experienced trackers that allow automatically tracks sleep. Nevertheless, the data is succinct and clearly shows:
- Total sleep duration
- Deep sleep duration
- Light sleep duration
- Awake duration
- Time which sleep tracking commences and time which sleep tracking ceases
Again, it’s also a bit perplexing to see that the monthly average sleep is merely the amount of sleep clocked thus far divided by the number of days that have passed this month. I have to remind the reader that sleep tracking is manually activated so if you forget, you’ll get skewed sleep stats.
If Soleus had tweaked the data to suggest that I slept on average 6 hours daily for the days that sleep was tracked, that’d be meaningful. Telling the user they slept on average 1.5 hours daily per month is of no use because the I know it’s not true.
ANYTHING ELSE?
The Soleus Push is powered by a CR2032 coin cell battery so users will not have to worry about recharging issues.
It says on the Soleus website that average pace and speed are featured stats though I didn’t see that stat in the mobile app and the printed manual. A LG Nexus 5 running stock Android was used for this review. If any Soleus rep sees this, let me know how I can access the average pace/speed feature.
The Soleus Push is water resistant but it isn’t recommended for water sports. Also, pressing of the button underwater is a no-no.
Users can calibrate their walk and run stride for more accurate distance tracking.
The mobile app is available for both the iOS and Android platform. Data presentation is basic and straightforward.
There’s no display or any form of indication that the user is nearing the goal. All stats are visible only after manual sync.
IN A NUTSHELL
Pros:
- Tracks steps, distance, calories burned, active minutes
- Tracks sleep
- Wireless syncing, manually activated
- Stores 7 days worth of data
- Water resistant
- 2 different sized wristbands provided
- Easy to use mobile app
- Goal setting
- iOS and Android app available
Cons:
- Limited functions for the price
- No display
- Stats visible after syncing only
- Can’t add friends
- No autosync
- Sleep tracking manually activated
- Not waterproof
- No audio or vibration alert.
In terms of pricing, I’ve seen Misfit Flash going for about $25 on Amazon and the competitively priced Xiaomi Mi Band that has some form of smartphone notification only costs $20 plus depending on where you buy it.
For comparison, both the Misfit Flash and Xiaomi Mi Band feature automatic background syncing, automatic sleep tracking, and some form of progress indicating in the form of LEDs.
Fitbit, Jawbone, Withings and even Nike are already offering their fitness tracking platforms for free on compatible mobile devices. These apps are superior to the Soleus Go app.
At $39, there are trackers out there which are superior in function in the similar price range. I can’t find a compelling reason to suggest you put your money on the Soleus Push tracker which is nothing more than a simple activity tracker with bare bone functions.
The Soleus Push Activity and Sleep Tracker is retailing at the RRP of $39 at Soleus.com
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