I have yet to see an activity tracker costing less than $99 that I can wholeheartedly recommend. Fitness brand Bowflex (owned by Nautilus) is taking a stab at it with its $49.95 activity monitor, the Bowflex Boost. This wristband looks and feels beautiful. It's sleek in shape and is crafted from a soft and durable silicone that feels almost velvety. But it lacks a real interface, other than one indicator light and a single button. That means you have to look at your iPhone or Android phone to see stats for your daily steps, distance, sleep, and calories burned. Seeing as the app plays such a crucial role for the Bowflex Boost, you'd think it would look more attractive.
Together, the Boost and app just fall short of being a great pair. I definitely recommend spending a little more—upward of $99 to be precise—on a fitness tracker that you'll love. My two favorites are the $99 Fitbit One and the more expensive $199 Basis Carbon Steel Edition, which includes a built-in heart rate monitor.
Bowflex Boost Design and Features
The all-black Bowflex Boost is a wrist-band activity monitor made of a soft silicone. Two rows of holes line a loose end of the strap, which wraps around and secures into two fasteners that sit at the top. The way the band wraps around your wrist is a bit odd because the fastener is unconventionally at the top, near your wrist bone, rather than being on the underside.
The tracker component is permanently fixed inside the band, so you'll never lose it. The back side has a two charging connection points that, when fitted onto the included charging cradle, snap in place via magnets.
When you look at your wrist, you see nothing but black—until you press a single button that's just barely raised on the band. That button turns on an indicator LED. More on that in a moment.
Steps, Distance, Activity. When the Boost is charged and strapped on your arm, you wear it all day long to track the number of steps you take, the distance you travel (in miles or kilometers), and your total activity. When you set up the mobile app, it will also estimate how many calories your body burns over your base metabolic rate, using information you give it about your sex, height, weight, and age.
You also use the app to customize your goal for how much activity you want to get in a day. The indicator light is red when you are 50 percent or less of your goal. It changes to amber when you're between 50 percent and 99 percent, and it turns green at 100 percent and above. You have to press the button to see the color, however. The Boost never gives you information otherwise.
Sleep tracking. The Boost does have the ability to track sleep, but you need to actively put the device into sleep mode by pressing the holding the button until it turns purple. Likewise, you have to press and hold the button when you wake up to turn off sleep tracking.
The Boost only tracks the amount of time it took you to fall asleep and your total sleep time. After several days and weeks, you can see a bar graph or line graph of your sleep habits over time—more on that in the section about the mobile app.
The Fitbit line of products that track sleep do it automatically, asking you only what times you got into bed and woke up the next morning. The Jawbone UP24 shows the same statistics that the Boost collects, plus your light and deep sleep moments. Those are helpful to analyze if you have trouble sleeping or wake up frequently at night, because you can see where you were in your sleep cycle when you were disturbed. The Basis Band goes even further; it collects heart rate and skin temperature data, which helps it figure out your REM periods, too.
Water-resistant. The Bowflex Boost is water resistant up to one meter (3.3 feet), which means you don't have to worry if it gets wet, but you shouldn't swim while wearing it. If you swim laps from time to time for exercise, you'll probably prefer the Misfit Shine, while more serious swimmers and triathletes who care about their speed and Swolf score should take a look at the TomTom Multi-Sport.
Boost Mobile App
The Bowflex Boost is compatible with the iPhone 4s and newer models; iPad 3 and newer models; and select Android phones running Android 4.3 or later with Bluetooth Smart. There is no option to sync the device with a computer, so you must have a compatible smartphone.
Frankly put, the app is ugly. A gray and red color scheme reminds me of business software from the late 1990s. It's very basic, though at least it works. To sync the Boost to the app, you press and hold the one button on the device for about five seconds until it blinks blue. Then you can let it go and wait for an on-screen confirmation that it's syncing.
The main page of the app shows four red progress bars. The top one indicates your general activity level, as a percentage toward your goal. The other three show the number of steps, calories burned, and distance traveled. All four progress bars show percent toward completion, and they turn green after you hit your goal. Above each bar are numerical values of your current total and goal.
Swipe once, and you can see sleep data. It's not very detailed, showing only the time it took to fall asleep and total sleep time. If you turn your phone sideways (to landscape mode), the graph becomes a little easier to read.
What's missing from the app is a way to log calories consumed, or at the very least, the option to pull in data from another calorie-counting app, such as MyFitnessPal. Many other activity trackers let you connect to MyFitnessPal. It's become the standard, and there's no reason it shouldn't be an option in the Boost app.
Think Long Term
I wish the Bowflex Boost had a better interface and more evolved app. The band itself is a gorgeous piece of work, even if the strap is a bit unconventional. The $49 price may be alluring, but I don't think many people will find they'll get the lifespan out of the device that they had hoped. You don't want to buy a new product only to abandon it a few weeks later out of frustration.
If you want a device that you'll use for months or years, I recommend the Fitbit One or the Basis Carbon Steel Edition. In the end, I think most people will be glad they paid a little extra. The real kicker about fitness trackers, though, is that they are very personal, so I fully admit that even those two devices—as much as I sing their praises—aren't right for everyone. Read up on how to choose a fitness tracker and then browse through my list of the best activity trackers for fitness for more guidance.
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